Jimmy Kimmel believes that Donald Trump could still force him into an early retirement, even after the late-night host thwarted the president’s previous attempts.
Twice in the past year, Trump, 79, has explicitly pressed ABC to cancel Jimmy Kimmel Live!, one of which resulted in the network suspending Kimmel, 58, for almost a week. As a result, Kimmel “believes there’s still a real possibility” that the president could weaponize one of his monologues to force ABC to “kill the show,” according to a new profile by Vulture.
“I had the truth on my side as a defense. What if I actually do do something wrong?” Kimmel told Vulture, laughing, about his Charlie Kirk and White House Correspondents’ Dinner monologues. “I mean, that’s inevitable.”
Kimmel, whose contract with ABC was extended only one more season until May 2027, is uncertain about his future at the network.
“I don’t know what ABC is going to want to do,” he added, noting that the network did not offer him a three-year contract extension as was previously typical. “It’s an unusual position to be in, but I do still have a year left on my contract, and that’s what I agreed to.”
“Everything is so tumultuous,” he added of his shorter deal. “That seemed to make sense. It’s definitely not how it’s gone in the past.”
Even with a longer contract, Kimmel’s position at the network would not be rock solid. His former late-night colleague, Stephen Colbert, was fired by CBS with a year still remaining on his three-year deal (and ultimately stayed on as host until this May).
CBS, which reportedly tried to push Colbert towards an even longer contract, has said his cancellation was “purely a financial decision.” They have since cited $40 million in annual losses from the show, but a week after The Late Show ended, Kimmel remains dubious about their reasoning.
“Am I to believe that over the course of those two years, they suddenly started losing $40 million a year?” Kimmel said. “These are just made-up numbers.”
“I feel a little bit defeated by it,” he admitted of Colbert’s finale. “In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m looking at my own future.”
“We’re not just dying of natural causes. We’re being poisoned,” he added.
Since Colbert’s departure, CBS has continued to tout the $40 million figure, thanking The Late Show‘s replacement, Byron Allen’s Comics Unleashed, for giving them “a $55 million swing.”
Even still, Kimmel has been told “quite specifically” by ABC that Jimmy Kimmel Live! is still profitable, though he notes, “It’s not like when Johnny Carson or even Jay Leno were raking in the dollars.”
At this point in his career, Kimmel is seriously considering retirement—even noting that he six years ago he told ABC he “was done when Biden was president“—but does not want to burn bridges with the network for the sake of his employees.
“It’s important to me to be responsible,” he said. “I know I could go out in a blaze of glory and get a lot of applause for it, but it would be a very selfish thing to do.”
“He’s built himself a gilded cage of responsibility to these people,” Kimmel’s longtime friend and collaborator Adam Carolla said. “He feels like he can go off into the sunset, but what about the employee that’s been with him for four years who’s just had a kid?”
The host is eyeing a late-night departure after the 2028 election, but his staff is uncertain whether he’ll even make it there.
“He’s been talking about leaving for a while,” longtime Jimmy Kimmel Live! producer Erin Irwin told Vulture, adding, “But I don’t know if Jimmy can do it for that long. He’s tired.”
“Professionally, I have no idea what I’m going to do after this,” Kimmel confessed. “Freedom is what I want more than anything. I want to be able to go fishing because the fishing’s good.”
