Rick Rosner On, 10: Jimmy Kimmel’s Intelligence, Empathy, and Fact-Checking
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Personal SubStack
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/07/06
Scott Douglas Jacobsen asks Rick Rosner about his greatest year and Jimmy Kimmel’s virtues. Rosner reflects on career success, family, and his undeveloped theory of the universe before praising Kimmel as smart, empathetic, curious, socially generous, and factually rigorous. He highlights Kimmel’s response to tragedy, his son’s heart surgery, his interviewing skill, and his insistence that jokes may bend reality, but factual setups should remain accurate.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What single year would you count as your greatest year?
Rick Rosner: What single year as my greatest year? I do not know. That is a good question. I was at Kimmel. I was pretty successful at Kimmel for a long time. I have been married to Carole for a very long time, and we seem mostly well suited to each other. I have a kid. I have this theory of the universe that I have failed to develop as thoroughly as I should. But I could argue that it was kind of cool to come up with that. I do not know. Maybe my greatest year is still in the future. Maybe I can still do something awesome.
Jacobsen: What are the virtues of Kimmel?
Rosner: Of what?
Jacobsen: Kimmel.
Rosner: He is a mensch. He is a decent guy. He is wildly smart. I think people mostly realize it now, but where he came from, radio, morning zoo radio, and then The Man Show, hid his smartness for a long time.
He is genuinely interested in people, especially people who do weird stuff. Other talk-show hosts have been criticized for not being the best interviewers. Jimmy is a really good interviewer because he is genuinely interested in people.
My natural tendency, not that I am a talk-show host, is to not be around people if I do not have to be. Kimmel, in his private life, has built places where a bunch of people can gather and hang out with each other, because he likes that shit.
He is known for being an easy crier, but not because he is a baby. It is because he feels genuine sympathy and empathy for people.
When the Las Vegas shooting happened, when that gunman shot hundreds of people at a concert from his window at the Mandalay Bay, that was one of Jimmy’s turning points. He got angry on the air about what had been done to his hometown.
When his kid needed heart surgery, Jimmy realized that he was in such a fortunate position compared to a lot of families whose kids need care. His empathy rose to the surface.
He is quick, mentally quick. There you go. There is a bunch of stuff.
One more thing: I think he has a pretty realistic and informed view of the world. The right wing likes to criticize famous people as out-of-touch elites. Maybe that is true for some people, but famous people, especially if one of the reasons they became famous is that they are smart, are in a position to be pretty well informed about the world. They have the time, the wherewithal, and the curiosity to develop a decently informed view of things.
You hear stories about celebrities who are dicks, or actors who can be dickish. To me, that seems counterproductive. If you are trying to develop your tool as an actor, you need to be able to inhabit emotions convincingly. Why would you cut yourself off from seeing how people work by being a fucking cunt?
So I would say that a lot of the most successful people in entertainment are attuned. They try to be in the world. I do not know if Jimmy could tell you how much a gallon of milk costs, but there is a lot of stuff he can tell you.
It was a little frustrating working for him because he could pull up the facts faster than anybody else. The show began production in 2002, before Google was what it became, but when you were pitching stuff to him, he would sit there with a laptop and pull up the pertinent information faster than anyone. He could fact-check you lickety-split.
In fact, he places great emphasis on the factual accuracy of what is presented on the show. He does not like to bullshit people, except for a joke. If it is the setup of a joke, then it should be factually accurate.
If it is a prank or a punchline, then, yeah, you can depart a little bit from reality for comedic purposes. He always hated being wrong about something, or me being wrong about something. So I would pitch a lot of facts, and sometimes I was wrong, and that was not loved.
Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Rick.
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