Jimmy Kimmel Live! viewers got a glimpse of a throwback video featuring Kyle Mooney last night, and if there’s any lingering nostalgia, worry not: You can now watch the 13-year old segment in full.
Kimmel welcomed Mooney back to JKL Tuesday night so that the former Saturday Night Live cast member could promote Y2K—the new A24 film he directed and co-wrote. But before they got into the movie, Kimmel reminded viewers that Mooney once served as a correspondent for JKL. Kimmel then showed an awkward-on-purpose clip of Mooney reporting from a reptile convention.
“I gotta say,” Mooney told Kimmel deadpan after the clip. “To me, that was awkward.”
Back around 2011, Mooney had been posting other videos like these to his own YouTube account. At the time, Mooney was four years into Good Neighbor, the sketch group he founded with future SNL castmate Beck Bennett, writer Nick Rutherford, and writer and segment director Dave McCary.
In late 2011, Mooney’s awkward reporter persona was recruited to make appearances as a correspondent on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
While Kimmel only showed a brief clip last night, the complete segment is available to watch here:
Jimmy Kimmel shared a short snippet last night, but here's the full four-minute clip of a pre-SNL Kyle Mooney's 2011 Jimmy Kimmel Live! reptile convention remote. pic.twitter.com/458pf1WCLJ
— LateNighter (@latenightercom) December 4, 2024
“A few months ago, after an exhaustive search of the halls, we found a new correspondent for the show,” Kimmel tells viewers before Mooney’s December 2011 appearance. “I saw Kyle online, and I liked his style.” As Kimmel mentions in the 2011 clip, Mooney made the videos with McCary.
“I watched a bunch of those today, and it was just making me laugh so hard,” Kimmel told Mooney of his reporting pieces during last night’s interview.
Mooney would go on to audition for SNL the following summer, though he didn’t book the gig that time around. In 2013, however, both he and Bennett auditioned again and were hired as featured players. Mooney spent nine years at Saturday Night Live, ultimately leaving in 2022. He returned to the show for a cameo during last month’s Charli XCX-hosted episode.
