Stephen Colbert has been off late night television for less than a month. In that time he has already appeared in not one but two streaming projects, both of them carrying a particular resonance given the circumstances surrounding his departure from The Late Show.
His latest voice cameo, which aired this week and immediately sent fans into a frenzy of sharing and tagging, comes in Hulu’s The Testaments, the sequel series to The Handmaid’s Tale based on Margaret Atwood’s follow-up novel. Colbert voices a broadcaster for Radio Free Boston, the resistance network operating within the totalitarian society of Gilead.
His character tells listeners simply not to let the bastards grind you down.
If you understand the context of why Colbert’s Late Show was cancelled, the resonance of those seven words is not subtle. Three days after Colbert called CBS’s 16 million dollar settlement with President Trump a big fat bribe on air, his number one rated show was cancelled. Jon Stewart described the cancellation as representing the fear and pre-compliance gripping American institutions. Over 150,000 people signed petitions demanding CBS reverse the decision.
And now Colbert is voicing a resistance broadcaster in a streaming series about a totalitarian society where free speech has been eliminated.
Series creator Bruce Miller told TV Insider that Colbert would have been on his shortlist for this role regardless of his Late Show status, but that the timing added a dimension to the casting that nobody could have planned. That is the kind of statement that says everything while appearing to say very little.
The cameo is not Colbert’s only recent project. He has also appeared as the Digital Dean of Students in Star Trek Starfleet Academy on Paramount Plus. Reports have connected him to a Lord of the Rings film project. He is staying active and engaged across multiple platforms while the streaming petition campaign and the hashtag movement continue to build.
The hashtag BringBackColbert has been trending today across social media, driven by fans sharing clips from the Testaments appearance alongside a renewed push for streaming services to commission a new show for him. The momentum behind the campaign is not slowing down. If anything, each new appearance reignites it.
The resistance radio broadcaster chose exactly the right line. And the people listening know exactly what it means.
