Jimmy Kimmel Says He Wanted His Show Cancelled
“Jimmy Kimmel Live” will be at SXSW all this week taping shows in Austin, Texas. If Jimmy Kimmel had gotten what he wanted back in 2003, there would be no “Jimmy Kimmel Live” show to be talking about today. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Kimmel said in a SXSW interview that he wanted the network to pull the plug on his show in the first season. He said, “I wanted them to cancel it, so I didn’t have to quit.”
Kimmel explained his feeling came from the show being so loosely put together in the beginning that there would be days where no guests were booked until just hours before the show went on the air. He said, “I was burnt out, exhausted, terrified.” That especially applied to his very first show when he was in the 12:05am time slot. Kimmel explained, “There was almost nothing planned for my first show.” His plan? He was just going to “hold up newspaper articles and bullshit my way through my show.”
Jimmy Kimmel has always sang David Letterman’s praises as an icon and a huge influence in his life and career, but he says he never set out to follow Dave into the late night business. “My goal was just to keep watching a late-night talk show. It never occurred to me that anyone other than David Letterman or Johnny Carson would have a late night talk show.”
12 years later, things have changed for Jimmy Kimmel. The guy who used to not have any guests until right before air time just had the President of the United States on his show. He was also last week’s Entertainment Weekly cover boy.
To see how you can be in the audience for “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in Austin this week, go to SXSW.com
