Who is On Late Night Tonight in Comedy: Week of January 4, 2021

Published by Ernie Tripper at January 4, 2021

Who’s on Late Night Tonight in Comedy?

This week, our hosts are all back to work (well, not Conan), Colbert welcomes a squirrel-friend (Yaass Queen), and Seth Meyers talks to the comedian who refers himself as the “lovechild of Liberace and Edward Scissorhands.”

Happy New Year! It’s a brand new year for our late night talk shows and like a lot of the American workforce, our late night hosts are getting back behind their desks for some new shows this year. However, one our hosts is trying to run out the clock on his current TBS contract before he heads off to HBO Max next summer. Conan O’Brien won’t be in this week. This is his third straight week off from his TBS show.

But enough about who’s NOT working. Let’s talk about who is. Why not start the week out with a Eleganza Extravaganza!? RuPaul, the Emmy Award winning host of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” on VH1, is going to sissy up the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday night.

Mama Ru will be promoting the newest season of “Drag Race.” The 13th installment premiered on VH1 on New Year’s Day with 13 new drag queens all vying to become “America’s Next Drag Superstar.” Of course, we can hope we’re getting to see RuPaul the Drag Queen, but we may get RuPaul Charles instead, the entrepreneur, producer and mogul in his street clothes, which are just as fabulous.

Ricky Gervais is filling the guest slot on a couple of late night shows this week, with both new and rerun appearances. The acid-tongue emcee of the Golden Globe Awards will be on Conan on Monday evening as part of a Team Coco repeat and Ricky will also be appearing on an all-new Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon on Thursday night.

Currently, Ricky Gervais is working on the third season of “After Life“, his hit Netflix series which deals with death, loss and grieving and yet is still hilarious. Ricky says that the third and final season has been written and it’s ready to go into production. It’s rare that Gervais ever offers a third season to any of his TV projects. But he was talked into doing one more for the streaming service. Gervais also recently revealed that Netflix is ready to pick up his next projects in his post “After Life” life.

Besides Ricky Gervais on Monday night, Conan O’Brien has some funny Best Of shows lined up with Thomas Middleditch on Wednesday’s Conan repeat. He’ll be discussing how to make life saving kidney transplant surgery funny on his new CBS sitcom “B Positive.”

Then on Thursday’s rerun, Sarah Silverman will be the repeat guest on a Conan encore episode. Sarah is part of the new comedy special, “Yearly Departed” on Amazon Prime. She joins other top comics like Tiffany Haddish, Natasha Leggero, Phoebe Robinson and more as they eulogize the year 2020. It’s a goodbye to the year we wish never happened. It’s available now on Amazon Prime.

Also appearing in new late night shows this week, Tim Minchin will be doing a virtual interview with James Corden on the Late Late Show on Tuesday on CBS. Tim is the British comedian, musician and actor who in his autobiographical song, “Talked Too Much, Stayed Too Long“, describes himself as the “lovechild of Liberace and Edward Scissorhands.” Tim Minchin will be promoting his latest album, “Apart Together” which is available on TimMinchin.com.

On Wednesday night, there will be a reunion with two of the correspondents from the Daily Show. And we’re talking about the Jon Stewart version of the Comedy Central series. Former Daily Show news team members Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee will be together again on Wednesday when Samantha is a guest on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS.

Samantha Bee has also gone on to host her own show. She’ll be joining Stephen Colbert to promote the new 6th season of “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” on TBS. They may have let Conan get away, but TBS is making sure that Sam sticks around. The new season of “Full Frontal” premieres on Wednesday, January 13th at 10:30pm on TBS. Just in time for the inauguration.

This weekend, it’s your chance to catch an encore of the highest rated SNL episode of the season again. Just over 9 million viewers tuned in to see Dave Chappelle host Saturday Night Live on November 7, 2020. That’s about twice the audience SNL usually brings in on weekly basis. Making this episode extra-special, it was the first SNL after the Presidential Election of 2020.

It’s become a new Saturday Night Live tradition to have Chappelle host SNL after the Presidential election every 4 years. He’s done it in 2016 and now in 2020, either to celebrate or chill the country out. This is also the final episode of Saturday Night Live where Jim Carrey will play President-Elect Joe Biden. BTW, it was that Saturday afternoon, just before this show hosted by Chappelle originally aired, when the state of Pennsylvania was called in favor of Biden, giving him the Presidency. You can relive all of this on Saturday night.

Hope you have a Happy New Year and with any luck, Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen have sobered up by now.

Monday on Late Night

RuPaul is on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert at 11:30pm on CBS
Amy Poehler is on Late Night with Seth Meyers at 12:30am on NBC
Ricky Gervais is on Conan at 11pm on TBS (REPEAT)

Tuesday on Late Night

Tim Minchin is on the Late Late Show with James Corden at 12:30am on CBS
Lauren Ash is on A Little Late with Lilly Singh at 1:30am on NBC (REPEAT)

Wednesday on Late Night

Samantha Bee is on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert at 11:30pm on CBS
Phoebe Robinson is on A Little Late with Lilly Singh at 1:30am on NBC (REPEAT)
Thomas Middleditch is on Conan at 11pm on TBS (REPEAT)

Thursday on Late Night

Ricky Gervais is on the Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon at 11:30pm on NBC
Sarah Silverman is on Conan at 11pm on TBS (REPEAT)
Aisha Tyler is on A Little Late with Lilly Singh at 1:30am on NBC (REPEAT)
Rob Huebel is on A Little Late with Lilly Singh at 1:30am on NBC (REPEAT)

Friday on Late Night

Jenny Slate is on A Little Late with Lilly Singh at 1:30am on NBC (REPEAT)
Kathryn Hahn is on A Little Late with Lilly Singh at 1:30am on NBC (REPEAT)

Saturday Night Live

SNL Encores with host Nicole Kidman and musical guest, Stone Temple Pilots from 1993 at 10pm on NBC
Dave Chappelle hosts a repeat episode of SNL with musical guest, Foo Fighters at 11:30pm on NBC