According to The Hollywood Reporter, Stephen Colbert (The Colbert Report, Strangers with Candy) and Seth Meyers (Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Seth Meyers) celebrated fellow late-night host Jimmy Kimmel (The Man Show, Crank Yankers) for Jimmy Kimmel Live! returning to the air after ABC lifted the show’s suspension. Colbert said in the teaser for The Late Show’s opening monologue, “We do, like, 160 of these a year or something and when I have the chance, it’s always nice to start the show with some good news.”
“Just a few hours before we tape this broadcast, we got word that our long national late nightmare is over, because Disney announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live! will return to air on ABC tomorrow, Tuesday night,” Colbert added via The Hollywood Reporter, followed by cheers from him and his live audience.
“Wonderful news from my dear friend Jimmy and his amazing staff. You know, I’m so happy for them. Plus, now that Jimmy’s not being canceled, I get to enjoy this again,” he said via The Hollywood Reporter.
“Once more, I am the only martyr in late nights. Wait, unless CBS, you wanna announce anything?” Colbert stated in reference to the network canceling his late show back in July via The Hollywood Reporter.
As per The Hollywood Reporter, Meyers, the host of Late Night, also said on his show, “Minutes before we started taping, we got word that our friend Jimmy Kimmel will be back on the air.”
“A massive national backlash to Donald Trump’s (Two Weeks Notice, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York) crackdown on free speech, even among conservatives. I haven’t seen poll yet, but I think if you asked Americans if the president should be dictating what TV hosts can and can’t say, you’d get about 3 percent positive and…” Meyers continued via The Hollywood Reporter, and then cut to a clip of Trump saying, “97 percent negative.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, ABC parent The Walt Disney Co. announced that Kimmel’s show would be returning to broadcast after being suspended for a brief moment as its suspension ignited a national debate over free speech and the Trump administration’s pressure tactics.
“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 company wrote in a statement via The Hollywood Reporter. “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.”
Below are the full statements by Colbert and Meyers.