Jimmy Kimmel Thinks He Will Have a ‘Hard Time’ Despite Successful Talk Show: “I Fear That Day…”

For over two decades, Jimmy Kimmel has been a mainstay in late-night television, hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live! with a blend of humor, celebrity interviews, and cultural commentary. But as Kimmel contemplates the future, he seems to be increasingly anxious about what lies ahead once his long-running show comes to an end. On a recent episode of the Politickin podcast, hosted by Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch, and Doug Hendrickson, Kimmel confessed, “I will have a hard time when it’s over. It worries me, and that’s part of the reason why I keep going.”

As per Deadline , Kimmel’s late-night talk show premiered in January 2003, and since then, he has become a household name. He remarked, “Each time I think, well, this is going to be my last contract , and then I wind up signing another contract, It’s because I fear that day, that Monday after my final show, and it’s like, OK, now what am I going to do? Because there’s not a… I don’t know, there aren’t a huge number of options for late-night hosts after the shows are over. People think of you like a late-night talk show host. It’s not like you are suddenly going to start starring in films.”

Earlier this year, he hinted that his latest two-year contract could be his last. In February, Kimmel explained, “It’s hard to yearn for it when you’re doing it. Wednesday night, I was very tired, and I had all these scripts to go through — I had to revise and rewrite all these pitch ideas for the Oscars — and I was literally nodding off onto my computer. I think this is my final contract. That seems pretty good. That seems like enough.”

Kimmel went on to explain, “I have a lot of hobbies — I love to cook, I love to draw, I imagine myself learning to do sculptures. I know that when I die, if I’m fortunate enough to die on my own terms in my own bed, I’m going to think, ‘Oh, I was never able to get to this, and I was never able to get to that.’ I just know it about myself,” as reported by the New York Post .

Beyond his personal concerns, Kimmel is also worried about the future of late-night television as a whole. He shared, “I don’t know if there will be any late-night television shows on network TV in 10 years. Maybe there will be one, but there won’t be a lot of them. The audience is, there’s a lot to watch, you know, and now people can watch anything at any time. They’ve got all these streaming services. It used to be like, you know, Johnny Carson was the only thing on at 11:30. And so everybody watched, and then David Letterman was on after Johnny.”

Kimmel noted that the rise of streaming services and the ability for viewers to watch content on demand has prominently changed the landscape of television. Kimmel added, “And so people would watch those two shows, but now there are so many options and maybe even more significantly, the fact that people are able to easily watch your monologue online the next day, it really cancels out the need to watch it when it’s on the air. And once people stop watching it when it’s on the air, networks are going to stop paying for it to be made.”