Following a week of high drama in the world of late night television in the US, Jimmy Kimmel Live! will return to air next week.
The Walt Disney Company controversially suspended the show, following comments Kimmel made criticising the Trump administration in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
The company claimed the decision was made because “we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive”.
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However, just an hour ago, Disney provided a new statement, saying “We’ve spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday”, adding the move was made to “avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country”.
The pressure on Disney has been immense from the general public, with people cancelling their subscriptions and protests, the share price plummeting, all that sort of stuff.
And earlier today, over 430 celebrities including Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Jane Fonda, Selena Gomez, Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston and pretty much everybody else signed an open letter condemning the suspension.
Now, the situation has created a major headache for Disney, especially since one of the signatories, Pedro Pascal, is the star of their new film, The Mandalorian and Grogu.
Disney gave fans this first look just as the open letter went public and that is released in May next year, although fans flooded the comments section, accusing Disney of trying to distract from the scandal.
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Meantime, Jimmy’s ABC colleagues on The View also addressed the controversy, with Whoopi Goldberg leading the charge.
“Did y’all really think we weren’t going to talk about Jimmy Kimmel?” the host asked.
“When the news broke last week about Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, we took a breath to see if Jimmy was going to say anything about it.
Hear more of Goldberg’s comments in the full entertainment wrap above
