Matt Damon, 55, the actor who has spent two decades trading insults with Jimmy Kimmel on the air, crashed the Monday, Sept. 28, 2026, episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” — heckling from an audience seat in a Boston Red Sox cap until security hauled him out of the theater.
Jimmy Kimmel, 58, had brought the show east for a week of broadcasts in Brooklyn, N.Y., and it was opening night of the Brooklyn run. The host was only a few lines into his monologue when a man began shouting from the crowd. The man was Damon.
Kimmel’s monologue line came just after he noted the series would start in the Bronx. “Tomorrow the baseball postseason begins with a three-game wildcard series between the bitterest of all rivals, the [New York] Yankees and the [Boston] Red Sox,” Kimmel said.
Damon interrupted from his seat, cheering for his home team. “Go Sox! Go Sox!” he said. He had chosen baseball as his weapon.
The Mom and Sister Twist
“You, the loser in the Red Sox cap, what is your name?” Kimmel asked.
“You know my name,” Damon answered.
“I have no idea what your name is and honestly, I don’t care, because it’s time for the ceremonial throwing out of the first Red Sox fan,” Kimmel said. “Security, please remove this ‘Masshole’ from the theater.”
Damon tried a defense. “Wait a minute, I’m not even trying to get on the show. I’m just here with family,” he said.
“Security — wait, what family are you here with?” Kimmel asked.
“I’m here with your mom,” Damon replied. Joan Kimmel, the host’s mother, stood up beside him. “I’m also here with your sister,” Damon added, and Jill Kimmel, the host’s sister, rose from the next seat.
“My mother and my sister? Get him out of here right now!” Kimmel said.
Security ushered Damon out of the auditorium, and Joan and Jill Kimmel followed him up the aisle. “You don’t bring my mother and my sister with you,” Kimmel shouted from the stage.
Damon fired back on his way out: “Listen, I’ll tell you what. You can keep me off the show; you can’t keep me out of your mom!”
Kimmel then turned to the crowd. “You should all probably get tested for HPV,” he told them.
The baseball half of the stunt did not go Damon’s way. The Yankees took Game 1 of the series 9-0 on Tuesday, Sept. 29, leaving the Red Sox one loss from elimination.
A Feud Born in 2005
The bit dates to 2005, when Kimmel began closing episodes with an apology to a guest who had never been booked in the first place: “Apologies to Matt Damon, but we ran out of time.” The joke hardened into a tradition.
Damon finally turned up as a guest in September 2006. Kimmel cut him off and ended the show, which kept the feud alive rather than settling it.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” launched in 2003 on ABC, and the running gag has outlasted nearly everything else about the program. Kimmel has said the early days of the show were “murderously difficult.” He has recalled that most publicists were wary of him early on and that he leaned on a small circle of famous friends to fill the guest chair.
Kimmel has hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards three times — in 2012, 2016 and 2020 — plus the 2012 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. At the 68th Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016, which Kimmel hosted, “The People v. O.J. Simpson” dominated the night.
Truce Attempts and Relapses
In March 2023, the two men attempted peace, in a detente brokered by Ben Affleck, Damon’s closest friend. Damon and Affleck met as kids growing up in Cambridge, Mass. The truce fell apart on air that same night.
While hosting the 2024 Oscars, Kimmel played a clip of Messi, the dog from “Anatomy of a Fall,” urinating on Damon’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — and the feud was back on.
Damon, a father of four, has never needed an invitation to participate, as the Brooklyn audience learned.
Away from the bit, Kimmel has described his professional rivalries in far milder terms than his on-air persona suggests, telling IndieWire in 2016 that late-night hosts chase the same bookings and little else.
