Jimmy Kimmel has admitted that in the early years of hosting his late-night talk show, he would “pray” that ABC would swoop in and cancel it.
The comedian, 57, has fronted Jimmy Kimmel Live! since 2003. He has since become one of late-night television’s trusty stalwarts, recently coming back from a week-long suspension following his comments on the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
However, that wasn’t always the case. Sitting down Wednesday for Ted Danson’s Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, Kimmel confessed that when he first landed the gig, he felt lost.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said. “And I would pray that they canceled the show sometimes.”
Kimmel added: “I didn’t want to quit because I didn’t want to disappoint all the many people who worked for me, but I couldn’t. I was just — I couldn’t do it anymore.”
Opening up about the specific struggles he faced, the Emmy-winning host said that early on, it was difficult for him to find guests. “It was just, like, we didn’t have guests many times,” he recalled.
“We’d go on the air live at midnight, at 12:05. There were times it was 5:30 in the afternoon and we didn’t have guests for that night’s show, and I would have to just pick up the phone and call my friends,” he revealed. “That’s not how you go into a show. You can’t operate that way”.
Kimmel shared that he often called on his close friends and then-girlfriend Sarah Silverman to appear on the show. “I asked her to come on a lot and I love her,” he noted, adding that his roster of friends included Adam Carolla, David Alan Grier, Anthony Anderson and Kathy Griffin.
“God bless them, because I needed them,” he said. “And they were always ready at a moment’s notice to come on.”
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Things eventually worked out. “It stabilized and we figured out how to do it,” he said, remembering how he started using “running bits” and other elements to help “keep [him] afloat.”
Kimmel’s surprising admission comes shortly after his show was reinstated by ABC following a brief suspension.
Last month, the network made the controversial decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air indefinitely due to Kimmel’s comments about the fatal shooting of Kirk.
His September suspension caused a wave of outcry from celebrities, politicians and others who believed pulling the show was a violation of free speech protections. Some went as far as to boycott Hulu and Disney+, streaming services of Disney, which is the parent company of ABC.
According to recent data from subscription analytics firm Antenna, the rate of Hulu subscription cancellations spiked to 10 percent in September, up from 5 percent in August. Similarly, the rate of Disney subscription cancellations rose to 8 percent from 4 percent.
Within a week of his suspension, Disney announced Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be returning after “having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy.” The entertainment company explained it decided to suspend the show “to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country.”
Kimmel’s first night back skyrocketed in ratings. The episode brought in a whopping 6.3 million views on television, according to data from audience measurement firm Nielsen. That’s triple his normal TV viewership, despite an estimated 23 percent of households not being able to watch on their local ABC stations due to a boycott of Kimmel’s show by station owners Nexstar and Sinclair that has since ended.
