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Comedian Tomlinson: "Never had a real job"
Photograph:
Netflix / Everett Collection / picture alliance
Stephen Colbert is currently the number one in classic American late-night television. For the past seven years, he has been ahead of his competitors Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel in average viewership; even in the much-watched reboot after the writers' strike, "The Late Show" with Colbert on CBS had better ratings than the comebacks of the competition.
But CBS has had an open void in the post-Colbert show slot since James Corden's departure. Corden took over »The Late Late Show« as the fourth host of the show in 2015 and attracted attention with formats such as »Carpool Karaoke«. In April 2022, the British comedian had announced his departure from the format.
Now it was Stephen Colbert who made the succession plan public on his "Late Show" on Wednesday evening. In the future, the show "After Midnight" will be shown Monday to Friday from 0:37 a.m. on CBS. Colbert's guest was stand-up comedian Taylor Tomlinson, who revealed, among other things, that she turns 30 this week. "Congratulations," Colbert congratulated, "I've got a network TV show for you."
Taylor Tomlinson was born in Orange County, California, in 1993. She grew up in a Christian family and began performing in comedy at the age of 16. "I've never had a real job," she joked on Colbert's show. "I've been doing stand-up comedy since I was 16, it's not a job."
Taylor Tomlinson received greater attention and good reviews in 2020 with her first stand-up special for Netflix, »Quarter-Life Crisis«. A second special, »Look At You«, followed in 2022. She's very popular on TikTok – "TikTok is Google for kids," she told Colbert. There, for example, she sought answers to the question: "How do I impress my next boss?"
In fact, Stephen Colbert will be her boss in the future, because the talk show host is one of the producers of "After Midnight". The show is based on a format called "@midnight," a type of comedy game show that was once shown on the Comedy Central channel after Colbert's earlier show "The Colbert Report."
Women in the Late Night
With Taylor Tomlinson, a woman joins the currently all-male line-up of US late-night television. Most recently, Lilly Singh had occupied the after-midnight slot on NBC from 2019 to 2021. One pioneer was Joan Rivers, who hosted "The Late Show" on the Fox Network from October 1986 to April 1987.
On German television, too, the position of late-night talker is mostly occupied by men. Anke Engelke took over Harald Schmidt's slot at Sat.2004 in 1, but »Anke Late Night« was a flop with audiences and critics. Later, Sarah Kuttner (on Viva and MTV) and Carolin Kebekus (on WDR and Erste) moderated similar formats. At the end of October, 3sat premiered »Bosetti Late Night«, a monthly show with comedian Sarah Bosetti.
Feb