Jimmy Kimmel Shares The Minute-By-Minute Details Of Finding Out ABC Was Taking Him Off The Air

The house lights blaze. The crowd roars. Stephen Colbert takes the stage, his voice booming:

“Give it up for Louis Cato and ‘The Late Show’ band, everybody!”

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But tonight isn’t just another night. There’s an edge in the air—a sense that something important is about to happen.

Colbert turns to the audience, a knowing smile on his face.
“Here’s the thing about doing one of these shows—it’s a privilege so few people know. The grind, the responsibility. And tonight, my first guest knows exactly what it’s like.”

The crowd erupts as Jimmy Kimmel walks on stage, grinning.
“Thank you for having me. I’m so honored to be here with my fellow no-talent late-night loser. Great to stick together.”

Colbert nods. “We’re honored because this is your first interview since September 17th—when you found out you’d been indefinitely suspended.”

The audience gasps, then boos the network.
Kimmel admits, “It was an emotional roller coaster. You hear that a lot, but it really was.”

Colbert leans in. “How did you find out?”

Kimmel recounts the moment:
“It was 3:00. We tape at 4:30. I’m in my office, typing away. I get a call from ABC. They say, ‘We want to talk to you.’ That’s unusual. So I go into the only private place—the bathroom. I’m on the phone with ABC execs. They say, ‘We want to take the temperature down. We’re concerned about what you’ll say tonight. We’ve decided the best route is to take the show off the air.’”

The crowd boos again.
Kimmel shrugs. “I started booing too. I said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ They said, ‘Well, we think it is.’ There was a vote. I lost.”

He walks out, calls in his executive producers. “They’re pulling us off the air,” he tells them. His wife says he’s whiter than Jim Gaffigan.

Colbert asks, “What’s the first thing that occurred to you?”
Kimmel answers, “That’s it. It’s over. I’m never coming back.”

He tells the staff. Meanwhile, the audience is already in their seats, loaded for the show. “We had a chef, Christian Petroni, making meatballs and polenta. Howard Jones was taping a performance—‘Things Can Only Get Better.’ We taped it anyway, in front of our disappointed employees.”

Colbert jokes, “You don’t have jobs, but there’s plenty of wet cornmeal.”

Kimmel grins. “Might as well eat while we still can.”

He leaves for home, trailed by paparazzi, helicopters overhead. “I didn’t have makeup on—my bald spot was showing. I didn’t want America to see that.”

At home, the kids are up. His daughter offers to sell her stuffed animal. His son strips naked and runs around the house.

Kimmel says, “Then it was like a DUI in L.A.—three days in jail where I couldn’t say anything. Just phone calls. You were kind to call me.”

Colbert asks, “Who was the most unusual person you heard from?”
Kimmel lists: “High school girlfriend, James Taylor, George R.R. Martin—he sent me ‘The Winds of Winter.’”

Kimmel jokes, “I didn’t have a girlfriend in high school. But I heard from the Pope. I heard from everyone I’ve ever met—even the guy who picked me up at the Nashville airport fifteen years ago.”

He and Colbert compare their notes from James Taylor, laughing about whether the legendary singer cut-and-pasted the same supportive message.

As the segment closes, Colbert promises more:
“We’ll be right back with Jimmy Kimmel, everybody. Stick around.”