As the host of next year's Oscars, Jimmy Kimmel's been tasked with delivering a funny monologue — but he also plans to tackle serious issues. Like, for instance, the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
Kimmel recently told Vulture that he wasn't going to shy aware from the issue — or politics in general, for that matter.
"I have no interest in protecting Harvey Weinstein. I couldn’t care less about Harvey Weinstein. Hopefully, he will get what he deserves and we’ll all move on with our lives," he said. "I definitely think it will make the guys who do this kind of thing think twice. But it’s silly to point at Hollywood specifically. Hollywood’s not so different than any other business."
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When asked specifically if he'd discuss Weinstein at the Oscars, he said, "I probably will. It’s not really a laughing matter. There’ll be a lot of people in that room who maybe have been through experiences with him, and that’s not something I want them to relive on the night they get their Oscar."
Kimmel was criticized for not addressing the Weinstein scandal on his show, which he said was largely because he had already written it by the time the news broke. One of his critics was Donald Trump, Jr., who tweeted at him, "Thoughts on Harvey Weinstein?" Kimmel replied by sharing Donald Trump's Access Hollywood video.
"There’s definitely been a shift in my feeling about the country over the last year or so. I feel frustrated," he told Vulture. "I don’t know — maybe a lot of it is media hysteria, but I go to bed worried and I wake up worried, and I honestly don’t know if things are going to be okay. I worry that we’re going to look back at Donald Trump almost fondly because someone worse will come after him."
This concern for the state of the country has made his work more political recently, he explained. "I think I’ve alienated more people than I’ve brought onboard. But what I thought was important was telling the truth."