After “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” won the 2026 Critics Choice Award for Best Talk Show, its host took the opportunity to reflect on his eventful 2025.
Appearing in the winners room backstage at the Santa Monica Airport’s Barker Hangar, Kimmel joked about his one-week suspension related to his comments about the death of Charlie Kirk. The host spoke about the support he received from friends in the entertainment industry and free speech activists, but he wasn’t afraid to joke about the political enemies that he made as well.
“For one thing, this one is real heavy and sharp and I could use this as a weapon in case one of these maniacs breaks into my home. So that’s good, that’s a plus,” Kimmel said with a laugh while examining his statuette.
Kimmel compared the outpouring of encouragement that he received to a scene in Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” in which three pirate-loving friends run away from home, only to return in time to attend their own “funeral” thrown by relatives who thought they were dead.
“It was almost a near-death experience for me,” he said of his suspension and subsequent return. “And of course, not literally, but I did feel a little bit like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn watching their own funeral when all this stuff happened. And to be here and to see that people reacted to it in not just a positive way, but in almost a desperate way. We’re like, ‘Oh, boy, when they come after the comedians, this is when we draw the line.’ And we’re very grateful that they drew the line at us.”
Between Kimmel’s suspension and CBS’ cancellation of “The Late Show,” the future of the late night talk show seems dubious at times. But Kimmel expressed his optimism about the future of the medium, saying that even if productions” have to get smaller, the audience for his kind of show will remain.
“I think there will always be late night talk shows,” he said. “They may not happen late at night. I think there are some shows that are called ‘late night talk shows’ that aren’t late night talk shows that still have the same format. And maybe we need a different term for them, but it seems to me it’s one of the cheapest forms of broadcasting. And it would be very surprising to me if it went away entirely. I think maybe it won’t be as big, maybe there won’t be a big band welcoming the host of the stage. Maybe there won’t be 15 writers, but I think there will be some version of a late night talk show. And in a way, maybe it’ll be better because maybe there will be more opportunities for more people of various backgrounds and ages and niche programming that I think could be a lot of fun to watch.”
