Comedian Taylor Tomlinson will be US late-night TV’s only female host - and the youngest

LOS ANGELES - In a shake-up of the late-night television landscape in the United States, stand-up comic Taylor Tomlinson will take over the time slot after The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on CBS network.

The move makes the 29-year-old not just the only woman in the job on a late-night show on network television now, but also the youngest host by two decades.

Tomlinson will serve as host of After Midnight, based on @midnight With Chris Hardwick, a series that premiered on Comedy Central in 2013 and was cancelled four years later. That show, with Hardwick as the host, featured a panel of comics.

Among the executive producers of the new show is Stephen Colbert, who announced the news on his programme on Wednesday. Tomlinson will start in 2024.

The comedian, who is based in Los Angeles, is a film and television novice, but in a very short time, has become one of the most acclaimed and popular stand-up acts in the US, building on the strength of two specials on Netflix, Quarter-Life Crisis and Look At You. She is currently on a global tour of big theatres.

She got her start performing as a teenager and played the church circuit early on. Her big break on Netflix came courtesy of a 15-minute set on The Comedy Lineup in 2018. Her next special will premiere on the streaming service in February.

Tomlinson is essentially filling the position vacated when English host James Corden retired from The Late Late Show in 2023. Before him, Craig Ferguson and Tom Snyder had served as hosts of programmes that followed The Late Show With David Letterman.

The list of women getting such opportunities on network television is extremely short.

Joan Rivers was the first in the modern era, becoming host of a short-lived Fox series in 1986. In 2019, Lilly Singh replaced Carson Daly in the late-late slot on NBC in 2019. But when that show went off the air in 2021, network television became an all-male club. NYTIMES