Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel made late-night history Tuesday by showing up on each other’s talk shows on the same night.
Kimmel interviewed Colbert over his cancellation from CBS, while Colbert interviewed Kimmel about the week Jimmy Kimmel Live! was pulled from the air by ABC.
Kimmel recalled being told by ABC that they wanted to “take the temperature down” in the wake of the right-wing backlash to Kimmel’s comments, and that ABC said the best way to do that was to pull his show.
“I said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ And they said, ‘Well, we think it’s a good idea,’” Kimmel explained.
“And then there was a vote, and I lost the vote,” Kimmel said.
The worst part for Kimmel was having to tell the live audience the bad news so soon before the show was supposed to air.
“They’re loaded and in their seats, ready for the show,” Kimmel said.
He noted that one of his guests for the episode, chef Christian Petroni, had been “cooking all day” for his appearance before ABC canceled it.
Kimmel also noted that the song played by his musical guest for that episode, Howard Jones, had been “Things Can Only Get Better.”
“Which, you can take two ways, right?” Kimmel joked.
Meanwhile on Jimmy Kimmy Live!, Colbert recalled to Kimmel how he’d broken the news of his own cancelation to his audience. Although Kimmel’s show returned to air after three episodes off, CBS has not reversed its decision to end The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in May 2026.
To make sure his audience wouldn’t be sad during the main episode, Colbert had decided to wait until the regular taping was over before telling them the news.
“I went back out on stage to tell everybody, 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—ed up twice and had to restart,” Colbert said.
He recalled, “The audience thought it was a bit, and they started going, ‘You can do it, come on!’ Because I always messed up on the sentence that told them what was happening.”
Colbert concluded sadly, “I got to the sentence that actually told them what was happening, and they didn’t laugh.”
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