Jimmy Kimmel’s audience was already in their seats when ABC called to tell him that “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was suspended.
Kimmel appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Tuesday night and talked about the moment he got the call telling him the show would be pulled.
Disney, which owns ABC, “indefinitely” suspended Kimmel’s show on September 17 after FCC chair Brendan Carr slammed Kimmel’s comments about the killing of Charlie Kirk.
Kimmel said his live taping was at 4:30 p.m. daily, and he received a call from the ABC executives at 3 p.m.
“So I go into the bathroom, and I’m on the phone with the ABC executives, and they say, ‘Listen, we want to take the temperature down. We’re concerned about what you’re going to say tonight,'” Kimmel said.
He told Colbert that ABC’s executives said the “best route” would be to take the show off the air.
“I thought, ‘That’s it, it’s over, it is over,'” Kimmel said. “I’m never coming back on the air. That’s really what I thought.”
“Now, meanwhile, there’s the whole audience, they’re in their seats,” he said.
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Colbert interrupted, “Oh, wait. I didn’t know that your audience was already loaded.”
“They were loaded and in their seats, ready for the show,” Kimmel replied.
He said his team sent the audience home, but proceeded with the taping anyway.
Kimmel returned to the air to shoot “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on September 23 after being suspended from the airwaves for a week. Disney brought the show back after facing massive backlash over the decision.
Kimmel also hosted Colbert on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in an episode that was also released on Tuesday. The duo swapped war stories of finding out that their shows were getting cut.
CBS announced in July that it would pull Colbert’s show off the air from May 2026, and the decision was purely financial.
Representatives for Kimmel and Colbert did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
