Jimmy Kimmel is telling everyone that he wants Stephen Colbert’s Late Show to win an Emmy this year, even though his own Jimmy Kimmel Live is also nominated for the same award.
The comedian has rented a billboard, at the intersection of La Cienega and Santa Monica boulevards in West Hollywood, on which he declares, “I’m voting for Stephen.”
Scott Kowalchyk/CBS/Getty
The nominees in the category of Outstanding Talk Series this year are Colbert, Kimmel, and The Daily Show on Comedy Central. Though Colbert’s show has been nominated for 33 Emmys in all, across various categories, since 2017, it’s never won.
EW has reached out to reps for Colbert and Kimmel for comment.
Kimmel’s show of support comes two weeks after Colbert announced on-air that CBS’ Late Show franchise, which David Letterman began in 1993, will end next year.
The network said its decision to pull the plug on the franchise was “purely a financial one” and that it wasn’t “related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.” It continued, “We are proud that Stephen called CBS home,” officials said in a statement. “He and the broadcast will be remembered in the pantheon of greats that graced late night television.”
Critics, however, have called out the timing of the announcement, which came in the same month that Paramount Global, the parent company of Colbert’s network, agreed to pay $16 million to President Donald Trump over an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on 60 Minutes in November.
Trump has long disliked late-night hosts’ jokes about his administration and, since the cancellation, has said that he’s hearing “a strong word” that Kimmel will be canceled next, then The Tonight Show‘s Jimmy Fallon.
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But Trump has denied that he was behind the decision to end Colbert.
“Everybody is saying that I was solely responsible for the firing of Stephen Colbert from CBS, ‘Late Night” he wrote on social media. “That is not true! The reason he was fired was a pure lack of TALENT, and the fact that this deficiency was costing CBS $50 Million Dollars a year in losses — And it was only going to get WORSE!”
At the same time, Kimmel and The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart are among those who have come to Colbert’s defense, with their words and even cameos on his show.
