Jimmy Kimmel has opened up about potentially moving on from his ABC late-night show, again.
Kimmel and his wife Molly McNearney, who is also an exec producer of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, appeared on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast and the pair were asked about retirement, particularly whether he would regret it once he leaves.
“I know people who’ve been in that situation. It’s funny. People make a big show of like ‘I’m done and I’m tired doing this’, and then they make a lesser comeback trying to do the same thing. That’s always a bummer. I always look at that and go, Oh, is that going to be me?,” he said.
“Do you ever think to yourself, ‘How would I explain this to me at 25 years old, just giving up, just letting it go?’ I know that 25-year-old me will be like, ‘Are you crazy?’ I would have just been so excited to work at a place that had a snack table that was free,” he added.
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But Kimmel also said that “it depends on what you mean by retirement”. “I’m never going to stop doing things. It’s just a different scenario,” he said.
McNearney admitted that Kimmel gets asked this question a lot but “I feel like it changes”.
In December, Kimmel signed a one-year extension with Disney – a couple of months after he was pulled off the air over a joke about Charlie Kirk. Insiders at the time briefed that this would likely be his last deal with the company.
But the comedian has debated the topic over recent years. In 2021, he told Howard Stern that he was “vacillating” over whether to sign a new deal and then signed a three-year deal in 2022.
His current deal runs through May 2027.
“Our show has been renewed until May of 2027. Or until the world ends – whichever comes first,” he said on the show after signing the contract. “I was giving a lot of thought and decided I would like to spend less time with my family, and so to our audience here and at home – I’m honored and humbled to be a part of your routine. Whether it’s in bed at night, or during your morning toilet time.”
McNearney said she was “good either way”.
“I would be happy to be done with the show and end it in a great way and do my own next thing. But I do care deeply about that show and the people who work there, and I think the voice is really important right now,” she said. “It definitely appeals to me, for the nervous system of the household, but I also feel Jimmy has like a fly rod in one hand and like a torch in the other right now. It’s like he deserves to go out there and just be on the river and relax, but I also want him to keep fighting, and I feel this sense of desire to not quit because I think what he’s doing is incredibly important right now.”
