Jimmy Kimmel Kicks Off String of Brooklyn Shows

Jimmy Kimmel has arrived in New York City.

The late-night host, 57, kicked off a week’s worth of Jimmy Kimmel Live! tapings from his native Brooklyn on Monday, Sept. 29. Hosting the show on the opposite side of the country from where he usually tapes it — at the El Capitan Theater in L.A. — has become something of a tradition for Kimmel, and this year marks his seventh time hosting from the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Ryan Reynolds, Josh Johnson and Public Enemy joined the late-night host for his East Coast first show.

Kimmel’s opening monologue featured more jokes at the expense of President Donald Trump and his administration, including a joke about Trump’s surprise decision last week to order his administration to declassify records about Amelia Earhart‘s disappearance. The aviator disappeared on July 2, 1937 while attempting to become the first woman to fly across the globe.

“The president has been hard at work coming up with all sorts of nonsense to distract us from the Epstein files,” Kimmel joked before sharing Trump’s announcement on the Earhart files.

“Unless her final flight was to Epstein’s island, no one cares,” Kimmel said. “At least he made it to the E’s in the files. That’s progress.”

Kimmel also skewered the New York Mets, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Vice President JD Vance in his monologue.

Other guests for his upcoming Brooklyn shows include Stephen Colbert on Tuesday, Emily Blunt on Wednesday, Jeremy Allen White and Bruce Springsteen on Thursday and Tom Hanks for the final show on Friday.

In his final monologue from L.A. before crossing the country, Kimmel joked that the show has to “stay on the move so the FCC can’t get us.”

Kimmel’s string of Brooklyn shows comes just six days after his show returned to the air — though not everywhere — on Sept. 23, following a six-day hiatus.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! was pulled off the air indefinitely on Sept. 17, an ABC spokesperson confirmed to PEOPLE at the time. Sinclair, the broadcasting company that makes up the nation’s largest ABC affiliate group, then confirmed it would be “preempting” the show across its channels.

The decision was the result of comments Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk’s death during his Sept. 15 monologue, which Sinclair vice chairman Jason Smith called “inappropriate and deeply insensitive.”

“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. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving,” he said in the monologue.

“On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this,” Kimmel said, before a clip showed President Donald Trump taking questions from reporters after the shooting, one of whom asked how he was holding up after Kirk’s death.

“I think very good, and by the way, right there where you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House,” he said.

The cameras then cut back to Kimmel, who said, “Yes, he’s at the fourth stage of grief, construction.”

Kimmel had previously offered condolences to Kirk’s family on social media, writing after his death, “Instead of the angry finger-pointing, can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.”

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Sinclair initially boycotted Jimmy Kimmel Live! when it returned to the air on Sept. 23, as did Nexstar Media, which operates 32 ABC-affiliated stations. But as of Friday, Sept. 26, the show was broadcast on all affiliated channels for the first time since the hiatus.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC.