Wednesday was International Women’s Day, which doubled this year as A Day Without a Woman, when thousands of women took off from work and boycotted businesses not owned by minorities or women. Even though late-night television has a reputation for being something of a boys’ club, it turns out it can’t survive without its female staffers either, as hosts were eager to let us know with sketches highlighting the impossibility of producing a show without the women who are usually involved.
The segments about boycotts were inevitably a bit self-congratulatory—look, we employ so many women that we’d be lost without them! But they were also expressions of solidarity with the women who make these male-fronted shows possible, and the individual shoutouts were a great way to give credit to female crewmembers whose contributions, while essential, often go unappreciated.
Full Frontal proved that it couldn’t function without its audience coordinator, half the writers and producers, all of its researchers, digital department, half the control room, wardrobe, hair, makeup, stage manager—and, oh yeah, its host, Samantha Bee, the lone woman in the late-night lineup.
Stephen Colbert and James Corden also found themselves at a loss without the women of The Late Show and The Late Late Show, with both hosts using their cold opens to acknowledge their female crewmembers, some of them by name. Colbert’s opener came with a disclaimer that it was made “without the help of any of The Late Show’s female staff,” but without the heads of the footage, props, hair, makeup, and costume departments, there wasn’t much to do, especially since the male writers could only muster up Chewbacca and penis jokes.
Meanwhile, Corden found that he couldn’t even open The Late Late Show at all without women, because he gave Karina Licea, the Late Late Show teleprompter operator, the day off—but surely anyone could learn to feed him his lines, right? Wrong.
On the lamer end of the spectrum, Jimmy Kimmel marked the occasion with some uninspired jokes about the Day Without a Woman (“I went years without a woman, it was terrible”) and a gag involving artificial intelligence assistant Siri boycotting his iPhone. But to his credit, Kimmel did wear a red tie, the color chosen by organizers for allies to express solidarity with the movement.
