Jimmy Kimmel admits he is considering retirement but his wife wants him to ‘keep fighting’
Jimmy Kimmel says he’s weighing whether to retire from his ABC late-night show but is afraid he will come to regret it, while his wife wants him to carry on because his work is “incredibly important right now”.
Asked if he feared looking back after ending Jimmy Kimmel Live! and wondering why he stopped, he told Dax Shepard on the Armchair Expert podcast: “I do. I’ve that. I know people who’ve been in that situation. It’s funny. People make a big show of like, ‘I am done and I am tired doing this’, and then they make a lesser comeback trying to do the same thing. And that’s always a bummer. And I always look at that and go, ‘Oh, is that going to be me?’”
Kimmel, 58, has hosted Jimmy Kimmel Live! since 2003, making him the longest-tenured host of the current crop of American late-night TV shows.
His contract runs through May 2027.
Kimmel agreed a one-year extension with Disney, which owns ABC, in December 2025, about three months after the network suspended his show over his comments about the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The suspension was reversed six days later, with Disney saying that it had held “thoughtful conversations” with Kimmel.
Kimmel imagined how his younger self would react to the idea of giving up a job he was once thrilled to be in.
“Do you ever think to yourself, ‘How would I explain this to me at 25 years old, just giving up, just letting it go?’ I know that 25-year-old me will be like, ‘Are you crazy?’ I would have just been so excited to work at a place that had a snack table that was free.”
Molly McNearney, Kimmel’s wife of 13 years and his show’s co-head writer and executive producer, said she was conflicted about what Kimmel should do.
“It definitely appeals to me for the nervous system of the household. I also feel like Jimmy has like a fly rod in one hand and like a torch in the other right now. It is like he deserves to go out there and just be on the river and relax, but I also want him to keep fighting,” she told Shepard.
McNearney said that she felt a “sense of desire to not quit” because she believed Kimmel’s work was “incredibly important right now”.
“And yes, I know we’re doing it in a vacuum but I think it’s giving people a feeling of their voices being heard, and I think it’s important,” she said.
“But as his wife, I really would like him to be able to not do this show anymore so he could relax.”
She would be happy, McNearney said, for the show to end “in a great way”.
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However, Kimmel was certain that ending his show would not mean stopping work altogether. “It depends on what you mean by retirement,” he said.
“I’m never going to stop doing things. So, it’s just a different scenario.”
In June, Kimmel told Vulture that things were “tumultuous” after his contract extension.
“It’s important to me to be responsible,” he said on leaving, adding that he “could go out in a blaze of glory and get a lot of applause for it, but it would be a very selfish thing to do”.
The uncertainty around late-night television has been heightened by the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show, which ended its run on 21 May after 11 years.
Kimmel told Vulture that he felt “a little bit defeated” by the decision. “In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m looking at my own future,” he said.
