Television writer Molly McNearney, wife of late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, said the U.S. is in a “fragile time for freedom” following her husband’s brief suspension.
McNearney was the keynote speaker at The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment 2025 breakfast gala on Tuesday, where she described Kimmel’s suspension as a moment she realized she had taken freedom of speech for granted.
“I’ve been asked to speak about freedom of speech and I have to be honest, I naively assumed it was a guarantee in this country until Sept. 16, 2025,” McNearney said. “It’s something that I took for granted. Something I thought I’d always have, like my period. Did you guys know that those just stop? They just stop.”
She continued, “And it turns out your freedom in this country can too. We experienced it most recently in 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and we got another taste of it two months ago. I watched a show, co-workers, friends and the man I love be put on ‘indefinite suspension’ after our thin-skinned president asked for his removal and his FCC chair publicly threatened the company we work for. It is a fragile time for freedom.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the Federal Communications Commission and the White House for comment.
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Kimmel’s show was briefly suspended by ABC and its parent company Disney in September after he accused conservatives of reaching “new lows” in trying to pin a left-wing ideology on Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin Tyler Robinson, even though prosecutors reaffirmed those ties in an earlier indictment.
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said.
Kimmel’s show returned less than one week later after backlash from liberal commentators and celebrities.
McNearney described last month on the “We Can Do Hard Things” podcast how she felt “angry all the time” towards family members who voted for President Donald Trump after what happened to her husband.
“It hurts me so much because of the personal relationship I now have, where my husband is out there fighting this man, and to me, them voting for Trump is them not voting for my husband and me and our family. And I unfortunately have kind of lost relationships with people in my family because of it,” McNearney said.
