The creator of acclaimed television shows Lost, The Leftovers, and Watchmen said that he won’t work with Disney until Jimmy Kimmel’s show returns to the air.
“I was shocked, saddened and infuriated by yesterday’s suspension and look forward to it being lifted soon,” Damon Lindelof wrote a day after Disney announced that it would pre-empt Kimmel’s show after comments he made about the MAGA reaction to Charlie Kirk’s death prompted threats from FCC Chair Brendan Carr.
“If it isn’t, I can’t in good conscience work for the company that imposed it,” the three-time Emmy Winner continued. “If you’re about to fire up in my comments, just ask yourself if you know the difference between hate speech and a joke.”
He ended his post with a message to Kimmel, who he said he became friends with after Kimmel, 57, complimented the pilot episode of Lost.
“You’ve ALWAYS known what you were doing,” he wrote. “Love you and support you.”
Lindelof joins a chorus of entertainment figures who have criticized ABC’s decision to pull Kimmel off the air, including Jason Bateman, David Letterman, and Wanda Sykes (who Kimmel was scheduled to have on as a guest on Wednesday night).
And here we go. Comedians/podcasters who are righteous about free speech – Andrew Schultz, Tim Dillon, Sam Morril – are already condemning the Kimmel decision > https://t.co/6awGYQpnoA pic.twitter.com/g433m9Abjd
— Peter Hamby (@PeterHamby) September 18, 2025
That group even includes several prominent right-leaning comedians.
Andrew Schulz, who hosts the popular Flagrant podcast and interviewed Trump during the 2024 campaign, criticized the decision to suspend Kimmel and suggested that conservatives were not practicing what they preach when it comes to “cancel culture.”
“Right: Cancel culture is wrong! Unless you cancel the shows of our political opponents, then we’ll celebrate it,” Schulz wrote on his Instagram story on Thursday.
Matthew Belloni, an entertainment lawyer and a writer for Puck News, wrote on X that other creators are considering joining Lindelof in his boycott of Disney.
The controversy around free speech and late-night TV began earlier this week when the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host criticized conservatives for weaponizing Charlie Kirk’s death to go after political opponents.
“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,” Kimmel said in his Monday night monologue.
The comments sparked a conservative backlash, led by Carr, who said that Kimmel appeared to “directly mislead the American public” about Kirk’s alleged killer.
Tyler Robinson, 22, has been charged with murder in Kirk’s death. Prosecutors say that his mother noticed that Robinson had “become more political and had started to lean more to the left” over the past year.
On Wednesday afternoon, Nexstar, which owns 32 ABC local affiliate stations, pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live! from its programming. That move followed Carr’s statement on a conservative podcast that “companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Nexstar’s decision, and the threat of FCC action, had top Disney execs “p—ing themselves,” according to a report from Rolling Stone.
That report said that multiple executives felt Kimmel “had not actually said anything over the line,” but that the fear of retaliation from President Trump proved decisive.
Trump called Kimmel’s suspension “Great News for America” and called for NBC to cancel Seth Meyers’ and Jimmy Fallon’s shows next.
“Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” the president wrote.
Lindelof has worked on multiple Disney-affiliated projects in the past, including the horror film Prometheus and Tomorrowland, a science fiction movie inspired by a Disney theme park.
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