Jimmy Kimmel’s sidekick, Guillermo Rodriguez, is celebrating the return of Jimmy Kimmel Live! six days after it was abruptly pulled off the air.
Rodriguez, 54, took to Instagram on Tuesday, September 23, to share a joint post with the talk show ahead of the return episode set to air later that evening.
“We are back full of love,” the Mexican-American comedian, who has been working on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! set since 2003, captioned a photo of himself hugging Kimmel, 57, as the talk show host smiled and patted Rodriguez on the shoulder.
Fans rushed to the comments to gush over the photo and celebrate along with Rodriguez.
“Cannot wait for tonight’s episode!!!!!” one person wrote.
“👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 You go!!!! And Hope this will not affect your monologues, you said what we are all thinking,” another user added.
Rodriguez’s post comes one day after the Walt Disney Company confirmed that Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be returning to broadcast following its suspension over Kimmel’s comments about the man suspected of killing the late conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” the company told Us Weekly in a statement on Monday, September 22. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
During the September 15 episode of his talk show, Kimmel brought up the 22-year-old suspect who was accused of fatally shooting Kirk at Utah Valley University on September 10.
“The MAGA Gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”
He also showed a clip of President Donald Trump responding to a reporter who asked how he was coping with Kirk’s death. Trump, 79, said, “I think very good, and by the way, right there where you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House.”
Kimmel joked, “He’s at the fourth stage of grief, construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish, OK?”
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened ABC, Disney and Kimmel in response to the comedian’s comments.
“There’s calls for Kimmel to be fired,” Carr said on right-wing influencer Benny Johnson’s YouTube show on September 17. “I think you could certainly see a path forward for suspension over this. … Frankly, when we see stuff like this, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
Jimmy Kimmel Live! was abruptly pulled from broadcast that same day. A spokesperson for ABC told Us on September 17 that the show would be “pre-empted indefinitely.”
Nexstar Media, which owns multiple TV stations, told Variety that it “strongly objects” to the TV host’s remarks and would be replacing his show with other programming for the “foreseeable future.” In light of the show’s return, the company announced on Tuesday that it would continue preempting Jimmy Kimmel Live! until further notice.
The Sinclair Broadcast Group, which demanded that Kimmel apologize to Kirk’s family and make a donation to them and Kirk’s nonprofit organization, also revealed plans to continue airing alternative programming on its 38 affiliate stations.
