Actor Matt Damon, 55, crashed the Monday, Sept. 28, 2026, episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in a Boston Red Sox cap, heckling from his audience seat until security escorted him out of the theater.
Host Jimmy Kimmel, 58, was only a few lines into his monologue on opening night of the show’s week of broadcasts in Brooklyn, N.Y., when a man in the crowd started shouting. The man was Damon.
“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 in the monologue. He had just noted that the series would start in the Bronx when Damon interrupted.
“Go Sox! Go Sox!” Damon shouted, cheering for his home team.
“You, the loser in the Red Sox cap, what is your name?” Kimmel asked. “You know my name,” Damon answered. Kimmel shot back: “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.” He then called out, “Security, please remove this ‘Masshole’ from the theater.”
Mother and Sister Stand Up
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 said, then added, “I’m also here with your sister.” Joan Kimmel, the host’s mother, stood up beside him, 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!”
After Damon left, Kimmel told the crowd, “You should all probably get tested for HPV.”
The Yankees took Game 1 of the series 9-0 on Tuesday, Sept. 29, leaving the Red Sox one loss from elimination.
Two Decades of Mock Rivalry
Damon chose baseball as his weapon. The two men have spent two decades maintaining a mock rivalry on the air.
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, and 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 said 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 told IndieWire in 2016 that late-night hosts chase the same bookings and little else, milder terms than his on-air persona suggests.
A Truce That Did Not Hold
Kimmel has hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards three times, in 2012, 2016 and 2020, and he hosted 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.
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 is a father of four, and he has never needed an invitation to participate.
