One canceled late-night host and one temporarily canceled late-night host walked into a bar, or actually set, on Tuesday.
Jimmy Kimmel hosted fellow comedian Stephen Colbert on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” a week after Disney put Kimmel’s show back on the air. Colbert also hosted Kimmel on his own show, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” the same night. The shows were taped earlier in the day on Tuesday and aired late that night.
The pair swapped stories about what it was like to learn their late-night shows were getting pulled. Colbert’s contract as host of “The Late Show” was not renewed, and the show is set to end next May, with CBS saying the cancellation was a financial decision. Colbert and others have suggested CBS canceled the show to please the Trump administration.
Colbert said that his manager told him he needed to speak with him for 15 minutes following the show taping on July 16. The manager, who is also Kimmel’s manager, broke the news to him.
He said when he came home two and a half hours later, his wife said to him, “What happened? Did you get canceled?”
“I said, ‘Yes, I did,'” he added.
Colbert said his manager found out several days earlier but waited to tell him because he was on vacation, “drowning my entire life in spanakopita and Greek rosé.”
Colbert also shared how he broke the news to his staff the next day. He said he knew they would not be able to tape the show if they knew about the cancellation in advance, so he told a select few people and then filmed the show like normal.
After they finished filming the regularly scheduled episode, Colbert said he told the audience, “Okay, now nobody leave because we’ve got one more act of the show.”
Colbert said he then went backstage, got his staff on Zoom, and broke the news to them so they would not find out about it on air. Then he went back out to address the waiting audience again. He said he was speaking off the cuff and messed up a couple of times and had to restart.
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“The audience thought it was a bit, and they started going, ‘You can do it! Come on, Steve, you can do it!” he said, adding, “and then I got to the sentence that actually told them what was happening, and they didn’t laugh.”
Kimmel also shared a bit about how he reacted when he found out his own show was being pulled from the air.
“I came into my office, and I told some people, and then I texted you and Jimmy and Seth and the two Johns to let you know what had happened. But you were on stage at that time,” Kimmel said, referring to late-night hosts Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver, and Jon Stewart.
Kimmel then shared a clip that showed Colbert finding out and announcing in front of his live audience that Kimmel’s show had been pulled.
Meyers also made a cameo appearance on Kimmel’s show on Tuesday. Kimmel shared a photo of the three comedians on Instagram with the caption, “Hi Donald!”
After the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” taping, which was done in Brooklyn, though it’s typically produced in Hollywood, Kimmel headed over to appear on Colbert’s show, which is shot in Midtown Manhattan.
ABC, which is owned by Disney, pulled Kimmel’s show two weeks ago after comments he made following Charlie Kirk’s death and criticism from FCC Chair Brendan Carr.
Kimmel’s suspension sparked outrage and protests, drawing comparisons to Colbert’s show being pulled.
Kimmel’s reinstatement was criticized by President Donald Trump but celebrated by other late-night hosts, including Colbert, who said he was once again the “only martyr in late night.”
