The last few weeks have been a doozy in late-night television, with Jimmy Kimmel being taken off the air for comments he made about the murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. This led to backlash from Kimmel's fellow late-night hosts and a larger discussion about censorship in media, especially after President Donald Trump called for the removal of late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. But Kimmel — who was reinstated last week — is not the first late-night host to generate controversy, or attention from the FCC. Here are 24 more times late-night hosts came under fire for remarks made on their shows.
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Another comedian who raised FCC concerns? Stephen Colbert, and for a far more risqué comment. In 2017, he said of Trump, “You talk like a sign language gorilla who got hit in the head,” adding, “In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's cock holster.” The FCC reviewed complaints from viewers, but considering the late-night airtime and the nature of the joke (which fell short of “obscene”), as well as the fact that the word “cock” was bleeped out, they “concluded that there was nothing actionable.”
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When former conservative lawmaker Michele Bachmann appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, her walk-on music raised eyebrows, as it contained a snippet of “Lyin' Ass Bitch.” The band's drummer, Questlove, later apologized (well…kind of), saying, “The performance was a tongue-in-cheek and spur of the moment decision. The show was not aware of it and I feel bad if her feelings were hurt. That was not my intention.” Fallon himself, along with NBC, also apologized.
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But one of Jimmy Fallon's most controversial moments came when he had then-presidential candidate Donald Trump on the show. Fallon is arguably the least political and most softball of the late-night hosts, and his friendly rapport with Trump, despite his vile rhetoric, caused controversy with viewers…especially after Fallon ruffled Trump's hair. Fans felt this “normalized” Trump as if he were any other guest.
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Trevor Noah similarly had Tomi Lahren on The Daily Show in a move that some similarly felt normalized her views and offered her a space to share them, even if it was through a debate. Considering Lahren has been a vocal critic of prominent Black figures from Obama to Beyoncé and of social movements like Black Lives Matter (she compared it to the KKK) and feminism, this felt like a betrayal to many viewers, especially considering some felt as if Lahren did not come across as terribly as they'd expected.
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Arsenio Hall came under fire for having controversial comedian Andrew Dice Clay on the show multiple times. Clay was best known for misogynistic, racist, and anti-gay humor, and he had already been banned from MTV for a disastrous VMA set when he appeared on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1990. One member of Hall's band, keyboardist Starr Parodi, actually refused to perform during the show. Hall did not go easy on Clay — who actually cried during the broadcast as he spoke about believing in himself — but his choice to spotlight him multiple times did not sit well with everyone.
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In fact, one of Clay's appearances caused the LGBTQ activist group Queer Nation to protest. As audience members, they questioned Hall at the beginning of the show, asking why he didn't have more gay guests, like Harvey Fierstein or Gus Van Sant. Hall entered the audience to heatedly engage, pointing out that he'd had Elton John on before and that this was his show to do with what he wanted. Coming back to the stage, he called the interruptors “rude,” adding, “The one thing that I would not do is discriminate against a guest because of their sexual preference. To be honest with you, there are a lot of gay guests on this show, but it ain't none of your damn business that they're gay.”
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But perhaps the most controversial guest on a late-night show was Charles Manson. Tom Snyder interviewed him from prison while hosting The Tomorrow Show in a choice the Washington Post called “appalling” and “deplorable” (though they praised the interview itself). Manson rambled through the interview, and Snyder did not get the confessions he hoped for, but it certainly made for interesting television.
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Bill Maher, a more conservative host than others on this list, frequently came under fire for comments made on his shows, Politically Incorrect and Real Time with Bill Maher. For example, he once jokingly compared pop star Zayn Malik to Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. In a segment about Malik's departure from One Direction, he said, “And where were you during the Boston marathon?” showing a photo of Malik alongside Tsarnaev. Maher was quickly accused of Islamophobia.
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He also equated dogs to “retarded children” in a 2001 episode of Politically Incorrect, calling them “pretty much the same thing.” After guest Cynthia Garrett pointed out that she has a nephew with a disability that she does not see as a “little dog,” Maher replied, “Well, maybe you should.” Guest Sarah Ferguson rebuked the use of the r-slur, saying, “They are regular people. They have a heart and a soul.” Maher said, “They have a heart and a soul and a brain that's retarded. That's a fact, people!”
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This isn't a specific moment, but James Corden came under backlash for his recurring segment, “Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts,” where guests must answer a personal question or eat one of the laid-out “unappetizing” dishes. Fun, right? Except that many of the dishes in question are Asian delicacies. After backlash, Corden pledged to remove such dishes. “The next time we do that bit, we absolutely won't involve or use any of those foods,” Corden said. “Our show is a show about joy and light and love. We don't want to make a show to upset anybody.”
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He also came under fire for repeatedly blocking traffic during his “Crosswalk the Musical” segments, especially after footage from Corden filming the segment promoting Cinderella went viral on social media. Camila Cabello, who participated in the clip, claimed, “We basically did it during the red lights.” Still, fans expressed annoyance when imagining what it might be like if they were stuck behind Corden and friends.
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In one last example regarding Corden, he generated controversy for his behavior at the New York restaurant Balthazar. The restaurant's owner, Keith McNally, called him an “abusive customer” and said he screamed at a server. McNally actually banned him from the restaurant, though this was lifted after Corden “apologized profusely” after the incident blew up. Corden addressed the incident on his show, but this in itself caused controversy, as some felt he only apologized due to the backlash, especially since he'd previously claimed he had done “nothing wrong.”
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I still can't get over the moment when David Letterman admitted to having had sex with female staffers on his show (while being married)…on-air. In 2009, he found a box in his car with a letter that said, “I know you do some terrible things,” and that the writer was working on a screenplay about Letterman. “He's going to take all this terrible stuff he knows about my life and put it in a movie unless I give him some money,” Letterman later said the letter revealed. He was actually able to find out the identity of the blackmailer with the help of the Manhattan district attorney's office. CBS producer Robert J. “Joe” Halderman was arrested, and that very same night, Letterman went on his show and admitted, “Yes, I have had sex with women on my show.”
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This one is more bizarre than controversial, but nonetheless got people talking. In 2009, Joaquin Phoenix's appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman became infamous due to Phoenix's strange behavior. He was combative and nonresponsive for the whole interview, and overall did not act like himself. It turned out that this was for a reason; he was playing a character from his I'm Still Here mockumentary. Still, fans had no warning, and the bizarre interview is still making people uncomfortable today.
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Madonna also proved to be a controversial guest on Letterman's show. In fact, viewers complained to the FCC after Madonna used the f-word 14 times in the interview, gave her underwear to Letterman (and asked him to smell them), made multiple sexual references and innuendos, and refused to leave the set. The interview was uncomfortable at best and lives on in infamy today.
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Another controversial guest appearance concerns Joan Rivers, but it wasn't her guest who caused controversy — it was Rivers herself. Rivers did end up with her own late-night show, but this actually occurred when she was appearing on The Tonight Show, which was then hosted by Johnny Carson. During a 1985 episode with Oprah Winfrey as the guest, Rivers told Winfrey that she needed to lose 15 pounds by the time she next appeared on the show. This wasn't as controversial as it should've been at the time, but when it resurfaced last year after Oprah spoke to the press about it, fans were quick to note how cruel Rivers was.
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Another interview that is more controversial in retrospect than it was at the time is when David Letterman brought up rehab while interviewing Lindsay Lohan, making her clearly uncomfortable. He even made Lohan cry with his repeated invasive questions and comments.
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Let's get back into offensive jokes by late-night hosts. Chelsea Handler made a comment on her show, Chelsea Lately, that some thought went too far. One concerned Amy Winehouse, who had recently appeared to be drunk while performing in Serbia. “I can't believe they even allow Serbians to go to concerts. I didn't even know that was going on over there,” Handler said. Referring to Serbia's Minister of Defence's comment that Winehouse's performance “was a shame and a huge disappointment,” Handler replied, “Well, so is your country.” This comment predictably upset Serbian people, who created a Facebook page calling for a boycott of Handler's show.
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Handler also made waves with a skit mocking ASL interpreter Lydia Callis, who was translating for then-New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg as he spoke about Hurricane Sandy. The sketch, which featured the interpreter making crude, caricaturized gestures, was called a “totally offensive mockery of American Sign Language” by the National Association of the Deaf, and Callis herself called it “disgusting and offensive,” likening it to making fun of any other disability.
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Samantha Bee came under fire for a “Nazi Hair” joke from her show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. In the clip, correspondent Michael Rubens mocked men at the Conservative Political Action Conference, including Kyle Coddington, for their lack of hair. Coddington had stage 4 brain cancer.
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Bee also called Ivanka Trump a “feckless [c-word]” for not standing up to her father in a segment where Bee spoke about Trump's immigration policy of separating families at the border. Even Ivanka's critics took issue with the word, which is used to demean women. Bee later apologized, calling her comment “inappropriate and inexcusable.” However, she made it clear she wasn't apologizing to those on the right — and that her main regret was that the drama overshadowed her original point.
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One particular Trevor Noah joke that caused controversy was his joke about France's football team. “Africa won the World Cup,” he said on The Daily Show. “I get it; they have to say it’s the French team. But look at those guys. You don’t get that tan by hanging out in the south of France, my friends. Basically, if you don't understand, France is Africa's backup team. Once Senegal and Nigeria got knocked out, that's who we root for.” France's ambassador to the US, Gérard Araud, took issue with this. “Nothing could be less true,” he said of Noah's comments. “As many players already stated, their parents may have come from another country, but only two were born outside of France. The rich and various backgrounds of these players is a reflection of French diversity.”
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Conan O'Brien upset some fans in a segment where he tried — and failed — to get into the uber-chic Berlin club Berghain. DJ Black Madonna summed up the backlash when she criticized the clip: “Turning a space like this into a comedy spectacle for a largely straight American audience with no context other than the club being private and gay is a problem,” she said. “Conan is a comedian that millions of people watch nightly in a country on the verge of having Donald Trump for a president. That context matters.” Some fans were in agreement, while others found it harmless, arguing the club had evolved and become more mainstream.
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And finally, let's end with one of the biggest controversies in late-night TV: when Conan O'Brien was essentially ousted from NBC's The Tonight Show in favor of Jay Leno. O'Brien had been the host of Late Night for many years when he finally took over the highly coveted earlier time slot (11:30, as opposed to Late Night‘s 12:30) of The Tonight Show in 2009, as promised by the network. Jay Leno, who had hosted The Tonight Show until Conan took over, was moved to a 10 p.m. slot. But low ratings caused the network to shift gears, attempting to move Leno back to 11:30, with Conan at midnight, and Late Night — which Jimmy Fallon hosted at the time — to 1 a.m. Conan publicly fired back at the network and refused the deal.
Conan made multiple digs at NBC and Leno with his remaining eight episodes, joking, “Hosting The Tonight Show has been the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for me. … You can do anything you want in life. Yeah, yeah…unless Jay Leno wants to do it, too.” Fellow comics and late-night hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and David Letterman weighed in on the debacle, mocking Leno, who hosted the show for four years before Jimmy Fallon took over. Conan went to TBS, where he had his own show until 2021.
