Jimmy Kimmel Apologizes To Quinta Brunson For Emmys Gag

Jimmy Kimmel has made a formal apology to Quinta Brunson for a bit he performed at the 2022 Emmys last weekend. It wasn’t the craziest thing that’s happened at an awards show in recent memory, but a lot of people still found the joke to be in bad taste. Kimmel and Will Arnett were presenting the award for Best Writing In A Comedy Series.

Arnett dragged Kimmel onto the stage while claiming that he had too many margaritas after losing in his own category earlier in the evening. While the winner (Brunson) was announced and the award was presented to her, Kimmel continued his bit, lying on stage as if he was unconscious. As a result, Brunson had to step over him and even told him at one point to wake up. All the while, her 45-second speech clock was ticking, meaning she didn’t get the proper amount of time to give thanks.

People quickly took notice and thought it was a disrespectful gesture towards Brunson. Apparently, Brunson wasn’t too upset by the whole thing, but people on social media and some news sources were. Last night, on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Kimmel made a formal apology to Brunson. He wrote the whole thing off as a “dumb comedy bit” and followed up to say:

I’m sorry I did do that, actually. And also, the last thing I would ever want to do was upset you because I think so much of you. And I think you know that — I hope you know that.

She accepted the apology, saying: “It is very kind of you to say that I had a great night.”

A bit earlier in the show, Brunson hit Jimmy with a little bit of payback by popping in during his opening monologue to thank some people she didn’t have the time to thank earlier. She approached him saying: “You know how, when you win an Emmy, you only have 45 seconds to do an acceptance speech, which is not that much time? And then you get less time because someone does a dumb comedy bit that goes on a bit too long.”