Jimmy Kimmel cancels show, Steve Martin postpones dates due to COVID-19
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel has tested positive for COVID-19. Credit: Getty Images / Kevin Winter
With COVID-19 infection rates ticking upward, late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel and comedy icon Steve Martin each have canceled weekend shows in Las Vegas after contracting the disease.
“Well, Las Vegas, I got COVID, and sadly, we need to cancel this weekend’s Strike Force Three show,” Kimmel, 55, host of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” wrote on social media Wednesday. The planned Saturday show at the Dolby Live at Park MGM, starring himself and fellow late-night hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon, was an extension of their “Strike Force Five” podcast that also includes Seth Meyers and John Oliver. Like the podcast, the canceled event was being done as a benefit to raise funds for their talk shows’ crew members, who are idle during the ongoing actors and writers strikes.
“I could never live with myself if I got my hometown friends sick,” the Brooklyn-born Kimmel continued, appearing to mean fellow Brooklynite Fallon; Colbert was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in South Carolina, and now lives in Montclair, New Jersey. “Thanks to all who purchased tickets[;] everyone will get full refunds and we will try to reschedule if possible.”
Neither Colbert nor Fallon have commented publicly on the cancellation.
Kimmel previously contracted COVID-19 in May of last year, causing him to miss some episodes of his talk show.
Martin, meanwhile, had been set to appear at the Wynn and Encore Las Vegas with his “Only Murders in the Building” co-star and frequent cohort Martin Short in “Steve Martin & Martin Short: You Won’t Believe What They Look Like Today!”
But Wednesday on social media, comically addressing a note to “Dear fans and enemies,” the 78-year-old star wrote, “Unfortunately, our sold-out shows at the Wynn in Las Vegas this Friday and Saturday [have] to be postponed because of rampant COVID in our crew and one other essential guy,” evidently a lighthearted reference to himself.
Continuing in a jocular vein, Martin said, “We are sorry for any inconvenience, but we are moving to mid-December, where your tickets will be honored with an added ‘date-moving tax,’ of nine thousand dollars.”
Short has no evident social media and has not commented publicly.
