Yes, Jimmy Kimmel Will Bring #MeToo into His Oscars Monologue

With just days to go before the Academy Awards, workers are rolling out red carpet on Hollywood Boulevard, a camera crew is rehearsing in the Dolby Theater, and Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel is still honing his material. Hosting the Oscars is always a tricky job, but perhaps never more than this year, when the entertainment industry is grappling with its role in the #MeToo story, and much of Hollywood has settled into a state of unease. On Thursday, Kimmel spoke to Vanity Fair about whether he’ll tackle #MeToo in his monologue, how he’ll deal with an audience afraid to laugh, and where Matt Damon will be on Oscar night.

Vanity Fair: Happy Oscar week.

Jimmy Kimmel: Thank you. That’s a nice way of looking at it. I wish I looked at it that way.

Last year at this time when I talked to you, you had been named Oscar host with relatively little notice. This time you’ve had a whole year to prepare. Is that a good thing or a bad thing as far as you’re concerned?

I thought it would be a good thing, but I don’t think it turned out to be as good a thing as I expected it to be. Because I was in such a panic last time, I thought about the Oscars nonstop and I’ve been a little bit more relaxed leading up to it this year. Although now that it’s—what is it today, Thursday? I’m pretty well set. If you’d asked me three days ago I would have told you I’d been procrastinating too much as a result of having too much time. When you know you have to get it done, you get it done.

What’s something you plan to do differently this year?

I’m gonna do basically the same thing but with different jokes. It’s kind of the same drill. I feel like I learned little things, subtle things. Every time you do something like this you gain wisdom because the audience is not like the audience of your talk show. They’re not there to see you. You’re there to see them, so it’s just a different approach. I’ve learned not to overplan the show. I’ve learned you should play to the audience in front of you rather than the audience at home, and to keep it loose if possible. Some of these things tend to be very tightly wound.

Certainly last year gave you a huge opportunity to test your improvisational skills.

That’s the easy part. Either you’re good in that type of situation or you aren’t. You don’t have to think about those things. Sometimes you just walk out there and see what happens.

Tonally, these shows are always tricky and this year will be no exception. How do you balance putting on a show that’s entertaining and fun while responding to serious issues on the minds of the audience?

Looking at the big picture is one way to do it. You can get caught up in specific jokes or bits. You do have to take a step back, and hopefully you have people around you who can take a step back and say, “Hey, maybe you’re not saying enough about this.” We never really know if we got it right. People will judge for themselves whether we did. There are some people who feel causes have no place on the Oscar broadcast. There are some people who feel that should be what we do with that platform. Like everything else, you just have to find that balance. Part of it is luck, part of it is making the right choices. Even though it’s the Oscars, this one feels different than last year. Last year I was asked these same questions, too. People, for whatever reason, expect social issues to be addressed on the Oscars [telecast]. That expectation has created situations where it happens always.

One difference between this year and last year is that last year we were asking you about Donald Trump, whereas this year with #MeToo and Time’s Up, the issue directly involves people who will be in the room at the Dolby Theatre, which seems more complicated. Do you have questions or bits that address Time’s Up?

I do, yes. It’s very tricky because when people are scared they don’t laugh, and when there’s a camera in their face they behave differently than they do in a comedy club or in the audience on a talk show. When you’re put in that position, those in the audience become a little bit of a deer in the headlights. That’s the part [where] you have to rely on experience and the knowledge of your medium. We all know that what happens during and after the Oscars is that people will take a screengrab of somebody and build a whole story around it. I found myself in a situation at the NBA All-Star game a few weeks ago, during Fergie’s national anthem, where I suddenly was on camera and didn’t realize I was and, had I known I was on camera, I might not have had a natural reaction, and that’s in an arena with 17,000 people.

So you’re saying you have some empathy for your audience?

Yeah, you have to understand where they’re coming from. It’s important to you that people are laughing and clapping in all the right spots. But for them, they’re worried about themselves and they’re gonna be careful. Careful does not necessarily equal great when it comes to a comedy audience.

Is your monologue set at this point or are you and your writers still coming up with jokes?

We just keep going until the show starts. If something happens in the next few days we’ll all set our sights on that, and we all know something will happen in the next few days.

A couple years ago at the Emmys, Jill Soloway in her acceptance speech urged the world to “Topple the patriarchy.” Then the camera cut to you to introduce another category and you said something like, “I’m trying to figure out if toppling the patriarchy is good for me or not. I feel like it’s probably not.” That was an honest and funny ad-lib, but, at a time when the world is grappling with issues of inclusion, do you feel like being a heterosexual-white-male host limits you? How do you take on those issues in your comedy?

I start with three strikes against me. Listen, there’s nothing I can do about my gender. Well, I guess I could do something about my gender. But there’s nothing I can do about my race. I surround myself with women. Even on The Man Show our executive producers were women. People don’t necessarily realize that. We have five executive producers and four of them are women. I almost hate saying that because I think it would indicate that I hired these people because they are women, which is absolutely not the case. You can talk and you can say whatever you want, but let somebody take a look at your organization and you will learn everything you need to know.

Are there many women writers on the Oscar telecast?

Of course.

Will Matt Damon be involved in the show?

Matt is in Australia, so the answer is no. We have our feud, but when it comes to playing along with a comedy bit he is always game and I cannot say that for everyone.

What do you do immediately after the Oscars?

I’ll go to the Governors Ball and then I’m having a party, a different kind of party. It’s an eating party. . . . And then, you know those inflatable creatures they have outside used-car lots? And you know what happens to them when you cut the power? That’s what happens to me the minute the Oscars are over. I really just want to go home and go to sleep, because the adrenaline, when it washes back down into your bones, I just really feel exhausted. I think I fell asleep at my post-Emmy party. I didn’t know if I could leave, I was like, “Is it O.K. for me to leave?”