Jimmy Kimmel Tells Stephen Colbert He Was in the Bathroom When ABC Pulled His Show

Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert are addressing the recent late night TV shakeup.

Exactly one week after Jimmy Kimmel Live! returned to television following its indefinite hiatus, Kimmel opened up about the situation during his appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday, Sept. 30.

“It was about 3 o’clock, we tape our show at 4:30,” Kimmel began. “I’m in my office, typing away as I usually do, I get a phone call. It’s ABC. They say they want to talk to me. This is unusual. They — as far as I knew — didn’t even know I was doing a show previous to this.”

“I have like five people who work in my office with me. So the only private place to go is the bathroom,” Kimmel continued. So I go into the bathroom, and I’m on the phone with the ABC executives. and they say, ‘Listen, we want to take the temperature down. We’re concerned about what you’re going to say tonight, and we decided that the best route is to take the show off the air.’ ”

As the audience booed in reaction, Kimmel quipped, “That’s what I said!” “I started booing,” he joked, adding, “I said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ and they said, ‘Well, we think it’s a good idea.’ Then there was a vote and I lost the vote.”

Kimmel continued, “I put my pants back on, and I walked out to my office, and I called in some of the executive producers. There are about nine people in there. And I said, ‘They’re pulling the show off the air.’ And I was — my wife said I was white, I was whiter than Jim Gaffigan when I came out of there.”

Colbert then asked, “What’s the first thing that occurred to you,” to which Kimmel replied, “I thought, that’s it, it’s over. It is over. I was like I’m never coming back on the air. That’s really what I thought. So we told our staff — meanwhile the whole audience was in their seats.”

Kimmel shared that the audience for that night’s show was “loaded, and in their seats, ready for the show,” when he found out ABC had pulled the show.

Not only was the audience ready for the taping, so were the guests. “We had a chef — a guy named Christian Petroni on the show, who was making meatballs and polenta that night,” Kimmel shared. “He’d been cooking that day.”

“Then we had Howard Jones taping a performance to air in the future,” Kimmel said, adding, “it’s funny” because the song they taped — even though “they sent the audience home” — was “Things Can Only Get Better.”

The appearance comes two weeks after an ABC spokesperson confirmed to PEOPLE that Kimmel’s show would be on pause “indefinitely” following the host’s comments during his Sept. 15 monologue.

“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,” Kimmel shared at the time. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”

“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,” he continued, as a clip cut to showing President Donald Trump taking questions from reporters after the assassination. One offered their condolences for the death of the president’s “friend” Kirk.

However, when asked about how he was holding up, Trump, 79, replied, “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 continued discussing the ballroom plans, saying the result would “be a beauty.” When cameras cut back to Kimmel, he said, “Yes, he’s at the fourth stage of grief, construction.”

Kimmel, meanwhile, previously offered his condolences to Kirk’s family on social media, writing, “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.”

The decision to remove Kimmel from the air came after the announcement by Nexstar Media — which operates 32 ABC-affiliated stations — that it would acquire rival broadcast company Tegna for $6.2 billion and place itself in 80% of America’s TV-owning households, per a press release. The acquisition requires final approval from the Trump-controlled FCC.

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The late-night show being pulled off the air sparked outrage across Hollywood leading to over 400 celebrities signing a letter defending the constitutional right to free speech and supporting Kimmel. In addition to Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, John Oliver and Jon Stewart addressed his suspension, as did Conan O’Brien, David Letterman, Howard Stern, and the co-hosts of The View.

While the Walt Disney Company announced on Monday, Sept. 22, that the show would return to the air on Tuesday, Sept. 23, Sinclair — the broadcasting company that makes up the nation’s largest ABC affiliate group — followed Nexstar Media’s lead and announced that it would be preempting Jimmy Kimmel Live! across ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming.

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Sinclair announced the end of its preemption of Jimmy Kimmel Live!  on its ABC affiliates in a statement on Friday, Sept. 26, noting that it had “received thoughtful feedback from viewers, advertisers, and community leaders representing a wide range of perspectives.”

Nexstar followed suit the same day, announcing the end of its preemption of Jimmy Kimmel Live! on its ABC affiliate stations. The show has since returned to airing on all stations across the United States

Prior to Kimmel’s news, late-night was shaken up by the announcement of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s cancelation.

In a statement from CBS shared with PEOPLE in July, the network said, “This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”

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The Late Show will end in May 2026 after 10 seasons. Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC.