Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos were among those weighing in on Jimmy Kimmel’s return to ABC on Tuesday night after parent company Disney suspended Kimmel’s eponymous late-night show on Sept. 17.
Though Ripa and Consuelos rarely discuss politics and other controversial topics on their syndicated daytime show, Live! With Kelly and Mark, on Wednesday they addressed their friend and Disney colleague’s comeback. Live! With Kelly and Mark is syndicated by Disney Entertainment and produced by WABC in New York.
Kimmel, Consuelos and Ripa indicated, is a friend, and regular guest. Live! viewers know he’s been a guest on the show multiple times and even a past guest co-host.
“We know him personally and when I tell you he’s one of the kindest, most generous people that I know, cares about his family, takes care of his crew, his staff, everybody. He really, really cares,” Consuelos said, as Ripa added that he “cares about people.”
Consuelos added: “And his statements last night, I think, were on point. He understands both sides, he was very humble in his speech.”
And he noted that while he and Ripa “don’t talk about any politics,” the right to free speech is “very important.”
“One thing we can all agree on as a country is that the First Amendment is really important,” Consuelos said. “We do a light show here. We don’t talk about any politics here, we just don’t do it. We know that our fans at home want an escape from all of that, and we agree — we want an escape from all of that! But I think it’s important, too, that we all are free. Because you never know — we could say something crazy and tomorrow we’re gone.”
He added that it’s “not lost” on them that they’re “sitting here in the Disney building, our home here” and he called Kimmel’s return, “the right thing to do, for the company, to bring him back.”
Ripa said, “And I have to tell you, and we can all agree here, even though we are a light, frothy … we are non-controversial. We are non-controversial. We are like melted ice cream. But even we are constantly in a position where we are checking what we’re about to say in our heads because we’ve come to this inflection point where no matter what you say, somebody is upset. And I think everybody needs to take a step back and really think. I have a right to speak and you have a right to say horrible things to me on Instagram. That’s the pleasure about living in a free society. That is important.”
Kimmel returned to ABC on Tuesday night with a new episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! a little less than a week after ABC took the late night show off the air following remarks Kimmel made on Sept. 15 about the alleged killer of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The suspension also came after station owners Nexstar and Sinclair said they would pre-empt Kimmel’s show and FCC head Brendan Carr appeared to threaten ABC affiliate licenses in a podcast appearance last week.
Kimmel’s suspension and Carr’s remarks, with President Trump fueling the fire by saying that Kimmel was “fired,” drew widespread backlash, particularly from those in Hollywood, with a number of stars speaking out in support of Kimmel and roughly 400 actors, filmmakers, writers and musicians signing an open letter from the ACLU condemning Kimmel’s suspension as anti-free speech.
Disney announced Monday that Kimmel’s show would return on Tuesday. Still Nexstar and Sinclair continued to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Tuesday night, a decision that affects more than 60 ABC affiliates that reach about a quarter of the TV homes across the U.S.
Kimmel also spoke about the First Amendment in his return, saying his right to free speech was “something I took for granted till they pulled my friend Stephen [Colbert] off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates who run our show in the cities you live in to take my show off the air. That’s not legal. That’s not American. That is un-American.”