Star ‘wars’ rage on
The history of Jimmy Kimmel and Matt Damon ‘hating’ each other
At the Academy Awards on Sunday, host Jimmy Kimmel paid tribute to his favourite prank target: Matt Damon. In a sketch, Kimmel screened Damon’s 2011 family-friendly movie We Bought a Zoo, marvelling that Damon “has almost no discernible talent, but he works.”
Back in the Dolby Theatre, Damon joined his childhood friend Ben Affleck on stage to present the award for best original screenplay. But the announcer told the audience to welcome “two-time Academy Award-winner Ben Affleck and guest.”
This was a continuation of a long-standing but fake feud between Damon and Kimmel, who eventually schemed to play his frenemy off the stage.
“I’m just presenting. You can’t play me off!” Damon said as the camera flashed to Kimmel gleefully conducting the orchestra. The constant bickering was one of the highlights of the broadcast — before all of the drama of the ceremony was usurped by an epic best-picture mix-up.
Just how far back does this fake fight go? As it turns out, quite a ways. In 2011, Damon explained the origins of the joke to Parade. He wasn’t even in on it initially. In fact, he had no idea what was going on. All he knew was that Kimmel had been saying, “My apologies to Matt Damon; we ran out of time” for the better part of a year.
In 2006, when Damon was finally invited to be a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live, he asked the host about the gag. Here’s Damon explaining their off-screen conversation:
“And he was like, ‘ You want to know what happened? I was doing a particularly lame show; I think my guests were a ventriloquist and a guy in a monkey suit. We were wrapping it up, and there was a smattering of applause in the audience. I was having kind of a low moment, and I just said, ‘My apologies to Matt Damon; we ran out of time.’ My producer was right off camera and he doubled over laughing. It was just gallows humour. Nobody else got the joke. But it made us laugh, so we started doing it every night. I have no idea why I said you. It could have been anybody.’ ”
On that fateful evening in 2006, Kimmel welcomed Damon with a drawn-out introduction that left little room for an actual interview. “Matt Damon, everybody!” he eventually said as the audience cheered. “They love you and it’s so good to have you here. Unfortunately, we are totally out of time.”
“I’m sorry, Matt,” he added. “Can you come back tomorrow night?” “Go f--- yourself,” Damon replied. The two then staged a screaming match, with Damon marching off the set.
The faux feud took a heightened turn in 2008 when Kimmel hosted then-girlfriend Sarah Silverman on his show. After a long, convoluted intro that included discussion of her thick, black arm hair, Silverman revealed that she had a surprise. She threw to a clip of her strumming a guitar.
“Here it goes,” Silverman said, before breaking into joyous song. “I’m f---ing Matt Damon!”
Then Damon appeared. “She’s f--ing Matt Damon!” he said with a wide grin. They proceeded to tell Kimmel, through song, about all the places and instances in which they did the deed.
As he was on Oscar night, Affleck is often in on the joke. Last year, he went to extremes to bring Damon onto Jimmy Kimmel Live, carrying him in under a very large trench coat.
And just a few weeks ago, Damon appeared in a sketch with Kimmel and his wife, Molly McNearney, who is expecting their second child.
The joke here was that the baby might actually be Damon’s child. Damon and Kimmel tried to hash things out on a spoof episode of Maury Povich, with Martin Short playing the daytime host, who has an affinity for paternity tests.