Stephen Colbert Confesses He “Was Not Aware Of The Trouble” He Was In Ahead Of Ruptured Appendix Diagnosis And ‘Late Show’ Hiatus

Monday night’s (Dec. 11) episode of The Late Show saw host Stephen Colbert return after his recent appendix surgery. Colbert, who was absent from the CBS late night spot for two weeks, opened up to his viewer about his recent operation.

“The last time I was sitting at this desk, which was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I was in a heap of trouble,” he said, per The Hollywood Reporter. “I was not aware of the amount of trouble I was in.”

After asking the Late Show‘s bandleader Louis Cato if he noticed “anything going on with [him] that night,” Cato replied, “I knew something was wrong when for the first time in almost nine years, you had to rehearse the monologue, sitting at your desk, with a barf bucket next to you.”

While Colbert quipped that he had “forgotten that detail,” he noted, “that’s never a good sign.” He explained that following David Letterman‘s Nov. 20 Late Show appearance — which he described as “a wonderful time” — he “got home and [he] wasn’t feeling great.”

“I didn’t know what was going on. I thought I might have caught something from Dave’s beard,” he teased. “I woke up the next morning just in abdominal agony, and I figured the pain would go away.”

Unaware that his appendix had burst, he decided to record two shows that Tuesday night (Nov. 21) “so people could have an extra day off for the holidays.”

“We’d already been out for five months during the strike, and I’d already missed a week for COVID, and most importantly because I am an idiot, I said, ‘Let’s just do the show!'” he recalled.

He continued, “The pain was manageable. It only hurt when I moved — and when I didn’t. I held it together for two monologues and two-second acts and then a long interview with Bradley Cooper, because there is no pain when you’re lost in those baby blues.”

Colbert then highlighted “a moment [he] was not prepared for,” telling his audience about the cooking segment he did with chef José Andrés.

“At the end of it, he spontaneously grabbed me to dance with him afterwards,” he shared, noting that while Cooper and Andrés were unaware of his pain, his “insides had become what the Spanish call ‘paella.'”

After coming down with a “raging fever” and eventually “shaking like a Polaroid picture,” his driver Pablo and his wife Evie pushed him to go to the hospital.

“They said when they opened me up, it was like they’d shot John Wick 5 down there,” he joked, then thanked his doctors, his team, his loved ones, and even sarcastically those who didn’t reach out.

He also thanked his appendix, joking, “Because you giving me blood poisoning helped me lose 14 pounds. Ladies, gentlemen, you heard it here first: appendicitis is the new Ozempic.”

The Late Show airs on weeknights at 11:35/10:35c on CBS. Next-day streaming is available on Paramount+, while subscribers with the Showtime extension can stream episodes live.