Kimmel said he would have hired Stewart. Jimmy Kimmel says Jon Stewart almost got his hosting job, jokes that ABC made a mistake

Kimmel said he would have hired Stewart.

Jimmy Kimmel says Jon Stewart almost got his hosting job, jokes that ABC made a mistake

Kimmel said he would have hired Stewart.

By Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt is a writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2024. Her work has previously appeared on Yahoo and in American *Journalism Review* and *The Shreveport Times*.

EW's editorial guidelines

October 23, 2025 1:28 a.m. ET

Talk show hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jon Stewart. Credit:

Randy Holmes/Disney via Getty; Matt Wilson/Comedy Central

If it had been up to Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart would probably be hosting a show in the time slot for ABC's *Jimmy Kimmel Live.*

The network was about to hire *The Daily Show* host when a producer Kimmel worked with on the '90s game show *Win Ben Stein's Money* suggested that the head of the network watch video of him, Kimmel explained Wednesday on the *Where Everybody Knows Your Name* podcast.

He watched the tape and said, "I think this might be the guy," Kimmel said. The even higher-ups agreed, and Kimmel was called in for a meeting under "false pretenses."

Late-night TV hosts Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel.

Randy Holmes/Disney via Getty

"They called me in and they said that they wanted to meet with me about a Thursday night variety show, which I was not interested in," Kimmel said. "And they said, 'Come on, meet the president of ABC.' I went in, we never talked about me doing a show. He just asked me a bunch of questions about [CBS late-night host David] Letterman. And we talked about Letterman for like 90 minutes."

As Kimmel recalled it, that was apparently all that was needed for the suits to hire him.**

"But it was a very strange thing, because Jon and I had the same manager. Now he's in the difficult position of having to tell Jon, like, 'You're not going to ABC, but Jimmy is going to ABC.'"

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He added, "That was a mistake by the way. They definitely should hire Jon. If I'm in that position, there's no question I hire Jon. One hundred times out of a hundred."

Kimmel noted that he heard later that it had been helpful that he was "cheaper."

***Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.*****

Both Stewart and Kimmel have done more than okay for themselves since then, and they've become friends.

In fact, much of late-night — past and present — came together last month after Kimmel was taken off the air indefinitely following comments he made about the "MAGA gang" response to the man who killed right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The show went dark for six days amid pressure from the Trump administration and affiliate groups.

Listen to Kimmel's full conversation above.

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