Late night TV hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert were guests on each other's shows Tuesday night, to trade stories about how their shows were canceled — temporarily in Kimmel's case, or permanently for Colbert.
In New York, they united in a special talk show crossover; Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS. The broadcasts even included a stunt in which they waved to themselves from onstage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where Kimmel is taping his show all week, and the Ed Sullivan theater in midtown Manhattan, home of Colbert's show.
"I am so honored to be here with my fellow no-talent, late-night loser," Kimmel joked, referring to the insults President Trump has hurled at both of them. During their monologues, both hosts continued mocking the president and other newsmakers of the day.
To the cheers of a live audience in Brooklyn, Kimmel joked about their near simultaneous shows, "We thought it might be a fun way to drive the president nuts."
On Colbert's stage, Kimmel sat for his first interview since his show was suspended temporarily on Sept. 7. Network executives pulled the plug after listening to Kimmel's monologue from the previous night, which The Walt Disney Company, owner of ABC, called "ill-timed and insensitive." Referring to the recent killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, Kimmel commented, "We hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it."
Those comments incensed Trump, conservative activists, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission and two major broadcast groups, which pulled the show off the air.
Tuesday night, Kimmel told Colbert the entire incident was an "emotional rollercoaster." He said he was getting ready for his next show when he got a call from ABC executives informing him that Jimmy Kimmel Live! was being suspended "indefinitely."
"They say, listen, we want to take the temperature down. We're concerned about what you're going to say tonight, and we decided that the best route is to take the show off the air," Kimmel recalled. "I thought, that's it. It's over, it's over. I was like, I'm never coming back on the air."
While Kimmel told his staff the news, the audience was still seated in his theater in Hollywood, waiting for the show to begin. One guest chef had been making meatballs and polenta all day for a segment. After sending the audience home, Kimmel said the staff watched musical guest Howard Jones perform the song "Things Can Only Get Better."
Kimmel said after that, he was followed home by paparazzi in cars and two helicopters. His 11-year-old daughter was so concerned, she offered to sell her Labubu, while his son "got naked and started running around the house."
Kimmel's suspension set off a national debate about free speech and attacks by the Trump administration on the media. Fans around the country rallied to support the late night comedian, threatening to boycott Disney and cancel subscriptions to its streaming service. Then last week, ABC and all its affiliate stations reversed their decision, and brought his show back on the air. Kimmel returned to host his show, with tears in his eyes, saying, "I never meant to make light of the murder of a young man."
On his show Tuesday — "the show the FCC doesn't want you to see," as Kimmel joked — he introduced Colbert as "the Emmy-winning late night talk show host who, thanks to the Trump administration, is now available for a limited-time only."
In July, CBS announced The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will end in May for purely financial reasons. His fans were skeptical, noting that the news came shortly after Colbert criticized CBS' parent company, Paramount Global, for paying $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. It also came as Paramount Global sought FCC approval for a $8.4 billion merger with Skydance Media.
At the time, Trump celebrated Colbert's cancellation, tweeting "I hear Kimmel is next."
On Kimmel's show Tuesday, the audience cheered "Stephen! Stephen! Stephen!" Then Colbert sat down to tell how he found out that the show he had hosted since 2015 was ending. Colbert said his manager waited until he returned from vacation to break the news. After taping the show that day, Colbert told his audience not to leave because he had one more act to record.
"I was so nervous about doing it right, cause there was nothing in the (tele)prompter, I was just speaking off the cuff," Colbert recalled, saying he messed it up twice. "They started going, 'You can, come on Stephen, you can do it," because I always messed up on the sentence that told them what was happening. And then I got to the sentence that actually told them what's happening, and they didn't laugh."
During their shows on Tuesday night, Colbert and Kimmel talked about the friendship they had with each other, and with other late night hosts Jimmy Fallon, Jon Stewart, Jon Oliver, and Seth Meyers — who made a cameo appearance. They talked about how Kimmel had put up a billboard in Los Angeles asking people to vote for Colbert to win an Emmy Award, which he did in September.
And they ended Colbert's show with a visit from Kimmel's sidekick, Guillermo Rodriguez, who poured tequila shots. The trio toasted to "good friends, great jobs, and late night TV."
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