Stephen Colbert is a huge fantasy nerd. The late-night talk show host has made this very publicly known over the course of his multi-decade career on shows like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and The Late Show. Not only has he consistently featured actors, writers, and filmmakers from these kinds of franchises on his shows, but he's also been directly involved in many such projects. For example, Colbert's love of J.R.R. Tolkien is so strong that he has interviewed Peter Jackson numerous times, and by the early 2010s had established such a strong report with the filmmaker that he actually had a cameo appearance in The Hobbit trilogy.
Another fantasy-genre innovator that Colbert has built a strong relationship with is none other than Game of Thrones architect, George R. R. Martin. The renowned author has been featured on The Late Show numerous times over the past decade, and seems to have forged a strong relationship with Colbert, as demonstrated by the late-night host's recent reveal that Martin actually reached out to him after the show was unceremoniously cancelled.
When Colbert recently had fellow late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel on his show to speak to him at length about Kimmel's own abrupt suspension from his show in light of politically geared backlash, they got to talking about the unique kinds of people who reached out to them in the aftermath of their respective negative announcements. While Kimmel has since been reinstated on his late-night show, Colbert's fate remains the same; the parent company of CBS, Paramount Skydance, seemingly capitulated to ill-intentioned demands and made the extremely unorthodox decision to announce that The Late Show would be canceled in a few months, despite the fact that it has been a late-night TV staple for decades.
Since that happened, Colbert has been on a bittersweet victory tour of sorts, using his last few months to routinely skewer the parent company and the political powers who were involved in the decision. This all culminated with The Late Show taking home an Emmy just a few weeks ago, but now, Colbert has also revealed in that interview with Kimmel that no less than George R. R. Martin reached out to him shortly after Paramount's initial announcement.
"George R. R. Martin [reached out]... He sent me The Winds of Winter," Colbert said, poking fun at Martin's long-gestating next novel while applauding the author for providing him some comfort during a strange time.