The late night world has been a wild place to be working over the last couple of years. The narrative from head honchos at ABC and other places is that budgets aren’t working. Then, the current President of the United States has made many comments weighing in on late night and how much he feels hosts have “no talent.” So, naturally, John Oliver, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel were in a room together this week to talk about it.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! cooly aired from Brooklyn this week, and during the last episode, he had on some fellow late night hosts: NBC’s Seth Meyers (whom Trump has also hated on) and HBO’s John Oliver, both of whom tend to crack political jokes on their shows. It was Oliver who brought up how often Jimmy Kimmel actually comes up on Last Night Tonight, particularly during the Q&A portion they do with the audience during tapings. He joked his show is a BIG FAN of bringing up how much Donald Trump seemingly dislikes late night. Apparently, Kimmel is their beard.
During our Q&A you are a presence, because you come up all the time. They’ll normally say, like, ‘How does it feel being disliked by the current President?’ We always say, ‘As long as you’re [Jimmy Kimmel] on the air, we’re fine.’
John Oliver didn’t stop his bit there, also joking he and Seth Meyers are fine with Kimmel having this cross to bear, noting, “We are fully behind you the way we are behind a bulletproof vest.” But why has Kimmel been the one to face FCC scrutiny? The other hosts weighed in.
Does President Trump Dislike Jimmy Kimmel The Most?
Seth Meyers agreed having Kimmel as a shield has been pretty darn supreme, at least since Stephen Colbert was cancelled. But why does Trump hate Kimmel so much? He has a theory...
We have a theory too, which is, other than the fact you don’t like him, we think he would want to hang out with you. Like, I think he sees us [myself and Oliver] as a couple of dorks. And even if we were fans of his, he would have no respect for us. But I’m sure he like talks to people all the time about like, ‘Yeah I think he has a pizza oven.'
It’s true that Kimmel famously has a high-end pizza setup at his home, and he and Jimmy Fallon once got into a "pizza feud." He’s also chummy with a lot of celebrity a-listers like Oprah Winfrey and Jon Hamm, and has had them over to test the oven. It's honestly pretty cool.
Oliver also joked he and Meyers don’t “have one pizza oven between them.” This bit gets silly and goes on for a while, but the general crux is pretty interesting given the context that Kimmel recently had a James Talerico interview pulled and has been having trouble on his late night show, specifically with the FCC for a while. The pizza oven bit may be over-the-top, but there are a lot of interesting perspectives to take from this interview.
If you missed it, you can check out the fun Brooklyn set and late night guests, below.
While this is all lighthearted fun and jokes, Jimmy Kimmel's been honest he feels as if late night is getting "poisoned" in recent months, and after his contract is up in May of 2027 the entire future of late night is up in the air. We'll have to wait and see what happens next, but the stakes are rather high.
