On the first episode of his Spotify Strike Force Five Podcast, Jimmy Kimmel revealed that his friends Ben Affleck and Matt Damon offered to pay his staff during the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strike.
Kimmel jokingly referred to his longstanding fake feud with Damon when he mentioned: “Ben Affleck and the despicable Matt Damon contacted me and offered to pay our staff for two weeks.” He added, “A week each, they wanted to pay out of their own pockets our staff.”
However, he declined the offer because he “felt that that was not their responsibility.”
Kimmel also asked his co-hosts, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver, “Are you guys getting stir-crazy? Are you ready to go back to work?” before adding, “Because as you know, I was very intent on retiring right around the time where the strike started, and now I realize, like, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s kinda nice to work.’ You know, when you are working, you think about not working.”
Following this, Meyers raised doubts about the credibility of Kimmel’s statements, humorously likening him to the “Tom Brady of late-night hosts” due to his numerous instances of pretending to retire. However, Jimmy Kimmel remained resolute, asserting that his intentions to step away were indeed sincere.
After the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA started, the podcast was launched to benefit the comedians’ out-of-work staff, with all proceeds from the show going towards their employees.
