It was a busy night for late-night TV hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert Tuesday.
That’s when they were guests on each other’s shows and talk about Kimmel’s suspension last month and Colbert’s cancellation that was announced in July, per NPR.
The shows — “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on ABC and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on CBS — were both filmed in New York.
The pair waved at each other while doing Kimmel’s show at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Colbert’s at the Ed Sullivan Theater.
“I am so honored to be here with my fellow no-talent, late-night loser,” Kimmel said, referring to what President Donald Trump has called them.
“We thought it might be a fun way to drive the president nuts,” Kimmel said about the simultaneous shows.
“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”
Kimmel sat for his first interview since his show was temporarily suspended on Sept. 7 after he commented in his monologue about the man who killed Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, which the Walt Disney Co., owner of ABC, called “ill-timed and insensitive.”
Kimmel spoke of the entire incident being an “emotional rollercoaster.”
He found out about the suspension as he was getting ready for his show.
“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 said. “I thought, that’s it. It’s over, it’s over. I was like, I’m never coming back on the air.”
Kimmel told his staff as the audience was seated waiting for the show to begin. One guest was a chef who had been making meatballs and polenta all day. After the audience was sent home, the staff watched musical guest Howard Jones sing “Things Can Only Get Better.”
After being followed home by paparazzi, Kimmel said his 11-year-old daughter offered to sell her Labubu. His son “got naked and started running around the house.”
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Last week, ABC reversed its decision, and brought the show back on the air.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Kimmel referred to his show Tuesday as “the show the FCC doesn’t want you to see.”
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.”
CBS announced in July that “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” would no longer air past May. The network claimed it was for purely financial reasons.
The cancellation announcement 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.
At the time, Trump reveled in Colbert’s cancellation, stating “I hear Kimmel is next.”
Colbert was notified of his cancellation when he returned from vacation.
After taping the show that day, Colbert wanted to make the announcement in front of that night’s audience.
“I was so nervous about doing it right, cause there was nothing in the (tele)prompter, I was just speaking off the cuff,” Colbert said, adding he messed 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.”
On both their shows, they talked about the friendship and camaraderie the two share along with other late night hosts, including Jimmy Fallon, Jon Stewart, Jon Oliver, and Seth Meyers.
They also talked about Kimmel having a billboard out up in Los Angeles seeking votes for Colbert to win an Emmy Award.
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Colbert won that award in September.
As Colbert’s show ended Tuesday, they were joined but Kimmel’s sidekick, Guillermo Rodriguez, who poured tequila shots.
The three men toasted to “good friends, great jobs, and late night TV.”
