Jimmy Kimmel Was Scared He Might Go to Prison Over Matt Damon Choking

While sitting down with Variety, the late-night host recalled an untold story he had about his friend Damon, whom he has a well-known, long-running, and playful "feud" with that started in 2005.

"Matt Damon was over at my house one night for dinner. I made pork ribs," Kimmel began.

"He came late, was very hungry, and started eating fast. He started choking on a pork rib," he continued. "It was stuck in his throat for about an hour and a half."

The late-night host said he began to stress about Damon's safety and told the actor's brother, who was also there, that they had to go to a hospital immediately, "because if he dies in my house, I'm going to prison for the rest of my life."

"I will never be able to explain this as anything other than a murder," he said. "We did a lot of YouTube-ing and finally concluded that eating little bits of bread was the way to get that rib to work its way down into his stomach -- and bread saved him."

Kimmel revealed they did attempt the "Heimlich" -- a first-aid method for choking -- however, the bone was "too far down."

The 57-year-old also opened up about the recent cancellation of his fellow late-night host Stephen Colbert's nightly program. The publication asked him to comment on the recent reports that Colbert's show was losing $40 million a year, with Kimmel calling it "beyond non-sensical."

"These alleged insiders who supposedly analyze the budgets of the shows -- I don't know who they are, but I do know they don't know what they're talking about," Kimmel said.

"They seem to only be focused on advertising revenue and have completely forgotten about affiliate fees, which number in the hundreds of millions -- probably in total billions -- and you must allocate a certain percentage of those fees to late-night shows."

He continued: "It really is surprising how little the media seems to know about how the media works. There's just not a snowball's chance in hell that that's anywhere near accurate. Even that -- that's all you need to know.

"Suddenly he's losing $40 million a year? I will tell you, the first 10 years I did the show, they claimed we weren’t making any money -- and we had five times as many viewers on ABC as we do now. Who knows what's true? All I know is they keep paying us -- and that's kind of all you need to know," he said.

CBS announced in July that the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert would be canceled after 33 seasons on the air between Colbert and originator David Letterman. The network insisted the move was purely a "financial decision."