How Jimmy Kimmel’s epic feud with Matt Damon started

If you’ve never seen an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! in the past 13 years, the host ends every episode with the same joke: “Our apologies to Matt Damon, we ran out of time”.

Kimmel, who is set to host the Emmy Awards on Monday, revealed to NPR that the long-running gag started at the end a particularly bad show.

“The guests were bad, and I was feeling pretty bad about myself at the end of the program,” Kimmel said.

“And I decided to say, for the amusement of one of our producers who was standing next to me ... ‘I want to apologise to Matt Damon. We ran out of time.’ ... And he got a kick out of it, the producer, so I just started doing it every night to amuse him.

“Matt Damon was just the first name that popped into my head. I was trying to think of an A-list star, and somebody we absolutely would not bump if he was on the show. ... The legs on this bit are unbelievable to me. I mean, people laugh every time I say it. ... Repeating the same joke every single night, you’d think eventually people would get tired of it, but they don’t.”

Right from the outset, the Good Will Hunting actor was a fan of the joke and got his publicist to call Kimmel to say, “Hey, that’s funny. Don’t stop doing that”.
In 2006 Matt Damon finally appeared on the show, but after showing a montage of all the time’s he’s said “Our apologies to Matt Damon”, Jimmy Kimmel revealed to the movie star that they’d run out of time ... again.

Proving what a great actor he is, Damon responded with a rather spectacular (fake) dummy spit:
 

The joke continued in 2008 when Kimmel’s girlfriend, Sarah Silverman, got in on the joke and revealed to the talk show host through song that she’s been “fu**ing Matt Damon”.

Kimmel told People magazine he had no idea Silverman had put the song together.

“She was a guest on the show and she was like, ‘I have a surprise for you’,” the host said.

“It was one of our anniversary shows and I hadn’t seen one second of it, which is kind of funny. The probably single most successful thing we’ve ever done on the show I had absolutely nothing to do with.”

(The song starts at the 2.15 mark)

Jimmy Kimmel Live

Jimmy Kimmel hit back at Matt Damon a year later when he released his own song about the actor’s best friend, Ben Affleck.

Stars including Brad Pitt, Robin Williams and Harrison Ford all got together to help Kimmel make the hilarious music video, which was originally suggested to him by Affleck’s then wife, Jennifer Garner.

“She kind of thought it would be funny and was talking to Harrison Ford about it at a dinner, and Harrison Ford was tickled by the idea and said, ‘Well, I’d like to be in that’,” Kimmel said to People.

“And when Harrison Ford said he might want to be a part of it, we decided to make it more like We Are the World and bring all these celebrities in.”

(The song starts at the 1.30 mark)

Jimmy Kimmel Live

The banter continued back and forth for the next few years.

Matt Damon joined the cast of The Monuments Men on Jimmy Kimmel Live! but a fire alarm meant the studio had to be evacuated before he had a chance to speak.

Then Damon and Kimmel tried to sort out their differences by going to couples therapy together.

But one of the pair’s best segments was earlier this year was when Damon snuck onto Kimmel’s show by strapping himself to Ben Affleck who was wearing a fat suit.

As mentioned earlier, Jimmy Kimmel is set to host the Emmy Awards next week and we can only hope that he’ll use the TV industry’s night of nights to further his feud with Matt Damon.

The 68th annual Primetime Emmy Awards will be broadcast live on Monday September 19 at 10am EST on Fox8.