Two of the biggest names in late-night rallied around Jimmy Kimmel last night as the host decamped to New York City for a week of shows in the Big Apple.
Kimmel was even joined by Josh Meyers, the brother of Seth Meyers, who parodied California governor Gavin Newsom to mark the host’s first week on the air since he was suspended for his comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Speaking from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the comedian described his program as the “show the FCC doesn’t want you to see.”
And, teasing his interview with Colbert, Kimmel said the show was going to “drive the president nuts.”
During his monologue, Kimmel was joined on stage by Josh Meyers, who played the part of California’s outspoken governor, even sporting Newsom’s famous slicked-back grey hair and gravelly voice.
Meyers arrived on a bicycle and claimed that he wanted to “bridge a divide.”
“L.A. and N.Y.C., we’re not so different,”
“I mean, we both just want to be free to smoke weed while riding our electric scooters to a drag queen brunch,” he said, parodying Trump’s claims that Newsom is “woke.”
Throughout his appearance, Meyers also copied the language used on Newsom’s social media accounts, which mock Trump’s own rambling social media posts.
The That ’70s Show star nicknamed Guantánamo Bay “Guantánamo Gay” and renamed Kimmel to “J-dog.”
Seth Meyers, host of Late Night with Seth Meyers, appeared later in the monologue to poke fun at the recent suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live!
“What happened with your show? I thought this whole thing was, you know …,” he said.
Stephen Colbert then joined Kimmel for his first interview, while a prerecorded interview between the pair also aired on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Colbert shared with his fellow late-night host how he broke the news of his show’s cancellation to his staff and the audience.
“By the time I get to my offices, I have sweat through my shirt because I didn’t want to know anything my staff didn’t know.
“And I said, ‘I’m going to tell my staff today,’ but then we couldn’t do a show if I told them because everybody would be bummed out and I would be bummed out,” he said.
Colbert also added an extra segment to his program that same evening, confusing his stage manager.
“And I was so nervous about doing it right — because there was nothing in the prompter, I was just speaking off the cuff — that I f— up twice.
“And I had to restart and the audience thought it was a bit and they started going, ‘Steve, 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 was happening, and they didn’t laugh,” Colbert added.
According to CBS, Colbert’s show was cancelled for “financial” reasons, days after the host said that the network had accepted a “big, fat bribe” from a “sitting” government official.
Kimmel’s own show was suspended by ABC earlier in September, after he claimed that Republicans were trying to use the assassination of Charlie Kirk to score “political points.”
He also pointed to Trump’s reaction to Kirk’s death, where he told reporters that he was “pretty good” before changing the subject and talking about the “new ballroom for the White House.”
“Yes, he’s at the fourth stage of grief, construction.
“This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish, OK?,” Kimmel joked.
He had previously said on social media that his family sent “love to the Kirks” and to anyone who falls “victim to senseless gun violence.”
Kimmel’s show returned last week, where he delivered an opening monologue that racked up 13 million views on YouTube and 5.7 million views on Instagram in 24 hours.
On last night’s show, Kimmel revealed the moment that he was told that his show was being suspended.
“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 gonna say tonight, and we decided that the best route is to take the show off the air,’” Kimmel said.
“There was a vote, and I lost the vote, and so I put my pants back on and I walked out to my office,”
“It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,” he said, through tears.
The Independent has contacted The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC and The Late Night Show with Stephen Colbert, for comment.
