‘The Testaments’: Stephen Colbert’s Role in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Spinoff Revealed

Stephen Colbert will make an audio cameo as the voice of “Radio Free America” in The Testaments, a spinoff of The Handmaid’s Tale, TV Insider can reveal. Colbert’s casting is a follow-up to Oprah Winfrey‘s audio-only appearance in The Handmaid’s Tale Season 2 Episode 11, “Holly,” when she played the voice of the opposition’s radio announcer. The Testaments showrunner and executive producer, Bruce Miller (who helmed The Handmaid’s Tale), tells TV Insider why he cast Colbert in the spinoff.

Set about four years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale series finale, The Testaments is a coming-of-age story that finds a new generation of young women in Gilead grappling with the bleak future that awaits them. For these young women, growing up in Gilead is all they have ever known, having no tangible memories of the outside world before their indoctrination into this life. Facing the prospect of being married off and living a life of servitude, they will be forced to search for allies, both new and old, to help in their fight for freedom and the life they deserve.

Based on the 2019 Margaret Atwood novel of the same name, The Testaments stars One Battle After Another‘s Chase Infiniti as Agnes, the daughter of a powerful commander, Lucy Halliday as Daisy, a Pearl Girl and Agnes’ classmate, and Ann Dowd, reprising her Emmy-winning role as Aunt Lydia, the head of their school. It premieres on Wednesday, April 8, with three episodes on Hulu.

“Radio Free America” provided updates on the American rebellion to those still stuck in Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale. Mayday, the rebel group that frequently infiltrated Gilead, had a major victory in the final episodes of the original series when it liberated Boston and the whole of Massachusetts with the help of the American military. (Catch up on how The Handmaid’s Tale ended here.)

“[Colbert] did a very nice turn and gave us a few minutes of their time and their voice to be the voice of ‘Radio Free Boston,'” Miller tells TV Insider. His cameo in The Testaments comes just one month before The Late Show comes to an end in May on CBS (the show replacing Colbert’s time slot was revealed on April 6).

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The Late Show‘s cancellation in 2025 was a shock to the industry. Critics of the move argued it was a capitulation to the desires of President Donald Trump to help Paramount’s merger with Skydance get approved by the federal government. Jimmy Kimmel Live! was also briefly taken off the air in 2025 in response to comments about Trump from host Jimmy Kimmel. Between Colbert and Kimmel, late-night television has become a mascot for First Amendment rights in the United States in the last year.

Miller calls Colbert “a good person to be the voice of free speech in America.”

“He was lovely to do it for us, and we very much appreciate it,” he says.

Miller wanted Colbert as the radio voice before The Late Show was canceled.

“He’s Stephen Colbert. If I was building ‘Radio Free Boston,’ he would certainly be one of the people on the list to be the DJ for ‘Radio Free Boston,’ the announcer, just like Oprah was,” Miller says. “He certainly would be on that list regardless of whether he had a talk show or not.”

The executive producer does admit that The Late Show‘s cancellation made Colbert’s Testaments casting kismet.

“I like it when that happens,” Miller says with a smile.

Like with Oprah’s cameo, Colbert is not explicitly appearing as himself in The Testaments, but rather appearing as a comforting voice for those tuning in.

Read our full review of The Testaments here.

The Testaments, Series Premiere (three episodes), Wednesday, April 8, Hulu