Jimmy Kimmel Tells Stephen Colbert His Show’s Suspension Was an “Emotional Roller Coaster”

Jimmy Kimmel stopped by his late-night friend Stephen Colbert‘s show for his first interview since Jimmy Kimmel Live! returned to the air after being suspended by ABC on Sept. 17.

During Tuesday night’s episode of The Late Show, Colbert first asked Kimmel to recall how he initially learned his show was “indefinitely” suspended, which he called an “emotional roller coaster” and “very strange” experience. Jimmy Kimmel Live! has since returned to broadcast on Sept. 23.

“It was about 3:00. We tape our show at 4:30. I’m in my office, typing away as I usually do. I get a phone call, it’s ABC. They say they want to talk to me. This is unusual,” he explained. “As far as I knew, they didn’t even know I was doing a show previous to this, so I have like five people who work in my office with me, so the only private place to go is the bathroom.”

“So I go into the bathroom. And I’m on the phone with the ABC executives and they say, ‘Listen, we wanna take the temperature down. We’re concerned about what you’re gonna say tonight and we decided that the best route is to take the show off the air tonight,” he continued, drawing boos from Colbert’s audience, which were directed at ABC executives.

“That’s what I said. I started booing,” Kimmel quipped. “I said I don’t think that’s a good idea, and they said, ‘Well, we think it’s a good idea.’ And then there was a vote and I lost the vote. So I put my pants back on and I walked out to my office and I called in some of the executive producers, and there were about nine people in there, and I said, ‘They’re pulling the show off the air.’”

Kimmel recalled his wife telling him that he looked whiter than actor-comedian Jim Gaffigan when he walked out of the meeting, because “I thought that it’s over. I was like, I’m never coming back on the air.”

The Jimmy Kimmel Live! host also noted that it was even more complicated because his whole audience was already in their seats for the show that night. They also had chef Christian Petroni scheduled for that episode, “who was making meatballs and polenta that night. He’d been cooking all day,” as well as musician Howard Jones taping a performance.

“The song he did do because we decided to tape it anyway, even though we sent the audience home, in front of our disappointed employees, was ‘Things Can Only Get Better.’ Which you could take two ways, right?” he joked.

After, Kimmel said he stayed at the El Capitan Entertainment Centre, where Jimmy Kimmel Live! is filmed, for a few more hours before going home. However, his trip back to his house was crazier than normal.

“I’m followed by 20 paparazzi cars, TMZ people jumping in front of me on the way home. We’re just trying to get to the house and we’re like, ‘Should we be going to our house?’ There are two helicopters following us home,” he recounted before quipping, “I hadn’t had makeup on yet, so my bald spot was not painted in. This is something I did not want America to see.”

Kimmel then got serious again and admitted his family was “shaken” by everything, especially since they have two children at home.

He said of the days following the initial suspension, “It was like a DUI in L.A., three days in jail where I couldn’t say anything. I just had to sit quiet and make a lot of phone calls and take a lot of phone calls. You [Colbert] were very kind to call me. … I did hear from literally everyone I have ever met.”

Jimmy Kimmel Live! was suspended by ABC after a comment the host made during his Sept. 15 episode drew heat online, includingfrom FCC chair Brendan Carr. During Kimmel’s remark in question, he said, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

President Donald Trump was among some Republicanscelebrating Kimmel’s brief suspensionfrom the air, while other politicians and Hollywood notablescondemnedABC’s decision, calling it an attack on free speech.

On Tuesday night, Kimmel clapped back at Trump once again after Colbert asked him if his younger self could have imagined “the President of the United States would be celebrating your unemployment?”

“I mean, that son of a bitch,” Kimmel responded. “No, I never imagined that we’d ever have a president like this, and I hope we don’t ever have another president like this again. I never even imagined there would ever be a situation in which the president of our country was celebrating hundreds of Americans losing their jobs. But somebody who took pleasure in that, that to me is the absolute opposite of what a leader of this country is supposed to be.”