Taylor Tomlinson Bids Farewell to ‘After Midnight,’ Admits She ‘Really Wanted CBS to Replace Me’ | Video

Taylor Tomlinson said goodbye to “After Midnight” Thursday with the final episode of the show’s second season — and thus, the final episode period.

And in her last-ever monologue, Tomlinson admitted she’s disappointed that CBS opted not to continue the show, telling her audience “it was my dream” that the network would replace her with a new host.

When Tomlinson decided to back away from the show to focus on her standup comedy career, CBS decided to let the show end with her exit. “After Midnight” will be replaced in the 12:30 a.m. slot with “Comics Unleashed With Byron Allen,” a show with a completely different format, starting in September.

In her monologue, Tomlinson alluded to the difficult decision she made to walk away, and to her reasons for leaving, but she mainly thanked the people working on the show who helped make it happen.

“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 I just didn’t think it was possible for me, like 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 just I can’t believe that I got to do it as long as I did,” she began.

“You know, it was my 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 continued. “And the reason I feel that way is because, honestly, I can’t.”

“I can’t really express how special this team of people is that I got. When I tell you, I mean, a lot of people have told me, like, Oh, you’re so good at this job. Like, who else could have done it? I’m I’m not kidding. A lot of people could have done it because this team is so supportive and is so good at preparing people to be on television. I mean, we have three guests minimum every single night who are on the whole hour. We make them stand like the whole time, like, it’s a big it’s a big ask to have people do this show like I mean, I hope you guys. Let me just be sentimental for a second, but like, the amount of work that goes into doing a show like this, it’s insane,” Tomlinson went on.

The comedian then noted the staff her made her look good every night — hair, makeup, wardrobe, who she said “deserve an award,” and admitted that “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, and like, to be totally frank, like we didn’t have the budget of a traditional late night show. Like, I know we make jokes on the show, like we don’t have the budget set. We really didn’t. We really, really didn’t. And everyone who works here was doing the job of, like, several people, not just their own. Everybody was working overtime, and everybody cared so much.”

Tomlinson ran the audience through the show’s exhausting pace, noting it was often edited while they were still filming, that it had two showrunners, multiple producers. She nodded to the “so many people behind the scenes” who kept things running, from talent bookers, to her writers, a “room full of comedians who are incredible performers in their own right. And were also not only writing jokes for me every day, they were also writing jokes for minimum, three panelists, if not, like, a few more walk-ons.”

She also explained how they ended up adding a monologue to the show. “After Midnight” is of course a fake game show where comedians riff on current events for weird prizes. “When we started this show, we weren’t doing a monologue. That was something that we added at the end of season one. And yeah, when we started doing the monologue, it was just my friend Sophie Bottle writing them. And then we added, like, a few more of our writers from the team. But it’s a very it was a small team of people, I’m telling you, like, I we had a small we just, we just did so much with they stretched so little to become so much.”

She also thanked Percy Rustomji, the show’s announcer/hype man, who she said, “whenever people do this show, they leave and they’re like, this should be Percy’s show. And I’m like, I agree with you, by the way.”

She thanked the show’s digital strategy team, and after worrying she might have forgotten some people, said, “I just need everybody watching to know how much this experience has meant to me. And the reason I took this job was to work with these people who are so good at what they do, and anyone you see on stage tonight, behind the scenes, just know, like, this is the A team you guys.”

“So 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 added.

Watch Tomlinson’s final monologue below:

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