This wasnt the year Jimmy Kimmel expected to have.
To a nation increasingly fractured by politics, his message was simple: Lets pledge allegiance to common sense.
What did Kimmel, 50, glean from this year that he calls a tsunami?
Randy Holmes/ABC via Getty Images
I learned that I cant keep it together on television.
Its like watching a chimpanzee do math.
Its going to be a viral video, simple as that.
Randy Holmes/ABC via Getty Images
Maybe theres a little bit more to me than railing against pumpkin spice lattes, he says.
Make no mistake, Im still antipumpkin spice latte.
I dont want to diminish silly things.
Not everything is a mountain.
The molehills need to be taken care of too.
In 2017, Kimmel one of EWs Entertainers of the Year scaled them all.
Its like a tsunami, actually.
So, it hasnt been a great year, to be honest with you.
I keep forgetting that I hosted the Oscars this year.
So many things have happened, so many moments that Ill never forget.Thatcontinually slips my mind.
Im hoping I dont forget to show up for the next Oscars.
Thatd be nice.It should have been a great year, I guess.
The Oscars went well and with the baby and everything, its definitely been an interesting year.
Thats probably the best way I can characterize it.
But it turned out to suit you very well.
How apprehensive were you about wading into these complex, charged areas?
Thank god things are going well, but if they werent, it would be very, very difficult.
I didnt know that people would be sending letters to my house, wishing death upon my family.
Im not making any money off of this, or at least Im not making money opposing gun control.
Im not making money supporting healthcare.
You knew that youd probably alienate parts of your fan base that were skewing more right-wing.
Dont screw up, Jimmy.Luckily, all of my misbehavior has taken place on television.
Even if you lost some of those viewers, youve seen a ratings bump this year, too.
What does your gut tell you about what actually happened?Well, I dont know.
I think leftard is what they
Thats the technical term, yes.But this has always been me.
I just didnt feel like I needed to speak seriously about this thing in the past.
I think people are just fighting all the time and its getting worse and worse and worse.
What did you hear from ABC as you were doing these monologues?
Was it a relatively hands-off situation?We dont really discuss content as far as the show goes.
They also wanted me to shave my beard.
Youre holding hard on that, right?Im going to stick to this for a while.
[He had a second successful heart surgery earlier this month.]
How challenging was it to take something so personal to you onto national television?
Do they have jobs that their employer is good enough to give them paid time off?
It seemed unlikely to me.
But usually they are much simpler situations and mere annoyances, not life-changing emergencies.
Lets talk about another difficult monologue, about the Las Vegas massacre.
Theres nothing you might do about it.
If its something that we can act on, we should at least be trying to fix this.
Something can be done about it, we just choose not to.
Maybe theres a little bit more to me than railing against pumpkin spice lattes in October.
Still, an issue that should not be forgotten.Make no mistake, Im still anti-pumpkin spice latte.
I dont want to diminish silly things.
Not everything is a mountain.
The molehills need to be taken care of, too.
What does man to man mean to you?
I dont think we were going dancing.I nearly accepted his inferred challenge to fightand then he disappeared…. Are people now looking to you to champion their social causes?Yes.
I was planning to stay focused until ll of those people got shot in Las Vegas.
Lets revisit the Oscars, which did in fact happen in 2017 and they had the craziest ending ever.
What was your goal going into the ceremony?My goal was to kill.
That was my goal.
I wanted to kill from the beginning of the show until the end of the show.
I just didnt expect that the end of the show would be so interesting.
I didnt want to just do the monologue and then check out for the rest of the show.
And everyone forgoteverythingas soon as that envelope was opened.
I was sitting in the audience next to Matt Damon.
In fact, nobody knows whats going on.
It just struck me as a funny situation.
Maybe I need to do something to just kill time until we figure out what happened.
I dont really even remember what I said.
And we all know what happened from there.
When in doubt, Warren, what did you do?
is a great go-to line.Thats right!
I said, Warren, what did you just do?
I dont know, it seemed funny to blame it on Warren, this icon.
Yeah, that was crazy.
Pretend you could go into a time machine that would take you back to that moment.
Youre sitting with Matt.
You have two choices.
Im glad you brought up this coming Oscars, whichyoure hosting again.
I mean, Ihopethat we dont top that.
I dont want to have the firstandsecond biggest blunders in the history of television on my watch.
