The Jimmy Kimmel Live host has long borne a grudge against his late night television counterpart, and he lets loose in Rolling Stone.
With ABC movingJimmy Kimmel Live to 11:35 p.m. next week, host Jimmy Kimmel took the opportunity to size up his competitors in the latest Rolling Stone. Jay Leno didn’t come off well.
“As a comedian, you can’t not have disdain for what he’s done: He totally sold out,” Kimmel said about Leno. “He was a master chef who opened a Burger King.”
Kimmel has blasted Leno many times in the past, perhaps most viciously in 2010, when he put on a gray wig and a giant lumpy prosthetic chin and did a scathing impression of Leno during an entire episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, cracking hammy jokes and mocking the kiss-up banter between Leno and sidekick Kevin Eubanks.
Soon afterward, Leno invited Kimmel as a guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Kimmel was unreservedly nasty. Leno asked Kimmel how to do a Leno impression; Kimmel answered that it’s part Sylvester the Cat, part Curly from The Three Stooges, and part Scrappy Doo. He also noted that kids could get Leno’s Dudley Do-Right-esque chin with Silly Putty.
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On that same show, Kimmel took Leno to task for his treatment of Conan O’Brien. Leno asked, “What’s the worst prank you ever pulled?” Kimmel replied, “I told a guy ‘Five years from now I’m gonna give you my show,’ and then when the five years came I gave it to him, and then I took it back almost instantly,” referring to Leno’s broken promises to O’Brien.
Kimmel also said that Leno should treat O’Brien better because “Conan and I have children. All you have to take care of is cars. We have lives to lead here. You’ve got $800 million, for God’s sake. Leave our shows alone.”
Kimmel is apparently a fan of other late-night competitors, David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon, whom Kimmel called “a worthy competitor” in Rolling Stone.
It’s no surprise that the Rolling Stone reporter gathered intimate quotes from Kimmel — Kimmel told Howard Stern on his morning talk show that the reporter literally lived with him for several days while preparing the Kimmel profile.
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