The two strikes that have brought Hollywood to a standstill have had some unintended consequences. Shows have been abruptly cancelled. Movie releases have been delayed. For Jimmy Kimmel, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes wound up putting the kibosh on something he swears he’s been wanting to do: retire.
As per Entertainment Weekly, Strike Force Five, that new super-sized podcast comprised of late night talk show kings, debuted its first episode, allowing Jimmys Fallon and Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver to talk about, among other things, how they’ve been dealing with being off-air. Kimmel had the most dramatic story of them all.
“Are you guys getting stir-crazy? Are you ready to go back to work?” Kimmel inquired of his cohosts. “Because as you know, I was very intent on retiring right around the time where the strike started, and now I realize, like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s kinda nice to work.’ You know, when you are working, you think about not working.”
But not everyone bought Kimmel’s story. “Come on,” Meyers interrupted. “You are the Tom Brady of late-night hosts. You have feigned retirement…”
“I’m Tom Brady without any rings, yes, or fingers,” Kimmel quipped.
Meyers asked him, “Are we to take you at your word, that you were seriously considering this?”
Kimmel assured Meyers he was “very, very serious” about throwing in the towel, adding that he’d even floated the idea past some colleagues. But obviously it’s not to be, as having spent four months not working has shown him what not working permanently is really like.
During the episode, the hosts also talked about why they set up their podcast to begin with. “The last time there was a writers’ strike, there wasn’t a lot of communication between the late-night hosts,” Kimmel explained. “And as a result, there was a lot of nonsense that went on, so Stephen suggested we get together and we talk through our issues and whatever we’re dealing with.”
Kimmel also expressed solidarity with his teams. “The reason we’re doing this is because we are financially supporting members of our staffs,” Kimmel said. “There are hundreds of members of our staffs — writers, you name it. Everyone that works on a TV show is out of work right now, and so all the money we make for this show goes to them.”
(Via EW)
Source: https://uproxx.com/tv/jimmy-kimmel-wanted-to-retire-wga-strike-bean/