On Monday, Jimmy Kimmel announced that his daughter, Jane, gave him COVID-19. Therefore, he is not able to host his show this week. Consequently, he asked comedian Mike Birbiglia to host the show.
The story of how that happened is pretty cool. Birbiglia texted Kimmel and his wife, Molly McNearney, who is the EP of the show, to see if they wanted to do dinner while he was in town. Kimmel said that Molly tested positive for COVID-19, and he is awaiting his results. Then the host asked if he got it, would Birbiglia host Jimmy Kimmel Live. The comedian was on a plane to LA at the time, and of course, he was like, “Absolutely.” And the rest is Hollywood history.
Yesterday was Birbiglia’s first monologue, and he decided to do a videochat with the man he replaced to see how he was doing. How is Jimmy feeling? He is wearing two pairs of sunglasses, a Hawaiian shirt, and a straw hat, and drinking an alcoholic beverage at his bar in the house. Therefore, you have to wonder if he is playing hooky? I think it is a little bit of both.
Hopefully, he will be better soon. But in the meantime, Birbiglia is doing a great job! It might’ve been a split-second decision, but it was a wise one.
