(NewsNation) — Years before ABC briefly took “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air last month, the late-night host hoped that the network would cancel his show.
“I didn’t know what I was doing, and I would pray that they canceled the show sometimes,” Jimmy Kimmel told Ted Danson during Wednesday’s episode of the “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” podcast.
Kimmel told Danson that he didn’t want to quit the show because he “didn’t want to disappoint” the people who worked for him.
“But I couldn’t. I was just — I couldn’t do it anymore,” he said.
Kimmel shared that in the early days of the show, which premiered in 2003, he had trouble booking guests: Instead, he relied on his famous friends.
“It was just, like, we didn’t have guests many times. We’d go on the air live at midnight, at 12:05,” he said.
“There were times it was 5:30 in the afternoon and we didn’t have guests for that night’s show, and I would have to just pick up the phone and call my friends.”
Kimmel, 57, would have his then-girlfriend, Sarah Silverman, frequently on as a guest.
“I asked her to come on a lot, and I love her,” he said.
He also brought on his other friends, Adam Carolla, David Alan Grier, Anthony Anderson and Kathy Griffin, according to Page Six.
ABC suspends Jimmy Kimmel’s show over Charlie Kirk
In September, the Disney-owned ABC network took his eponymous show off the air indefinitely after comments the late-night host made about the Sept. 10 assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.
During an episode of the show, Kimmel said the country “hit some new lows over the weekend,” when the “MAGA gang desperately tried to characterize this kid who killed Kirk as anything other than one of them.”
Backlash over Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension
Over 400 celebrities signed an open letter decrying the now-ended suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show and calling for an end to “retaliation” against free speech, writing that it “strike(s) at the heart of what it means to live in a free country.”
David Letterman said the cancellation signals a troubling future for the media landscape. He said he never felt the heat from the FCC during his years spent poking fun at different administrations.
“The institution of the president of the United States ought to be bigger than a guy doing a talk show,” Letterman said.