Taylor Tomlinson waved goodbye to After Midnight with an emotional monologue, praising the team that makes the CBS late-night show and saying she was “very grateful” for the opportunity.
The comedian began by calling it an “emotional” night.
“I’m so grateful that I got a chance to do this. I never thought that I would be able to host a late-night show. This was never something that was on my vision board at all because I just didn’t think it was possible for me. I’m a touring stand up and I feel very grateful to have that career that I do, and this opportunity came along at a time in my life where I could take advantage of it, and, while, unfortunately, I couldn’t keep doing the show, it just wasn’t sustainable for me. I can’t believe that I got to do it as long as I did,” she said.
CBS revealed that it was ending the 12:37am show after two seasons and was replacing it with reruns of Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen.
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Tomlinson said it was her “dream that I would get to finish out this season and hand it off to a new host”.
“I really wanted CBS to replace me, because I just think there are so many amazing comedians who would have done a great job with this show,” she added.
She paid tribute to the whole team that makes the show from the hair and wardrobe to the writing staff and below the line crew, as well as the guests that have appeared. “Let me just be sentimental for a second… the amount of work that goes into doing a show like this, it’s insane,” she said.
Tomlinson is returning to being a touring standup comedian. “I had no idea how to be on TV every day. I had no idea how to do any of this. I had no idea how much work it was to make a late-night show every single day. We didn’t have the budget of a traditional late night show. Everyone who works here was doing the job of several people… and everybody cared so much.”
She closed out by saying that she wanted the audience to know “how much this experience has meant to me”. “I just want to say on camera thank you so much to the staff and crew of After Midnight for having me as your host for 200 episodes,” she said.