Jimmy Kimmel was only a few lines into his monologue on the opening night of his Brooklyn run when a man in a Boston Red Sox cap began shouting from the audience. Security escorted him out. The heckler was Matt Damon.
The actor, 55, crashed the Monday, Sept. 28, 2026, episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” as Kimmel, 58, brought the show east for a week of broadcasts in Brooklyn, N.Y. The two have spent two decades maintaining a mock rivalry on the air, and Damon chose baseball as his weapon.
A Heckler in a Red Sox Cap
“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. He had just noted that the series would start in the Bronx when Damon interrupted from his seat, cheering for his home team: “Go Sox! Go Sox!”
“You, the loser in the Red Sox cap, what is your name?” Kimmel asked.
“You know my name,” Damon answered.
“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,” Kimmel said. “Security, please remove this ‘Masshole’ from the theater.”
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 replied, as Joann Kimmel, the host’s mother, stood up beside him. “I’m also here with your sister,” he added, 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 Joann 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!”
With the theater cleared of its most famous Red Sox fan, Kimmel turned back to the crowd. “You should all probably get tested for HPV (Human papillomavirus),” he told them.
How the Feud Began in 2005
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.
The running gag has outlasted nearly everything else about the program, which launched in 2003 on ABC. Kimmel has said the early days of the show were “murderously difficult,” recalling that most publicists were wary of him and that he leaned on a small circle of famous friends to fill the guest chair. He has since hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards twice, in 2012 and again in 2016, along with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. At the 68th Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016, which he hosted, “The People v. O.J. Simpson” dominated the night.
A Truce That Did Not Last
In March 2023, the two men attempted peace, in a detente brokered by Ben Affleck, Damon’s closest friend. The two actors met as kids growing up in Boston, and a source said Damon deflected Jennifer Lopez’s attempts to discuss Affleck during a conversation at the premiere of their film “Unstoppable,” which opened the Toronto International Film Festival slate on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024.
The truce held for about a year. 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, a father of four, has never needed an invitation to participate. Kimmel, for his part, has described his professional rivalries in far milder terms than his on-air persona suggests, telling IndieWire in 2016 that late-night hosts chase the same bookings and little else. That restraint did not survive contact with a Red Sox cap in Brooklyn.