On this episode of “Sidequest,” listen to podcast hosts Hela Khalil and Tilly Jones talk about their experience attending a “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” taping.

Hela Khalil: Welcome to Sidequest, a miniseries by Daily Bruin Podcasts where we send Podcast contributors on adventures that are unique to Los Angeles. In each episode, the contributors come to the studio to tell us about their experiences, funny stories and reviews. This is “Sidequest.”

Tilly Jones: What’s more Hollywood than television? And what’s more Hollywood than being part of a live studio audience for television? If you grew up in the U.S., Jimmy Kimmel is probably a household name for you – considered one of the greats of late night television. He’s been hosting his own show since 2003, hosted the Oscars four times and is buddies with countless A-list celebrities. Kimmel has had a whirlwind of six months: publicly feuding with the president of the United States, getting his show suspended and then getting his show reinstated a week later. After his comeback, we made it our mission to join the audience for a live taping of the Jimmy Kimmel show and, to our avail, it worked! Hela and I were driving through Hollywood doing our Celebrity Tours episode, and we drove past the Jimmy Kimmel studio, and, immediately, we realized this would be a great episode for another side quest, and we wanted to look into how you could possibly get tickets.

HK: After a Google search, I found out you can request free Jimmy Kimmel tickets through this website called 1iota.com – I think it’s pronounced? You essentially put your name and your information in, how many guests you’d like to bring, and then they ask you a prompt. They ask you, “Why do you want to see Jimmy Kimmel?” I know a lot of people are actively trying to get these tickets, so I wanted to make as strong of a case for us as possible. I basically wrote a mini essay about how Tilly and I are UCLA seniors who want to see the show to complete our bucket list before we graduate, and we talked about, in a world of very dark, sad news, how we appreciate Kimmel’s authentic and positive form of entertainment. Blah, blah, blah. It was written very quickly at an ungodly hour of the night, and I submitted it. Didn’t really think much of it, but woke up the next day, and, within a few hours, we had gotten the notification we were approved to get tickets for the following Tuesday. That was very exciting.

TJ: Because getting these tickets was super, super last minute, I had really no idea what to expect, and everything was sent directly to Hela. So about 20 minutes before I picked her up for the show, I realized I had no idea if there was a dress code, if there was anything we couldn’t bring, so I immediately texted her to give me all of the information.

HK: Yes. Luckily, they had sent me, along with the tickets, a very, very long instruction manual about how exactly to get there, what to do or where to go when we got there, and then a pretty strict dress code. For example, we couldn’t wear any white shirts. We couldn’t wear any patterns or logoed clothing, nothing with a band or an image of a person on it. It’s television, I get it. I tell Tilly all this, I said, make sure to not wear a white shirt – and you can tell the rest.

TJ: I pick Hela up, and I, it maybe took me 10 minutes into this drive, I look over and she is wearing a white t-shirt. When I say, as we were getting ready, she texted me, “Don’t wear a white t-shirt or a logo.” So I was like, “OK,” but meanwhile, Hela was putting on a white t-shirt. It all ended up okay, but it was really insane.

HK: Yeah, luckily, I had brought a jacket that I just kept over and zipped up because I was scared I was going to get kicked out of the show for literally wearing a white shirt.

TJ: I also don’t fully understand why you can’t wear a white shirt.

HK: I have no idea.

TJ: In hindsight, after this whole journey seeing what the audience looks like on TV, you can’t see anything that you’re wearing, so it does not matter.

HK: No, seriously. The Jimmy Kimmel show actually taped from the El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, heart of the Walk of Fame, right across from the Chinese Theatre. If you listen to our last episode, you are familiar with our brief experience there. But we were finally getting down and walking around, and it was very exciting. We ended up parking the car, getting out.

TJ: As we walked down Hollywood Boulevard – again, our last episode, we were entirely in the car, but this time we were walking around – we were seeing the sights. The second we left where we had parked, I turn, and this guy has a crate with two massive snakes in it, and I think I stepped maybe three inches away from them, and it really – it spooked me in the moment. So it was very over-stimulating from the get-go.

HK: Walking down Hollywood Boulevard – it was definitely terrifying. About five seconds after the snakes, there was an unserious Michael Jackson impersonator. He was just blasting Michael’s music through speakers but didn’t seem very interested in it.

TJ: He wasn’t even dancing or lip syncing. He was literally just sitting there as the song played in front of him.

HK: But, he was dressed like him, so he looked like him. It was funny.

TJ: After we walked down Hollywood Boulevard, saw all the stars on the sidewalk, we approached the theater and gave them our tickets, and we were immediately filed into this queue with all the other people who were waiting who had premium tickets – because we had premium tickets. We realized that we were probably going to be waiting for 45 minutes to an hour to get in the theater. So, Hela immediately turned to the people next to us and was like, “Have you guys been here before?” And we ended up having this really long conversation with this couple from Minnesota.

HK: They were so sweet. They were an older couple, and they were visiting their son who has been living here for a few months, they said. They were here to visit him, and they had literally gone to a taping of “Jeopardy” that morning. They were doing it all, seeing all the shows. I wanted to talk to them because I was curious what the demographic was like at the show. What kinds of people were getting tickets? I assumed most of them were tourists, and from what it seemed like, a lot of them weren’t from LA. It seemed like people were visiting from out of the country. I know there were. There was a Canadian couple that Jimmy was talking to in the audience, which was cool. After about, I would say, 45 minutes waiting in the queue, we got wristbanded, and then we had our phones locked up. It was basically the start of a time-warp because we didn’t have watches, phones, we didn’t know what time it was – but it was an awesome experience.

TJ: The part of the beauty of being unplugged was that we could just have these – we got to talk to this random Minnesota couple, and we weren’t distracted by our screens. It was kind of beautiful, honestly.

HK: Yeah, I agree.

TJ: After about an hour when we were standing in line, phones locked up, waiting, we got shuffled into this sketchy alley in the back, and we really thought, “Oh, maybe we’re going into the studio.” We were so excited. Then all we were waiting, and it was just another alley that was a little bit darker and dirtier. But after that wait, which was a lot shorter than the other, we entered the studio. Up on the walls you see pictures of Kimmel with all the celebrities that come on the show. I think we saw Jake Gyllenhaal and Snoop Dogg

HK: Yeah, Cardi B.

TJ: Cardi B, yeah.

HK: Was in one of them.

TJ: A lot of, and Ellen DeGeneres, maybe?

HK: I think so.

TJ: Yeah, there was a lot of famous people. We felt the LA energy.

HK: Yeah, we walked down this hallway and we turned the corner, and both Tilly and I kind of looked at each other because we were like, “Wow, this studio is actually significantly smaller than I would have expected.”

TJ: It’s tiny.

HK: Which honestly made me feel better, because that means the audience isn’t very big and not very many people get tickets. So I was like, “Let’s go,” but we were among the last people in the theater, and we were shuffled to the very back row in the farthest possible corner from the cameras. They just, they weren’t ready for our beauty.

TJ: They really said, “We do not want to see these two on camera.” But despite the fact that we were in the way back, it was so small we still had a really great view. We were maybe 30 feet from him, 50 feet?

HK: Yeah, I could almost touch him, if I really tried.

TJ: If we really wanted to, yeah. Once we got the whole audience set up and we had been sitting in the studio for maybe five to 10 minutes, the staff of the Jimmy Kimmel show started to rally the troops and get the crowd hyped up and try to explain to us what was going to happen. This one guy walks in, and he just has the most insane aura of anyone we’ve ever seen in our lives. The entire audience was just immediately gripped by him. He had them wrapped around his finger, and he was just like joshing around making jokes about Jimmy himself. He was self-deprecating. He was making fun of the audience. It was just so quick to realize, like, this man does this every day. He has the craziest power trip of his life, and he’s insanely good at what he does. And he revealed his name was Link, which was kind of insane.

HK: It just made sense.

TJ: It was the cherry on top of just his overall vibe. I was, immediately, just obsessed with him and his energy.

HK: Yeah, this guy seriously made the audience lock in. He explained exactly what the show needed to put on a good just show for television. He explained that we should laugh at all of Jimmy’s jokes, even if we didn’t necessarily understand them. I get it. He explained when we should stand-up and applause versus when we should be sitting down. It was definitely very methodical. It’s television – I didn’t expect it all to be natural, but it did seem a little more scripted/planned than I might have thought. Wow, this guy had swag. Me and Tilly were – we were fangirling about him.

TJ: More than Kimmel.

HK: More than Jimmy. After, when we were leaving the studio, we walked past him. We got to say thank you to him, and we both just looked at each other and freaked out a little bit, but he was the real star of the show, I think. Link was also kind of my savior because, at this point in waiting, I had to go to the bathroom so badly, and he let the audience go into the bathroom in sections, and Tilly stayed back in the seats, and I ended up walking to the bathroom. And who do I walk past – nobody but Guillermo (Rodriguez). If you don’t know Guillermo, he started out, I believe, as Jimmy Kimmel’s security guard and grew into a character and a well-known figure of the show himself. He goes to the Oscars. He takes shots with the stars on the red carpet. He’s an icon. He was behind a rope taking pictures with groups of people, so, unfortunately, didn’t get to talk to him or take a picture with him. But I was a bit starstruck.

TJ: And the other thing we forgot to mention was that the Minnesota couple had been to the Kimmel show the night before, and the one thing that they made sure to tell us had happened is that the mom got to fist bump Guillermo. So if that says anything about his power in that show, that does.

After Hela goes to the bathroom, everyone’s back in their seats. Link gives one final speech about what’s about to happen in the filming, and then he introduces who he described as one of Jimmy’s best friends. We do not have that confirmed, and we really did not know what to expect. And then this guy comes out. His name was Don (Barris). He was a stand-up comedian, and he was maybe more of a character than Link was. He was this bald guy – no hate – but he was bald, and he had the longest mustache in possibly the world. He was giving clown energy, but not in a mean way. In like, a real way. Like he would be a clown for parties and stuff.

So he introduced himself. He was like, “I’m the audience hype man. My job is to get you guys up out of your seats and clapping and excited.” And he told us a bunch of things to do. He was like, “If I wave my hands up, you guys stand up and you clap.” He told us when we were going to give the standing ovations for the guests that were going to come out for the show. He was also cracking jokes left and right. He gave a mini stand-up set that was kind of insane. Then, throughout the whole beginning, Link kept being like, “I don’t know you guys. You guys might be the best audience of 2026,” and it felt – from Link – it felt genuine, but then Don kept saying and it felt a little staged. So in that moment, I was like, they probably do say this every night, but Don kept promising. He was like, “If you guys keep this up, you’re going to be the best audience of 2026!” Which, again, probably wasn’t even the biggest honor, because it was February of 2026, but we were pretty invested in that.

As Don was trying to hype up the crowd, he announced that the announcer for the show itself was going to come out, and they just called him Lou. Immediately I was kind of freaking out because I forgot that I know who Lou is, and he’s kind of a niche celebrity, but he means a whole lot to me because he is on this show that I’m kind of obsessed with. Before he came out, I was, like, leaning over to Hela, like, “Oh my God, I know Lou.” And Hela was like, “What do you mean you know Lou?” I knew Lou. So Lou came out, and I was freaking out. I was very excited internally, not externally. I was very close to yelling at him and being like, “I love you.” Then I decided against it. Then Lou came to the floor, and he announced Jimmy Kimmel, and then Jimmy Kimmel comes out. What was your reaction to that?

HK: That just kind of felt unreal, kind of like a fever dream. It felt like I had been waiting in anticipation for an eternity – we actually don’t know how long, because we didn’t have our phones or watches or anything – for Jimmy to come out. I feel like every single time I’ve seen a celebrity in the flesh, I’m just like, “Whoa, they’re actually just a human.” That’s kind of the reaction I had. And we’ll talk more through this. But from the get-go, he was definitely a professional and very good at his job, and I quickly understood what it takes to be a late night host.

TJ: And I also think at the time that Jimmy had come out, we had already been so overstimulated with the most insane characters I’d ever seen, specifically Link and Don, so Jimmy coming out, it just kind of felt like, “Here’s another one.” He was so tame and composed that I think it was honestly the least shocking part of the day for me personally.

HK: When Jimmy came out, the first thing he did was jump right into his monologue. He does this in every single one of his episodes, if you are familiar. He basically went on a talk highlighting recent political events, news, culture, just to catch up the audience and viewers across the country on what’s been happening in the past 24 hours. The monologue didn’t last very long, but right after one of what we assume is his stage producers gave him notes because he had made a little error in speaking. He meant to say “country” but he said “company” instead. So it was actually very interesting, because the producer had him just repeat verbally the word “country” a couple of times so that they can edit it in where he said, “company.” But they didn’t refilm the whole thing, so they were quite efficient with it, wouldn’t you say?

TJ: I definitely would say so. My favorite part of the monologue was, before Jimmy had even come out, Link or Don, I don’t remember, had said that, no matter what you hear, if it sounds like a joke, just laugh as hard as you can. And so the second Jimmy came out, and he made like, I think he said, “Canada,” and everyone just started laughing hysterically. And we were right there with them. In retrospect, I don’t know how funny the monologue was, but I found it really funny in the moment because part of the fun was just forcing yourself to laugh.

HK: One thing Tilly and I both noticed is that, from start to finish, meaning from when Jimmy actually came out onto the stage until the end of his segment, the filming was extremely efficient and extremely fast paced. So they would have small breaks, which I would assume would be the gaps in which people on the TV would watch commercials. But between his monologue and the first guest, he interacted with the audience a bit. He talked to this one couple from Canada, which is kind of funny. He unfortunately didn’t talk to us. Sad. Was kind of expecting to become best friends with him, but it didn’t happen. Anywho. After he interacted with the crowd for a bit, the first guest came on, and it was Rose Byrne, and she’s been recently nominated for an Oscar for her movie, “If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You.” I knew her, most notably, from the movie “Bridesmaids”.

TJ: I actually totally forgot she was in “Bridesmaids.” I don’t know if I know her from anything specifically, but I definitely recognized her. So the next guest after Rose Byrne was Ego Nwodim. And I best know her because she was on “SNL” for seven seasons, I think. But she just left in September, so she was actually there to promote the fact that she was hosting an award show the following Sunday, which was kind of a bizarre reason. But she was there, she came out. Maybe I feel like I knew her more than Rose Byrne, so I was maybe a little more excited to see her. She was friends with Lou, my fave, so they had a whole banter. They all talked. But it was really, it did go by really quickly, having the guests there, so it didn’t feel like they were there for very long. So after the guests and everyone, it was kind of over, and, to close out the show, Don came back. Link said goodbye, and Don, he brought out this piece of paper in a really dramatic fashion. And he said that he declared us the “Best Audience of 2026,” but he said that could all change tomorrow. So I think in that moment, I realized, they do this every night. It was definitely a question at the beginning of whether we really were just that good. And I realized very much by the end that this was just kind of their shtick, and they did this a lot.

HK: After we were gifted the special honor of “Best Audience of 2026” they immediately ushered the crowd out. I think that they were wanting to close up shop and go home. I get it, they probably had a lot of editing to do because the show actually premieres on the East Coast two hours after they film it. It’s a pretty quick turnaround. But yeah, we were just shown the exit. Tilly and I walked past Link, our hero. We were given our phones back. Tilly and I walked back to the car and had a little debrief. We definitely have a list of takeaways from this Jimmy Kimmel experience. One for me is that TV is pretty much just what you would expect. I knew that from the second that Link and Don told us exactly when to clap, exactly when to laugh, exactly when to stand up. I think with a show like Jimmy Kimmel’s, there’s a natural element to it when he interviews his guests. But also, it’s still Hollywood. It’s going to be scripted in a way – it’s going to be kind of dramatized to create a more entertaining effect. I get it, but, wow, it was kind of what I would have expected.

TJ: And also the characters themselves were so – they were exactly what I expected. They were truly never before seen but also somehow I could have just seen them coming. The producers and Link and Don and just everything made so much sense. I think our next takeaway was that it was actually exhausting, and the fact that they do this five times a week, every single week is crazy. By the end, we were honestly kind of falling asleep. My eyes were closing. I totally understood why they needed an audience hype person, because at the beginning it felt like maybe a little too much – that they were just trying to control us so much and get us to clap. Then, by the end, I was like, I actually do genuinely need this reminder to be loud and be energetic because, in my natural state, I really want to go to bed right now.

HK: The experience definitely made me gain a lot of respect for television, especially nightly television, again, super efficient production. The producers are very focused and diligent with their work. Jimmy was super locked in. It’s like he was working a 9-to-5. In a way, this is his 9-to-5. But in between the segments, he was just very focused going over his notes. I’m sure he was practicing how to pronounce the names of the shows of the people he was interviewing or their names themselves and going over talking points during the interviews. He was definitely focused.

TJ: He really did kill it. I feel like Jimmy Kimmel, I don’t – this is no shade – but I don’t view him as maybe one of the best late night hosts. But after seeing him in person, I realized he is really great at his job. He was funny, he was charismatic, he was super locked in, like Hela said. I definitely gained respect for not just him but the whole late night culture as a whole, and now we know what behind the scenes looks like, so we really gain that perspective in a new way. If you haven’t yet, we would definitely recommend going to any live taping of a late night show. It was so much fun, and you’ll have so many good stories. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of “Sidequest.” Stay tuned for our next adventures coming soon on Daily Bruin podcasts.