Matt Damon Calls Jimmy Kimmel 'Terrible Human Being' Amid Their Longstanding 'Feud'
The heated "feud" between Matt Damon and Jimmy Kimmel has spilled over onto the red carpet. On Monday, Damon spoke with Entertainment Tonight at the premiere of his new film, Air, and discussed his long-standing (allegedly) bitter rivalry with the late-night host. When asked if he would consider putting the past behind him and moving on, Damon responded, "No, no, he's an a—. Why would I do that? "He's a terrible human being," Damon added. "He's a terrible human being. He's a demonstrably bad man." After watching Kimmel walk the carpet behind him, Damon decided to take a shot at the host, who has for years maintained a show of indifference and disdain for Damon. Damon yelled to Kimmel: "Hey Kimmel! I'd love to take a picture with you, but we ran out of time!" He played on Kimmel's ongoing joke on Jimmy Kimmel Live, in which Kimmel apologizes to Damon at the end of every show when he runs out of time and cannot feature him.
Kimmel got to ET and said, "You know, I don't know who that was, but yeah, I heard him. He was loud." Kimmel claimed that Damon "was the cocaine bear" at this year's Academy Awards, as in, the man wearing the infamous bear costume, despite Damon's denials. "Did he say he wasn't the bear?" Kimmel asked. "He was the bear. "And totally full of cocaine," the comedian quipped. Kimmel shot down the idea of reconciliation on his show or even an episode devoted solely to Damon when asked if the two would ever settle their differences. He said, " "I just can't imagine it happening. I really can't. I think we have Ben [Affleck] on tomorrow, so we'll have that, but that will be as close as we get."
Damon and Kimmel have been "feuding" for 15 years now, trolling each other on Kimmel's show and off, even enlisting celebrities like Sarah Silverman, Tom Brady, and Affleck to aid them. During a SiriusXM interview with Jess Cagle in 2021, Damon recalled the night Kimmel's bit first began, noting that no one he knew was watching the show that night. "People started to call me and ask like, 'Hey, what's your connection to this guy?'" he recalled. "And I'd never met Jimmy. And he literally pulled my name out of thin air one night. And the way he told me this story, he said, 'I had a ventriloquist and a guy in a gorilla suit as my guests. And I just said, kind of as a throw-away, my apologies to Matt Damon, we ran out of time.' He could have said, Brad Pitt. He could have said George [Clooney], he could have said somebody else."
"But he just, for some reason, maybe I had a movie out that week or something, but he just said my name," he continued. "And it changed the course of both of our lives. We've kept this a feud going for — it's gotta be 15 years now and had a lot of fun doing it." In response to Cagle's statement that Damon and Kimmel have had a "long, rich relationship," the Oscar winner remarked, "As he says, it's the weirdest thing. It doesn't behave like any joke ever. He goes, 'I say the same joke every night and it gets a laugh every night. It's the weirdest thing.'"
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