Howard Stern Accuses Jimmy Kimmel of Having ‘Fake’ Friendship With Jimmy Fallon

Howard Stern isn’t convinced that Jimmy Kimmel actually likes Jimmy Fallon and accused the pair of having a “fake” friendship.

Kimmel was a guest on the latest edition of The Howard Stern Show, where the radio host admitted he doesn’t buy the friendship after seeing the two Jimmys interact over the summer.

“I’m gonna be honest,” Stern said, per The Daily Beast. “We went away this summer, and you were kind enough to invite me. And I went there with Jimmy Fallon. It’s this whole thing, ‘Oh, the two Jimmys love each other.’”

He added, “I wish you would just come clean. You don’t enjoy being around Jimmy Fallon. And watching it is too f****** funny.”

Kimmel hit back at the accusations, saying, “Let me tell you a couple of things. First of all, I don’t know how I defend myself in this, but I’m going to attempt to. First of all, I cannot imagine anyone not having fun hanging around with Jimmy Fallon, because Jimmy Fallon, as you know, is a lot of fun.”

Stern agreed with that sentiment, but still wasn’t convinced that the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host likes his late-night rival.

“But secondly, do you think that I have so much free time in my life and so much open space in my life that I would spend—I’m going to dinner with Jimmy Fallon this week, as a matter of fact while I’m here—that I would waste that time maintaining a pretend friendship for no reason whatsoever?” Kimmel asked.

“It’s not pretend. I think you desperately need to prove that, ‘Oh, we can all get along,'” Stern countered.

“To who?!” an incredulous Kimmel replied. “Who am I proving this to?”

“I don’t know, to the world,” Stern responded.

Kimmel said he had no idea Stern was analyzing his friendship with Fallon so closely, noting, “Now that I know you’re watching us, I’m gonna be self-conscious of that.”

Since Fallon took over The Tonight Show in 2013, the two Jimmys have been direct competitors in the 11:35 pm slot. However, the pair have always maintained a public friendship. “We’re very friendly. I know people expect us to dislike each other and say bad things about each other, but that will never happen,” Kimmel told CBS News back in 2013.

Fallon appeared alongside Kimmel and fellow late-night hosts Seth Meyers and John Oliver to mark the end of Stephen Colbert‘s The Late Show back in May. The group of late-night hosts calls itself the Strike Force 5, after launching a podcast together during the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike in 2023.