Jimmy Kimmel and the Oscars just need a little time apart.
Kimmel, who hosted the previous two ceremonies, recently declined the chance to host the 2025 Oscars. It would have been his fifth time at the mic, having hosted the awards in 2017, 2018, 2023, and 2024.
On a new episode of the Politickin’ podcast (which is hosted by Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch, and Doug Hendrickson) the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host revealed why he turned down the gig.
“I just decided I didn’t want to deal with that this year,” Kimmel said candidly. “It was just too much last year. You wind up pushing everything off ‘til after the Oscars, and then you have to do everything you promised to do after the Oscars, after the Oscars. I did two years, it went well. I did another two years, it went well. I figured I’d take a little break.”
The comedian explained that Jimmy Kimmel Live! “suffers a little bit” when he has to juggle the show with preparing for the Oscars, and admitted that he’s “not good at balancing” multiple projects.
“I’m all in when it comes to something like the Oscars,” he said. “I think about it in the morning and at night. And when I have ideas I want to work on them, and then my nightly show seems like a nuisance. We have all our writers from the show working on the Oscars, so it distracts them. It’s fun to do, and it feels good when it went well, but, for me, [it] just was too much to do it three years in a row.”
The Academy is still searching for a host for the 2025 ceremony. In July, it was reported that fellow comedian John Mulaney was also offered the gig, but passed on the opportunity as well. Kimmel explained to Politickin’ that while there are seemingly a lot of good options for hosts, “most of them don’t want to do it.”
“It takes a lot of time, and a lot of the people who you think, ‘That person would be great’… they know they’d be great, they just don’t want to do it,” he said. “When you think somebody’s going to be great, the only thing they can do is prove you wrong when they host the Oscars.”
“They say it’s a thankless job,” Kimmel, who also declined to host this year’s Emmys, added. “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.”
The 97th Academy Awards are slated to air on March 2 on ABC.
