Jimmy Kimmel is taking things one day at a time when it comes to his talk show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, after what has been a rollercoaster of a year. Back in September, the popular ABC late night show was taken off the air for what turned out to be an entire week due to comments the host made about the shooting of controversial right wing influencer and close Trump administration associate Charlie Kirk. Several affiliate stations refused to broadcast the show for days after as well, although it returned eventually to sky high ratings.
However, earlier this week, a taping of the show scheduled for Thursday, with guests David Duchovny and Joe Keery, plus musical guest Madison Beer, was postponed as well, reportedly due to a “personal matter.” Madison herself confirmed the news with a statement shared on her social media page.
“Due to unforeseen circumstances, @jimmykimmellive needed to reschedule my performance that was originally set to air tonight to a later date,” she penned. “I’ll share more details on timing when I can, I can’t wait for you all to see it.” While neither Jimmy, 57, nor the show has commented on the surprise cancellation, he did recently make an appearance on a podcast, just days before news broke, to discuss his show.
Jimmy and his wife Molly McNearney, 47, joined the We Can Do Hard Things podcast, hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle, earlier this week. He took the time to address Jimmy Kimmel Live!’s suspension in September, saying that while he was faced with the very real possibility of his show never returning, he still wanted to end things “on my terms.”
“If I’d not been allowed back on the air, I’d be a martyr,” he said. “It’s not a terrible position to be in as a comedian, [but] it’s not the position I wanted to be in. And it’s also not the way I wanted the show.” He revealed having extensive discussions with Molly, also the co-head writer and executive producer of his show, about how they’d handle things if that was to be their curtain call.
“I want to end it in a graceful way. I want to have a farewell party with our staff. I want to do all those things,” he continued, adding that he wanted to “say the things that I want to say to people,” but the idea of having it all shut down “abruptly, and unjustly, would have been awful. It’s just not how you want it to go.” Reflecting on his tenure with the show, he continued: “I’ve been doing this show for almost 23 years, it’ll be 23 years in January.”
Molly added: “An interesting wave I think we both felt was mourning, right after [the show was suspended]. Because we felt we weren’t coming back and we didn’t have a shot to write our ending the way we wanted to…” Taking listeners back to that fateful day, she added: “When we left here, we didn’t know if we were going to see people again,” emphasizing that it was indeed a “very strange feeling.”
Jimmy further opined: “We weren’t fired, we were suspended, and I think suspended means come back, but it just didn’t feel like that to me at the time.”
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