Topline
Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert appeared as guests on each other’s late-night talk shows on Tuesday night and discussed the cancellation of Colbert’s “The Late Show” and the recent controversial suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” while taking some jabs at President Donald Trump.
In his opening monologue, Kimmel announced Colbert will be a guest on his show and he will simultaneously be a guest on “The Late Show”, and said: “We're doing something unprecedented tonight…We thought it might be a fun way to drive the president nuts.”
Kimmel joked about it being the show “the FCC doesn't want you to see,” before showing photos of signs above Highway 101 in Los Angeles, which read: “Public pressure works—Kimmel is back!” and “Now do Colbert.”
While interviewing Colbert, Kimmel quipped about the two of them being put in “Guantanamo Bay together” before asking about his show’s cancellation.
Colbert learned about the cancellation from James Dixon—who is both his and Kimmel’s manager—after returning from a vacation, and said that after his long meeting to discuss this, his wife—who was unaware—jokingly asked him, “What happened, did you get canceled?”
Kimmel said he was at the “No Kings” protest march with his wife and kids when he found out Colbert’s show had been canceled and added: “I was just absolutely shocked because it's not right.”
Colbert also shared a clip of him finding out during a taping of his show that Kimmel had been pulled off the air by ABC, where he appears shocked, says “wow’ a few times, and then steps off stage, telling his audience, “I want to find out what this is about.”
After Colbert welcomed Kimmel on his show, who then quickly took a swipe at the president, saying, “I'm so honored to be here with my fellow no-talent late-night loser. We have to stick together.” Kimmel said his nearly week-long suspension by ABC was an “emotional roller coaster” and “very strange.” Kimmel said he found out about the suspension just an hour and a half before he was set to tape his show on September 17. Kimmel said he had to take the call from the network executives in the bathroom, where they told him, “Listen, we wanna take the temperature down. We’re concerned about what you’re gonna say tonight, and we decided that the best route is to take the show off the air tonight.” Colbert’s audience then booed, and Kimmel noted, “That’s what I said, I started booing.” Kimmel said he disagreed with the decision, which was put to a vote. Immediately after this, Kimmel said he believed “That’s it. It’s over…I’m never coming back on the air.” The comedian noted that as the suspension news came through, his audience had already been seated at the studio.
On his show, Colbert asked Kimmel, when he was a radio DJ in the early part of his career, “Did you ever think the president of the United States would be celebrating your unemployment?” Kimmel responded: “I mean, that son of a bitch…No, I never imagined that we’d ever have a president like this, and I hope we don’t ever have another president like this again. I never even imagined there would ever be a situation in which the president of our country was celebrating hundreds of Americans losing their jobs. But somebody who took pleasure in that, that to me is the absolute opposite of what a leader of this country is supposed to be.”