Late-night shows return after writers strike, actors resume talks to end their standoff

LOS ANGELES — Late-night talk shows are returning after a five-month hiatus due to the Hollywood writers strike, while actors will begin their own lengthy career-ending talks.

CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live! ” and NBC’s “ The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon ,” the first shows to air when the writers strike began on May 2, will now be among the first to return Monday night.

Comedian John Oliver took his first strike, returning Sunday night to his „Last Week Tonight” show on HBO with enthusiasm and giving his full support to the strike.

Oliver gave a spirited recap of stories from five months ago, calling the strike a „very difficult time” for everyone in the industry.

„To be clear, this strike was for good reasons. Our industry has seen its workers hard pressed in recent years,” Oliver said. „So, the Writers Guild went on strike and luckily won. But, to achieve it, many sacrifices were required.

„I’m angry that it took 148 days to reach an agreement that the studios could deliver in one day (expletive),” Oliver said. He hopes the writers’ contract will help other entertainment industry guilds — as well as striking auto workers and employees in other industries — negotiate better contracts.

Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns HBO, is one of the studios on the other side of the table in the writers’ and actors’ strikes.

The network’s late-night hosts will return after Monday.

Colbert will have astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson on his first show back. Kimmel will host Arnold Schwarzenegger. Matthew McConaughey will be at Fallon’s bedside.

All patrons will surely talk about the strike in their monologues.

„I’ll see you on Monday, and every day after that!” An excited Colbert said in an Instagram video last week from the Ed Sullivan Theater, which was packed with his writers and other staff for their first meeting since the spring.

The hosts were not entirely idle. They teamed up for a podcast called „Strike Force Five” during the strike.

Writers were allowed to return to work last week after the Writers Guild of America reached an agreement on a three-year contract with a coalition of the industry’s biggest studios, streaming services and production companies.

Union leaders said the deal was a clear win on issues including wages, staffing levels and the use of artificial intelligence. Writers themselves will vote on the contract during a week of voting that begins Monday.

Meanwhile, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists will join writers in a historic double strike on July 14 to begin negotiations with a coalition of motion picture and television producers for the first time.

Actors walked off the job on many of the same issues as writers, and SAG-AFTRA leaders said they would closely monitor the gains and compromises of the WGA contract, but insisted that their demands would remain the same when the strike began. .

Five days after the writers and studios resumed talks, an agreement was reached and the strike ended, although an attempt to resume talks a month ago broke down after a few meetings.

Late night shows have significant limitations on their guest list. If the studios that are on strike have movies and shows that are their bread and butter, the actors who appear to promote the projects are not allowed to appear.

But exceptions abound. McConaughey, for example, appears with Fallon to promote his children’s book, „Just For.”

SAG-AFTRA has awarded interim contracts so that actors can work on multiple productions, and the actors’ right to promote them publicly.