Anderson Cooper emotionally signs off '60 Minutes' after 2 decades
Source: USA Today
May 17, 2026, 9:44 p.m. ET
Anderson Cooper is signing off after 20 years. The CNN anchor, 58, bid farewell to "60 Minutes" on the newsmagazine show's May 17 episode, his last as a correspondent. After the season finale, which featured a report by Cooper about London's cab industry in the age of autonomous vehicles, CBS News released an extended farewell interview with the journalist.
Cooper grew emotional as he delivered his final "I'm Anderson Cooper." After choking up for several seconds and looking down as he held back tears, he looked straight into the camera and said the line three times, a standard for the show. In the "overtime" segment, Cooper went down memory lane, recalling the "dangerous" and "dumb" things he's done for the show, such as diving with Nile crocodiles and being "temporarily" blinded after riding a jet ski over massive waves in Portugal.
Though a montage of recognizable faces showed Cooper's interviews with Prince Harry, Lady Gaga, and the late Donald Sutherland, Cooper seemed to fondly look back on impactful sit-down interviews with "compelling characters" who are not household names, such as a Holocaust survivor and people combating child malnutrition in Niger.
"The thing is, it's never felt like work. It's felt like you're stepping into people's lives, and you're invited into people homes," Cooper explained. "You're invited into their struggles, you're invited into whatever it is that has brought them to be on '60 Minutes.'"
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2026/05/17/anderson-cooper-leaves-60-minutes-last-episode/90132056007/
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