Jimmy Kimmel won’t be handing out gilded statuettes at next year’s Oscars ceremony — and he’s ready to tell the world why.
On Monday, the late night host joined Gov. Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch, and Doug Hendrickson for their Politickin‘ podcast, where he opened up about his decision to not host the awards show in 2025.
“It’s hard and it’s a lot of work and the show suffers a little bit to be honest,” he explained, referencing the gig’s impact on his nightly episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live. “When I’m focused on the Oscars, I’m less focused on the show. And I just decided I didn’t want to deal with that this year. It was just too much last year.”
He continued, “You wind up pushing everything off till after the Oscars, then you have to do everything you promised to do after the Oscars after the Oscars.”
Kimmel also pointed out that when it comes to hosting the Academy Awards, he already has a well-established streak of success stories. “I did two years, it went well. I did another two years, went well. I figured I’d take a break.”
Across the last decade, Kimmel has emceed the Academy Awards four times: in 2017 and 2018, then again in 2023 and 2024. The broadcasts in between his stints went hostless, save for the 2022 edition, which was led by Regina Hall, Amy Schumer, and Wanda Sykes. Kimmel went on to say that in his experience, hosting the show quickly becomes all consuming.
“I’m not good at balancing,” he admitted. “It’s not my strength, so I just, I’m all in when it comes to something like the Oscars. I think about it in the morning and at night. And I have ideas I want to work on. My nightly show seemed like a nuisance, sometimes.”
Making matters more complicated, Kimmel’s crew was also splitting time between the nightly show and the big broadcast. “We have all our writers from the show working on the Oscars, so it distracts them too. It’s fun to do and it feels good when it went well but for me, it was just too much. To do it three years in a row…”
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ABC has yet to reveal who will host the 97th Academy Awards, but a source previously told Entertainment Weekly that fellow comedian John Mulaney has turned down offers to preside over the upcoming telecast. As for Kimmel, he didn’t name names when asked who he would pick for the job, but did share his theory about why no one has leapt at the opportunity to take his place.
“I think there are a lot of people who would be good hosts of the Oscars, it’s just a matter of most of them don’t want to do it,” Kimmel said. “It takes a lot of time and a lot of the people who you think, ‘Oh yeah, that person would be great. She’d be great, He’d be great’ they know they’d be great, they just don’t want to do it.”
He continued, “Especially when you think somebody’s gonna be great, the only thing they could do is prove you wrong when they host the Oscars. They say it’s a thankless job and I wouldn’t necessarily describe it like that because when it goes well, it isn’t. But it’s a tough spot to be in.”
You can hear Kimmel open up about his Oscars decision in the podcast episode above.