Jimmy Kimmel and his wife, Molly McNearney, are opening up about how his late show being suspended impacted their entire family.
During a recent appearance on the “We Can Do Hard Things” podcast, the couple looked back on the aftermath of ABC abruptly pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air in September amid backlash for Kimmel’s comments about the death of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
“We go home, and our kids are there, and we realize they have no idea what’s going on,” said McNearney, co-head writer and executive producer on Kimmel’s show. “And we had to do that thing that parents do so well, which is just immediately put on a mask. [We] asked them, ‘How was soccer today? What’s the funniest thing you heard at school today?’ We were just trying to make conversation with our children, but meanwhile, our phones are just [blowing up] the whole time in our pockets. And there’s helicopters over our house and madness outside.”
Kimmel, 57, and McNearney, 47, share daughter Jane, 11, and son Billy, 8. The comedian also has two adult children, Katherine and Kevin, from his first marriage to ex-wife Gina Maddy.
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Eventually, Kimmel and McNearney realized the situation couldn’t stay under wraps for long. “Our daughter is in fifth grade, and kids talk,” McNearney explained.
The pair sat their little ones down on the couch before starting the conversation. “And we realized in that moment that any other time we’ve sat them down to talk about something, I guess it’s been good, because Jimmy said, ‘We wanna talk to you guys about something,’ and Jane [got excited],” McNearney said with a laugh.
The news that followed, however, was hard to hear. After learning what had happened to the show, Jane “immediately burst into tears” and told her parents, “I’ll sell my Labubus.”
According to McNearney, it was Billy who asked if President Donald Trump was involved. “We looked at each other and we didn’t quite know how to answer that question,” she recalled, with Kimmel admitting that he told his son yes.
“It’s certainly not an experience I had with my parents in Las Vegas,” Kimmel teased while reflecting on the conversation.
Kimmel went on to joke that Jane is convinced she’ll inherit her father’s show whenever he retires. “We’ve never said this to her, we don’t know where she got it,” he continued. “She has three other siblings, two of them are actually adults and more qualified to take over if it was indeed a family business. … She felt that she’d been somehow suspended. I’d ruined it for her.”
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Overall, Kimmel and McNearney tried to reassure their kids that everything would be OK — even if they weren’t convinced of that themselves. “Jimmy and I both believed that night the show was never coming back,” McNearney confessed.
ABC announced on September 17 that Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be “preempted indefinitely” due to a controversial monologue the host delivered days prior. At the time, a source exclusively told Us Weekly employees at the show were uncertain about its future, noting that “no one [knew] what’s really going on.”
The show’s fate was ultimately revealed by the Walt Disney Company in a statement on September 22. “Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” the statement began. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
When Kimmel returned to his show on September 23, he shed a few tears in his opening monologue and insisted he “never” intended to “make light” of Kirk’s death. (Kirk was shot and killed on September 10.)
He also thanked his viewers, many of whom canceled subscriptions to Disney+ in the wake of the suspension. “You supported our show [and] cared enough to do something about it to make your voices heard so that mine could be heard and I will never forget it,” he said.
