Disclosure: This post is part of an all expenses paid press trip to Los Angeles provided by Disney.  All thoughts and opinions are 100% my own.  All giggles and squeals will also belong to me while attending these events in LA!

I don’t make it a habit of taking pictures with other men.  But my husband is totally fine with this one!  In case you aren’t sure, that picture is a selfie I took with Jimmy Kimmel last week while in LA for a media event.   Yes you read that right, I took a selfie with Jimmy Kimmel.  This mom from Rhode Island that never set out to be any kind of writer, knows exactly how lucky she is and she doesn’t take not even one minute of it for granted.  Believe me.  I do know how much my blog has blessed me and if you have been following along with my trip to LA last week, then you know what a great time I had…. and there is still more to come!

So why the picture with Jimmy Kimmel?  Last Monday night, myself and 24 other bloggers were invited to a taping of Jimmy Kimmel live.  While there we had the chance to meet with Executive Producer Jill Leiderman, as well as co-head writer Molly McNearney and Jimmy’s trusty security guard Guillermo, a set tour and a surprise appearance by Jimmy Kimmel.  Yes, that was a very nice surprise!

I was pretty excited about this because out of all the late night guys, Jimmy is my favorite.  However, it’s not like I really watch much late night TV.  I used to watch more when I was younger and when my husband and I were first married, we watched The Man Show together almost every night, which starred Jimmy and Adam Carolla!  I really miss that show.  So needless to say, I love Jimmy!  So this was a fun opportunity.

What I was looking forward to the most, besides the chance to meet Jimmy, was getting a glimpse of what happens behind the scenes.  And that’s exactly what we got!

That night Julia Roberts and Sally Field were set to appear as guests.  No, we didn’t get to meet them. Sad I know but I’m okay with that even though they are two of my favorite actresses – they really are amazing, aren’t they?  But I did know we were in for a good show.

Meeting Executive Producer Jill Leiderman and Molly McNearney

Executive Producer Jill Leiderman and co-head writer Molly McNearney both stopped by our VIP area to give us an idea how things work at Jimmy Kimmel Live.  I honestly never gave it much thought but it’s a pretty interesting process that they go through day after day.  Since each show is taped live that day (a little earlier than it’s aired), they have new and fresh content every day.  Jill and Molly gave us a brief descriptions of the days on Kimmel.   There are 13 writers on the team for Jimmy Kimmel plus Jimmy himself.  Each morning the writers read the headlines for the day (or from the night before), watch the news, go online to see what people are talking about and anywhere they can find what’s going on that day.  They then write their bit or joke for Jimmy to review for the show.  By the afternoon Jimmy selects what he wants to use for the show and then they work on setting up the show script.  Since there are a lot of writers, lots of their daily ideas get tossed aside.  But that’s okay because if your bit or joke doesn’t get selected today, it may get selected tomorrow.  And Molly pointed out that if your bit or joke does get picked and it doesn’t go over as well as they hoped, that’s okay because the next day is a new day, with new content and they just do it all over again.

Jill Leiderman, Executive Producer
Photo Credit: ABC/Randy Holmes

I imagine it must be cool to be one of the writers and have what you wrote get picked.  And to then hear it later that day live.  Perhaps after a while it would get boring, I don’t know but I’d love it if Jimmy picked something I wrote on my blog and talked about it on air.  Unless he was making a joke then maybe I wouldn’t!

Both Jill and Molly told us that they LOVE working there and feel like they have dream jobs.  It pretty much sounds like they do.  I mean, who wouldn’t want a job that has a clean slate each day to fix any mistakes or make it better than the day before?  It’s like you get a do-over every day and that’s okay!  Not to mention Jimmy is a really nice guy.  And I know this because I met him and he’s super nice.   Trust me on that one.  😉

Photo Credit: @MollyMcNearney

And if you are a regular viewer of Jimmy Kimmel Live, the you probably love mean tweets as much as I do.  Well Molly is the one who came up with that and right before she came to meet with us, she did a meat tweet with Julia Roberts.  I can’t even imagine who would say anything mean about Julia!  And Molly has another great position there besides co-head writer.   She has been with the show for 10 years (and thankful for every one of those years!) and is married to Jimmy Kimmel for almost one year now.  Plus they have a baby on the way.  And can I just say she is the cutest looking pregnant women ever!!!

It was so great to speak with both of them and hear about how they run the show.  And we really could tell they love their job.  And that makes them so much better at it.

Sally Field and Julia Roberts in the first ever “Curse Off”

On my flight to LA, I watched August: Osage County which starred Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep.  I am fans of both of them and wanted to see this movie and figured this was the best time to do it since I had such a long flight from RI to LA.  Julia did an amazing job with her character but one thing that caught me off guard was how much Julia Roberts tossed around the F bomb in that movie.  Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t offended at all but I don’t think I have ever heard her swear like that.  But she did a great job…. it was just very out of character for her.

So imagine my surprise when I find out that her and Sally Field were going to have a Curse Off on Kimmel that night.  At first I thought perhaps it was a play on words and they’d be doing something other than swear.  Well, no that wasn’t it they were seriously going to come up with bad words until one of them ran out.  Again, this wasn’t going to offend me at all.

Photo courtesy of ABC.

The best part is we got to see it uncensored so we know exactly what they said and let me tell you, they did an awesome job.  They came up with some GREAT (or BAD) words and it was probably the most laughs I’ve had in a VERY Long Time.  It was amazing to watch without the bleeps and it’s one part of the trip I loved and will remember forever.  I know that sounds weird, but it was all for comedy and just plain ole hilarious!  Did you see it?

If you didn’t see it you can see it below.  The words are bleeped out but it’s still pretty hilarious.  I like how eager Sally was and how nervous Julia was to get the rules down right.

And yes, I have a whole new respect for Sally Field…. she is the bomb!!!

Meeting Jimmy’s trusty security guard Guillermo

Guillermo doesn’t have a huge part of Jimmy’s show but I think it would be lacking something without him.  Every talk show hosts needs a little sidekick to bounce things off of and Guillermo does a great job.  We were there on Cinco de Mayo so Guillermo did shots with Jimmy and Sally Field on set during the show.  It was pretty funny.

Before the band played Guillermo came out to meet us and he shook each and every one of our hands, which I thought was so sweet!  He didn’t stick around for long as the band was about to play but I thought that was great he came to say hi to us!

Set tour and a surprise appearance by Jimmy Kimmel

After the show was over we were escorted down to the studio, which was pretty cool!  The first thing I tweeted out was a picture of the chairs that Julia Roberts and Sally Field were just sitting in.  It was cool to know they were just there even though we didn’t see them.

I’m learning to get myself in the picture of things like this so I can remember I was there.  So I guess you could call this a selfie!  lol   Within moments of being there all of a sudden we here a “Hello” and I turn around and there is Jimmy Kimmel – about 5 feet away from me.  And my first thought was “OMG he’s so handsome!”.

He thanks us for being there, asked us if we enjoyed the show, told us something about what we do being so cool I think, hard to remember I was in a bit of a shock to see him and then he began shaking our hands and guess whose hand he grabbed first?  MINE!!!!  Yes, I will claim that for the rest of my life.

After a few minutes his assistant asked him if he wanted to take a group picture with us and he said instead he’d like to take individual photos.  He made all 25 of us VERY happy. You can tell he obviously likes his fans.  So while we all sat down to take a picture with him, he also let us take selfies!!! How cool is that.

Here is a picture of him and I taking our selfie….

Yes that is his hand on my back!!!!  And here is the picture they took of us together…

He was such a nice guy and I’m so happy to have had the experience to speak with his staff, met him, watch the show while it was being taped and visit the set.

Jimmy Kimmel Live is on ABC every night.  Check your local listings for times.  If you’ve never seen the show, DVR  it once to check out.  He’s a funny guy and so is his team of writers.  You’ll laugh, trust me!