Jimmy Kimmel made his return to his eponymous ABC late night show on Monday after he was out the previous week after testing positive for COVID-19.
During his monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the host said he feels “very good” and updated viewers that his “whole family’s fine.”
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“I had it pretty easy. I was tired. I had a little bit of a headache. But those are also the symptoms of having children. So it may have been pre-existing conditions,” he joked.
The host did say that he felt like he “deserved” to get COVID because he had been “obnoxiously pleased with myself that I hadn’t gotten it yet.”
“Every time I would meet somebody who’s had it, I would be like, ‘Oh yeah, I haven’t had it.’ And I was thinking, ‘I guess it means that I’m smarter and stronger than you,’ and then I got it.”
Mike Birbiglia guest hosted in Kimmel’s place. Birbiglia had been set to be a guest on the show and Kimmel texted him and asked him to host. After thanking Birbiglia and praising him for doing a “fantastic job,” Kimmel joked that his mom may have been a little too complimentary of the guest host.
Kimmel also poked fun at those who dismissed the virus, joking, “I guess I’m here to tell you COVID is a hoax, and they were right after all. ”
And he took a thinly veiled shot at former President Donald Trump’s comment in the early days of the pandemic that perhaps disinfectants could be injected or ingested to fight COVID-19. “I drank so much bleach, my teeth are whiter than a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago,” he said.
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Kimmel also talked about the weird phenomenon of getting COVID when you host a TV show.
“One of the weird things about having a television show is when you get COVID, everyone knows it. It’s in the news and then everyone checks in to see how you’re doing,” he said. “It’s like your birthday on Facebook times 1,000, which is nice, but unlike a birthday it’s not just once, it’s multiple times, you get 100 people checking in three times a day. And it’s a lot to respond to. You get to the point where somebody sends a text and you just want to write back ‘Um, this is not Jimmy, I found his phone, Jimmy died, Jimmy’s dead.’”
In light of the many people who did check in, Kimmel jokingly called out those who didn’t reach out to see how he was doing and even pulled out a list.
Kimmel said that while many of his colleagues reached out — including Jimmy Fallon, Jon Stewart, James Corden and Stephen Colbert, who sent soup to his house — he didn’t hear from Seth Meyers.
Additionally, Kimmel said that he didn’t hear from George Stephanopoulos or frenemy Matt Damon.
While Kimmel got a text from Martin Short asking if he wanted to join him and John Mulaney for dinner, the host said he didn’t receive a reply after telling Short he had COVID.
Meanwhile, Billy Crystal checked in, and, Kimmel noted, Crystal was nominated for two Tony Awards on Monday morning, something Kimmel suggested might not have been a coincidence.
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