For the first time ever on Wednesday night, Jimmy Kimmel invited his childhood hero David Letterman to sit down with him in his Los Angeles theater. And just days after the Oscars, the former late-night host was apparently in the mood to talk Hollywood.
“It was a thrilling moment for the country, the network and yourself,” Letterman told the host of his third time as host of the Oscars. “You know what it does to you, don‘you? You are the prince of Hollywood. He then added, “Congratulations, because you have resurrected this carcass, and the network and the Academy should be very grateful, that’s good.”
In contrast, when Letterman hosted the awards show in 1995, he joked, “It was such a bombshell, the Academy thought maybe it was terrorists.” He then gushed about the track he “really enjoyed” in which Kimmel had to tell Cocaine Bear to leave Malala Yousafzai alone.
Kimmel actually did his best to change the subject and talk about his guest’s more recent foray into serious interviews, but Letterman didn’t have it. “The show was so bad that the Academy got together and they said, ‘We can never let this happen again! “” he joked, “so they shut down the film industry for a year.”
But then Letterman finally went from self-mockery to an even bigger celebrity target.
“Here’s something that can be a little sensitive,” Letterman said. “Where was Tom Cruise?”
After a short pause, Kimmel replied, “We don’t know where Tom Cruise was. We have heard of “production problems”. When Letterman called it “nonsense,” Kimmel said, “Exactly, that‘It’s very unspecific, but we have no idea what happened.
According to reports leading up to the ceremony, the Top Gun: Maverick the star was unable to attend as he was filming the last Impossible mission film abroad while other rumors indicated that he was trying to avoid a meeting with his ex-wife Nicole Kidman. It later emerged that he was in London to celebrate Michael Caine’s 90th birthday.
“Tom Cruise should have been there, celebrating his big jet-pack maverick show,” Letterman told Kimmel, who suggested he may have skipped the event because he knew he wasn’t going to win. “Between you and me, he should have been there, right?
“Yeah sure,” Kimmel replied, “he’s the Prince of Hollywood.”
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