These two just can’t be in the same room without taking pot shots at each other. But they sure are pretty entertaining while doing it. In fact one of the many reasons that fans were looking forward to Jimmy Kimmel hosting the Oscars was to see what the duo would be upto this time around. And Kimmel did not disappoint. In fact he made sure to get begin early and a day before the awards ceremony happily shared pictures of himself doodling all over Damon’s picture.
Burying the hatchet?
On the awards night Kimmel again made sure to mention Matt Damon a lot in his opening monologue talking about how he would like to bury the hatchet with him after all. “He’s a selfish person. Those of you who have worked with him know this. But Matt did something very unselfish and I want to commend him for it,”he stated and then went on illustrate the point about how Damon had passed on the role of Oscar nominated film Manchester by the Sea. “He handed an Oscar-caliber role over to his friend and made a Chinese pony tail movie instead,” Jimmy joked. “And that movie went on to lose $80 million. Smooth move, dumb a**. See? It’s so easy to reach out and heal.”
But that wasn’t all, Kimmel then went on to do a special look back into Matt’s role in We Bought a Zoo and made sarcastic comments about them. Apart from this , Jimmy also made sure to caution the special tourists who were given a chance to witness the live show, to ‘ignore the jerk’ behind Casey Affleck, who happened to be Damon. He also made sure that when Matt made an appearance on the stage to serve as presenter, the music played him off so that Damon had a hard time getting a word in. Right before the final award of the night was presented for Best Picture, Kimmel took one final jab at Matt when he said, “And now, my favorite part of the night is here. A chance to see Matt Damon lose an Academy Award.” So much for burying the hatchet.
Time up!
But while, fans have been entertained by their long standing feud with each other, not everyone knows or remembers how it all began. In September 2006, when Kimmel was still starting out with his show Jimmy Kimmel Live which was still bereft of any first rate guests, he decided to end the show by randomely apologizing to Matt Damon for bumping him from the episode. “Matt Damon was just the first name that popped into my head. I was trying to think of an A-list star, and somebody we absolutely would not bump if he was on the show,” he said at that time. And it worked. He got laughs for that joke and thereafter kept signing off every show after that the same way.
To make things interesting, Matt Damon then decided to actually make an appearance on the show after all, but Kimmel decided to do a recap of the time he bumped Damon of the show, which went on for so long that when Matt finally made it to the chair, the time was up. As expected Damon was very impressed and went faux crazy. The duo decided to keep at it and in 2007 at the premiere of Oceans Thirteen, Kimmel’s sidekick Guilermo went for it but somehow ran out of time to talk to Damon! In August 2007 Guilermo then went on to star in the spoof version of Bourne Ultimatum.
Matt fights back
Damon finally decided it was time to fight back and in January 2008 appeared alongside Kimmel’s then girlfriend Sarah Silverman where they joked about how they had hooked up behind Kimmel’s back.
Kimmel teaches Matt to act
The duo have since continued to take jabs at each other with some of the most noteworthy ones including a post Oscar special in February 2015 where Kimmel created a sketch called The Kimmel School of Perfect Acting where he teaches a few popular actors how to act, including Matt Damon who was assigned the complicated role of essaying a lamp. The duo even had a special couple therapy session to sought out their differences, which didn’t seem to really work.
When Matt offered
sympathies
In fact the last time that Kimmel had host duties for the Emmy’s in September 2016, Matt Damon showed up on stage eating an apple and mock conveying his sympathies to Kimmel over losing the Emmy for Outstanding Varieties Talk Series to John Oliver ‘s Last Week Tonight. This is so humiliating. I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean you lost and now you’ve got to stand up here for the rest of the night in front of everybody when you probably just want to go home and curl up and cry.”
Well, Jimmy has more than made up for that jab this time around. Matt Damon, it’s your turn now.
