How ‘shaken’ Jimmy Kimmel learned ‘JKL!’ was suspended

Jimmy Kimmel is looking back on the fateful moment he learned his late-night show was suspended.

While appearing on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” Tuesday night, Kimmel, 57, said he went through an “emotional rollercoaster” when ABC briefly axed “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” last month because of his controversial comments about Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

“It was around 3:00. We tape our show at 4:30. I’m in my office typing away as I usually do,” the comedian explained. “I get a phone call — it’s ABC, they say they want to talk to me.”

“This is unusual. As far as I knew, they didn’t even know I was doing the show previous to this,” he joked.

Kimmel said that he went to the bathroom to take the phone call in private — and quickly learned the network wanted to pull the show from the air.

“I’m on the phone with ABC executives, and they say, ‘Listen, we wanna take the temperature down. We’re concerned about what you’re gonna say tonight. And we’ve decided that the best route is to take the show off the air,’” Kimmel shared.

“I said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ And they said, ‘Well, we think it’s a good idea.’ And then there was a vote and I lost the vote,” Kimmel recalled. “So I put my pants back on and I walked out to my office and I called in some of the executive producers. There was about nine people in there, and I said, ‘They’re pulling the show off the air.’”

Kimmel said that his wife, Molly McNearney, who is an executive producer on the show, told him he looked “whiter than Jim Gaffigan.”

“I thought, that’s it. It’s over. I’m never coming back on the air,” Kimmel told Colbert. “That’s really what I thought.”

Kimmel explained that the audience was already in their seats by the time he learned the episode was axed. He stayed at his Los Angeles studio for a few more hours before paparazzi followed him all the way home.

“TMZ, people jumping in front of me on the way home. There are two helicopters flying over following us home,” he said. “Meanwhile, I hadn’t had makeup on yet, so my bald spot was not painted in.”

“We get to the house and we’re shaken,” Kimmel continued. “The kids are up, I got two kids, and our daughter who is 11 years old says, ‘I can sell my labubus.’ It was actually very sweet. Our son just got naked and started running around the house.”

Kimmel compared his suspension to getting “a DUI in LA” and said he spent three days “where I couldn’t say anything and I had to sit quiet and make a lot of phone calls and take a lot of phone calls.”

On Sept. 22, five days after the suspension started, Disney announced “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” would be back on ABC the following night.

The media conglomerate said in a statement it suspended Kimmel “to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” calling some of his comments “ill-timed and thus insensitive.”

During his first episode back, Kimmel addressed his comments about Kirk but stopped short of fully apologizing. He also took repeated jabs at President Trump and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.