In late-night crossover, Jimmy Kimmel tells Stephen Colbert he thought his show was 'over' after suspension

Jimmy Kimmel said on Tuesday's "Late Show with Stephen Colbert"— you read that right, and more on this rarest of appearances in a bit — that he believed his long-running show was "over" after learning of the abrupt suspension.

"I thought, 'That's it. It's over. It is over. I'm never coming back on the air.' "

In his first interview since the suspension, Kimmel said he had been in his office with producers just before taping (at the El Capitan Entertainment Center in Los Angeles) was to begin, when a call came in from ABC executives.

"They say they want to talk to me, and [I thought] 'This is unusual.' "

Kimmel said he went off to a bathroom adjoining the office for privacy, where those executives — including Dana Walden, co-chair of ABC Entertainment — told him, "Listen, we want to take the temperature down. We're concerned about what you're gonna say tonight, and we decided that the best route is to take the show off the air tonight."

After Kimmel pushed back, he said, those on the phone decided to put the decision to a vote, and "I lost the vote."

When he saw his wife a short time later — Molly McNearney, co-head writer and executive producer of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" — she "said I was whiter than Jim Gaffigan."

"Jimmy Kimmel Live!" was pulled "indefinitely" on Sept. 17 following Kimmel's comments on the episode a couple of days earlier about Charlie Kirk supporters, or specifically, the "MAGA gang" who was "desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them" and of trying to "score political points from it." "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" returned to the air on Sept. 23.

Tuesday's episodes of both "Late Show" and "JKL!" (which airs this week from the Brooklyn Academy of Music) represented a historical moment for late-night TV, in which the hosts appeared on each other's show. Colbert first arrived at BAM, while Kimmel turned up at "Late Show's" Ed Sullivan Theater in Manhattan not long after wrapping his Tuesday show. (Yes, you got that right too, because traffic miraculously complied for once.)

On "JKL!" — where Colbert gave his first interview since the mid-July announcement that "Late Show" would wrap in May — he said his manager, Oyster Bay native James Dixon, had called him after he had returned from vacation with the news about CBS' decision. Colbert had been at the Ed Sullivan Theater, where he'd just taped his first episode since coming back, then — returning home a couple hours later — his wife said, "What happened? Did you get canceled?"

At the next night's taping — the one where he dropped the bad-news bomb on his national audience — Colbert said he stumbled twice when attempting to tell the audience what he knew, and the rest of the world (excluding his own staff, which had been informed moments before) was about to find out. Each time he made the attempt, he said, members of the audience (who thought it was a comedy bit) yelled out, "You can do it!"