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Jimmy Kimmel talked candidly about Jon Stewart's near-death experience as the original host of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which ultimately led to Kimmel's two-decade late-night career on ABC.
Kimmel disclosed on the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast that ABC was in negotiations with Stewart to host the show, which premiered in January 2003, prior to his landing the position.
Kimmel said, "They wanted a conventional late-night talk show in that slot."
"I work with the same manager as Jon, James 'Baby Doll' Dixon, and he was in the process of finalizing the agreement for Jon to host the show."
When Lloyd Braun, the chairman of ABC at the time, saw Kimmel's audition tape, things took an unexpected turn.
"After watching the tape, Lloyd thought, 'I think this might be the guy.'" When he showed Bob Iger the footage, Iger said, "Yeah, I think this might be the guy," Kimmel recalled.
The five-time Emmy winner described their common manager having to convey the news to Stewart as "a very strange" circumstance.
James claimed that he had to tell Jon, "You're not going to ABC, but Jimmy is going to ABC," which was a challenging situation.
Kimmel thinks the network made a mistake in retrospect.
By the way, that was a mistake. "Jon should definitely be hired," he said. Without a doubt, I would employ Jon 100 times over if I were in that role.
After being hired, Kimmel also recalled talking to Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney.
"When I asked Bob why they made such a big investment in hiring me, he replied, 'Well, you were cheaper.'" Everyone chuckled, but I knew he wasn't joking," Kimmel grinned.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! swiftly established itself despite the initial hesitancy.
We ended up receiving high ratings for some reason. Kimmel remarked, "They were good enough to keep us on the air, but I still don't know how that was."
But he acknowledged that those formative years weren't without difficulties.
"Some significant event was occurring even if I was only generating issues once every two and a half months. I said something, you know, and it started the entire affair. It was simply turbulent.
The host's remarks follow ABC's brief announcement that his talk program was "preempted indefinitely" last month, which almost resulted in its cancelation.
The action came after the FCC issued a warning about Kimmel's on-air remarks on Charlie Kirk, which sparked outrage from the public and even a celebration by Donald Trump.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! drew a healthy 6.26 million viewers for ABC after it was suspended again, indicating that Kimmel's late-night legacy is still firmly established despite previous scandals and near misses.
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