Jimmy Kimmel didn’t take Monday night off despite having hosted the 2024 Academy Awards the night before. And during his monologue, after a fun but where musical guest Justin Timberlake pretended to be the guest host for the night, Kimmel spoke at length about what it was like hosting the Oscars.
Naturally, he talked a lot about the fun sketch where John Cena appeared to be naked while giving out the Best Costume Design Oscar. And he talked about that social media post by Donald Trump that he read on-air — which set him up to quip that even with Cena appearance naked, “Trump still managed to be the biggest dick of the night.”
You can watch the full monologue above now.
So what did Kimmel have to say about the John Cena sketch? a lot. It turns out the network was extremely concerned about it and it was a difficult journey from conception to approval to performance.
“No comedy bit has ever received more scrutiny than this one,” Kimmel said, explaining that “there were meetings, and side-meetings, there were emails and texts, and phone calls, there were people sweating. Somebody was crying.”
Then Kimmel explained how, “once they realized we weren’t going to take no for an answer,” they had a long arduous process getting all the details approved, including the size of the envelope Cena would be hiding behind. “Every television network has what they call an ‘S&P’ department, which stands for ‘Scrotum & Penis,’” Kimmel quipped.
“But I want to thank John for being such a good sport,” Kimmel said a little later. “And I want to apologize for nearly killing our department of Standards and Practices last night.”
Further into the monologue, Kimmel then got to that Trump moment, when he read the insults Trump made about his performance and the Oscars telecast in general, right after it happened in one of the 2024 Oscars’ most talked-about moments.
“So, after the show, almost everyone I ran into was asking me, ‘was that real. Did Donald Trump really,’ Yeah, of course it was real,” Kimmel said. “And it kinda tells you all you need to know about Donald Trump. He wrote this because he was upset I didn’t mention him on the show, and no one mentioned him on the show. He wasn’t getting any attention; he couldn’t stand it.”
“We had John Cena onstage naked, and somehow Trump still managed to be the biggest dick of the night,” Kimmel said.