Jimmy Kimmel Hints 'This Is My Final Contract' as Possible End to His Long-Running Talk Show Looms

Kimmel is considering his future after 21 years on air, admitting that every spring he thinks he might call it a day on late night — but then, after a little time away, starts to "miss the fun stuff"

Jimmy Kimmel is considering moving on from late-night TV.

The television host, 56, confessed that he’s been thinking about leaving his hosting gig on Jimmy Kimmel Live after his latest contract with ABC ends.

“I think this is my final contract,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “I hate to even say it, because everyone’s laughing at me now — each time I think that, and then it turns out to be not the case.”

“I still have a little more than two years left on my contract, and that seems pretty good,” he added. “That seems like enough.”

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The comedian recently shared on the Strike Force Five podcast co-hosted by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and John Oliver during the writer’s strike, that he’d considered leaving before.

He told the L.A. Times that the thought also crossed his mind while preparing for his hosting gig at the Academy Awards in March. “Wednesday night, I was very tired and I had all these scripts to go through — I had to revise and rewrite all these pitch ideas for the Oscars — and I was literally nodding off onto my computer,” he recalled. “In those moments, I think, ‘I cannot wait until my contract is over.’”

He continued, “It’s hard to yearn for it when you’re doing it.” But he also admitted that he goes back and forth because, "then, I take the summer off or I go on strike, and you start going, ‘Yeah, I miss the fun stuff.’”

PEOPLE has reached out to a rep for Kimmel.

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As for what he would possibly do if he decided to retire from his late-night hosting gig, Kimmel joked that he might learn “Italian” or how to play the harmonica and go fly-fishing, among other things.

“[The future Kimmel is] very busy — it’s funny, whenever I think of what I’m going to do when I stop working, it all involves more work,” he said.

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Kimmel then went on to admit that he doesn’t “know exactly what I will do,” but there are still a lot of things he wants to accomplish.

“It might not be anything that anyone other than me is aware of,” he said. “I have a lot of hobbies — I love to cook, I love to draw, I imagine myself learning to do sculptures.” 

“I know that when I die, if I’m fortunate enough to die on my own terms in my own bed, I’m going to think, ‘Oh, I was never able to get to this, and I was never able to get to that,’” he continued. “I just know it about myself.”

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Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC.

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