Jimmy Kimmel Hints He May Be Done With Late Night TV After Stephen Colbert’s Show Gets Canceled
Jimmy Kimmel has been sitting with the idea of quitting late-night for a long time, and now he is finally saying it out loud. The host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! opened up to Vulture in an interview published June 1 about his growing disillusionment with the genre, hinting that his two-decade run on the show may be closer to the finish line than audiences think. The conversation comes in the immediate aftermath of CBS canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a development that clearly shook Kimmel more than he initially let on.
“Six years ago, I told them I thought I was done when Biden was president,” Kimmel told Vulture, laying bare just how long this feeling has been building. The 58-year-old host did not mince words about how Colbert’s exit hit him personally. “I feel a little bit defeated by it,” he said. “In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m looking at my own future.”
Colbert’s Exit Hit Close to Home
Colbert signed off from The Late Show on May 21, closing the chapter on a show that had been a fixture of CBS for over a decade. For Kimmel, watching that farewell was not just a moment of industry loss; it was a mirror. The two hosts have shared the late-night landscape for years, and the abrupt end of Colbert’s run underlined something Kimmel had already been wrestling with privately.
Kimmel did not shy away from naming the larger force he believes is squeezing the genre. “We’re not just dying of natural causes,” he said bluntly. “We’re being poisoned.” He was referring to the sustained political pressure that late-night comedians have faced in recent years, much of it directed at hosts who use their platforms to criticize those in power.
His Own Show Was Not Spared
Kimmel knows firsthand what that pressure looks like. Last September, Jimmy Kimmel Live! was temporarily suspended following comments he made about Charlie Kirk’s murder. The suspension put Kimmel’s future on the network under scrutiny and forced a difficult internal conversation about the boundaries of his platform. He returned to the show shortly after and addressed the situation publicly, but the experience left a mark.
“One of the things we talked about when I first got suspended was that I can’t do this show if I’m going to be micromanaged,” he revealed. The remark signals that for Kimmel, the value of hosting late-night has always been tied to creative and editorial freedom. Once that freedom feels conditional, the appeal of staying starts to dim.
The Audience Is There, But So Is the Exhaustion
To his credit, Kimmel is not declaring late-night dead. He pushed back against the narrative that viewership has dried up, arguing that the numbers tell a different story. “There are far more people watching late-night TV than there ever were,” he said, pointing to the volume of online views he and his fellow hosts generate daily alongside their linear television ratings. The audience, in his view, has not disappeared. It has migrated.
Still, the grind is real. His longtime producer, Erin Irwin, told Vulture that Kimmel has been expressing his desire to leave for some time. Irwin said she is hoping he can hold on through the 2028 presidential election, but added a candid caveat: “I don’t know if Jimmy can do it for that long. He’s tired.” Kimmel launched Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2003, meaning he has been in that chair for well over 20 years. That kind of tenure comes with weight.
No Exit Date, But a Clear Direction
Kimmel has not set a formal end date for his show, and ABC has not announced its future. What he has made clear, though, is what he is moving toward. “Professionally, I have no idea what I’m going to do after this,” he admitted. “Freedom is what I want more than anything. I want to be able to go fishing because the fishing’s good.”
It is a telling statement from a man who has spent the better part of his adult life in a studio, crafting monologues and interviewing celebrities under the pressure of a nightly deadline. The desire for open time, for unstructured days, for a life not measured by ratings and news cycles, is coming through loud and clear. Whether that departure comes before or after 2028 remains to be seen, but Kimmel is no longer hiding the fact that he is already thinking about the door.
