Jimmy Kimmel was “very intent on retiring” before the WGA-Lineup strike

ABC

The late night host revealed this on his “Strike Force Five” podcast on Spotify

Jimmy Kimmel claims he was willing to give up his stints as a late-night talk show host on ABC earlier this year — but the WGA writers’ strike changed his view.

Kimmel announced the revelation in the first episode of the “Strike Force Five” podcast on Spotify, which went live on Wednesday (August 30) and features a Zoom roundtable discussion between Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver.

“I was very intent on retiring at the time the strike started,” Kimmel said in the first episode. “And now, I realize, oh yeah, it’s nice to work.”

“Kimmel, come on, you’re a late-night Tom Brady…you pretended to be retired,” said Myers. But Kimmel insisted he was serious about retiring: “I was serious, I was very serious.” Kimmel also said he usually takes time off in the summer, but in past years, he’s been getting paid.

However, ABC announced a three-year renewal of Kimmel’s deal in September 2022, which would have made any Kimmel decision to retire an even more complicated effort.

Colbert said that during the WGA strike, people who watched him publicly asked him if he was “enjoying a vacation”: “I usually say, ‘It’s like a vacation in the same way a colonoscopy is like a nap.'”

The unusual alliance brings together the five late-night hosts, who usually compete for ratings and awards, as a way to push it to their teams – who have been left without a job due to the WGA strike. Proceeds from “Strike Force Five” will go to unemployed employees of each of their shows (“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”, “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”, “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and “Late Night”). with Seth Meyers” and “Last Night with John Oliver”).

In a post on X (aka Twitter), Kimmel said the group will produce episodes of “Strike Force Five” “for the rest of Strike.” However, it is set up to play at least 12 episodes per Spotify.

In podcasts, any time someone says the name of the podcast, a thunderclap sound effect is played.

The last time there was a writers strike — in 2007-2008 — “there wasn’t a lot of communication between the late-night hosts, and as a result there was a lot of shit going on,” Kimmel said on the episode. . “So Stephen [Colbert] Suggest that we get together and talk about our issues and whatever we’re dealing with.

Other anecdotes from Episode I: Kimmel took Fallon on a fishing trip earlier this summer (“I go fishing, I’m never invited,” Colbert complained); Fallon said his mother spent a week as a potential nun at the convent. Kimmel said that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were approached with an offer to pay them one week each of their employees’ salaries during the strike (which Kimmel rejected: “I felt like it wasn’t their responsibility”); One of his all-time favorite guests, Colbert said, was Robert De Niro, who was notorious for not speaking: “We just sat there in silence for a minute…and the audience loved it.”

You can listen to “Strike Force Five” on Spotify (at this link) and all the other major podcast platforms (although, in the show’s trailer, Oliver urges listeners to tune in to “Spotify, you fucks!”).

After the WGA strike began in May, the five hosts began meeting via Zoom video conferencing to discuss the impact of the work stoppage – and then agreed to turn the secret comedy meeting into a podcast.