Night stars offer hope as writers stare

Nighttime television will be the first to be hit if there is a writer’s strike, and the stars are bracing for an impact.

The nightly talk shows – The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Seth Meyers And The daily show How Saturday night live – will be one of the first high-profile shows to examine the consequences of a strike if the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers cannot reach an agreement by May 1.

Kimmel and Colbert, the latter of whom previously hosted Comedy Centrals The Colbert Report, will remember firsthand what happened during the last writers’ strike in 2007-2008. Meyers was up Saturday night life during this period.

While Jay Leno (who hosted The Tonight Show), Conan O’Brien (Late at night), David Letterman (The Late Show), Craig Ferguson (The Late Late Show) and Carson Daly (Last call) are no longer in their roles and The daily show Jon Stewart now has another program, many are still working on these productions, which also reminds of the chaos that arose at the end of 2007.

James Corden will be thanking his lucky stars for his last night The Late Late Show is April 27 and not a week later.

RELATED: WGA members to vote overwhelmingly to agree to strike if no deal reached by May 1

“As someone who identifies as a writer, there will be no attempt to get past that [a strike]. I won’t look for loopholes to figure out how to write,” one late-night host told Deadline.

This comment will not seem strange to those who remember that Letterman and Ferguson were able to bring their writers back to their shows before Leno, O’Brien, Kimmel, Stewart and Colbert.

Leno, Letterman, Kimmel and O’Brien all returned to the air on January 2, 2008 after being off the air for nearly two months. They were followed on January 7 by Stewart and Colbert.

But because of an ownership feature of Letterman’s Worldwide Pants production company, he owned it The Late Show And The Late Late Show instead of CBS and was able to strike a side deal with the WGA. Meanwhile, Leno, Kimmel, O’Brien and others were contributors to their respective networks.

Daly, who was not a WGA member, was the first host to return and he received a lot of flack, including from the WGA, which said it was “disappointed” that he “didn’t stand up to network pressure not” or respected writers “protest “.

Leno opened his first show without writers by saying, “A Jew, a Christian and a Muslim walk into a bar. The Jew says to the Muslim… look, I have no idea what they’re saying , because there’s a writer’s strike.”

As Stewart, who now presents Apple The trouble with Jon Stewart, He joked back, “Here’s the problem: Without the writers, every movie reference I make will be from the ’80s.”

Stewart was also upset that the WGA wouldn’t make a deal with his show, ala Letterman.

Kimmel previously said the strike wiped out his life savings because he paid many of his employees while they were out of work. Since the majority, if not all overnight hosts, went through a similar situation in the early days of the pandemic, they won’t want to pay out of pocket again anytime soon.

The ABC star also said the strike brought many of the hosts together because they wanted to return at the same time. This is notable because not all were as close as the current crop was.

Deadline understands the hosts and their showrunners will remain in close contact to monitor the situation, just as they did during Covid. The group has become relatively close over the past few years, and the stars regularly appear at each other’s shows.

A source told Deadline late last night that they are praying there will be no strike.

“I have and will continue to be in touch with the other programs to see what they are up to,” the source added. “We have to support the writers – our writers are great. Other than that the rest of the staff are great and I wouldn’t want anyone to lose their job or a paycheck. What is the golden mean? It wasn’t easy to figure it out.”

Another late-night host told Deadline: “It’s probably irresponsible that we didn’t plan for it [a strike] because it seems so likely. But at the same time there’s so much wishful thinking and we’re just trying to keep hope alive,” he added.

Saturday night live will also be affected for the final three shows of the season if a strike continues. This will affect the Pete Davidson-hosted show on May 6 and the season finale, which traditionally sees retiring cast members say their big goodbyes.

A SNL A source told Deadline that during the 2007-2008 strike, there were question marks over whether the venerable NBC show would ever return. “It was especially heartbreaking because the show was in such a great place at the time. But at the same time it was fully justified. There is no way to do it SNL during a writer’s strike.

A stream SNL Actor added that it was a very “complicated” case. “We also have to think about our crew. I absolutely support the writers and I want the writers to get what they deserve and need, but I don’t want our team to be out of work. We can’t do this art without each other.”