With NBC having canceled Community last week and freeing up star Joel McHale in the process, many have speculated that he’d be groomed to take over CBS’s soon-to-be-vacated 12:35 am program The Late Late Show, but CBS boss Les Moonves is now insisting that the network is not in talks with McHale.
Speculation began this week after especially after Moonves’s wife Julie Chen tweeted out a picture of her, her husband, and McHale, but Moonves said, during an interview with Bloomberg Television, it was just a chance meeting at a party and “there was no discussion about 12:30.†He explained, “We were at a party the other night. We were at a dinner night, and I’d never met Joel McHale. I said, ‘Hey Joel. Come over and sit down. Let’s have a chat.’ So we’re chatting. And my wife Julie, who has her own talk show, says all right, I’m going to tweet out this picture, right?â€
Moonves went on to say that Chelsea Handler is not out of the running for The Late Late Show. The network recently denied being in talks with her for a late night show after she posted photos online of her in the lobby for a CBS meeting, right around the time CBS’s late night transition announcements trickled in. “The only reason we said not is because she was tweeting out these pictures with CBS logos and all that,†says Moonves. “But Chelsea’s great. There are a lot of possibilities. There are a lot of terrific people there.â€