Jimmy Kimmel revealed that he was in the bathroom when he received the news that ABC was pulling his late-night show off the air.
The 57-year-old TV host addressed the recent late-night TV shakeup on Tuesday during his appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
“It was about 3 o’clock, we tape our show at 4:30,” began Jimmy. “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. They — as far as I knew — didn’t even know I was doing a show previous to this.”
“I have like five people who work in my office with me. So the only private place to go is the bathroom,” he continued. “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, and we decided that the best route is to take the show off the air.’ “
“I started booing,” joked Jimmy. “I said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ and they said, ‘Well, we think it’s a good idea.’ Then there was a vote and I lost the vote.”
“I put my pants back on, and I walked out to my office, and I called in some of the executive producers. There are about nine people in there. And I said, ‘They’re pulling the show off the air.’ And I was — my wife said I was white, I was whiter than Jim Gaffigan when I came out of there,” added the TV personality.
Stephen then asked Jimmy, “What’s the first thing that occurred to you?”
To which the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? former host replied, “I thought, that’s it, it’s over. It is over. I was like I’m never coming back on the air. That’s really what I thought. So we told our staff — meanwhile the whole audience was in their seats.”
It is pertinent to mention here that Jimmy Kimmel Live! returned to television on September 23, following its indefinite hiatus.
