Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver are launching Strike Force Five, a limited run podcast featuring all five late-night hosts with proceeds going to support their respective late-night staffs.
With the dual Hollywood strikes still effectively stopping just about all work out of Tinseltown, five late-night hosts have come up with a way to support their respective show staffs, and provide fans new content.
On Tuesday, Spotify announced that Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver are joining forces on a new podcast set to launch August 30.
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The limited run series — which will offer at least a dozen episodes — is called Strike Force Five and will follow them as they “navigate the Hollywood strikes and beyond.” The friendly five have been sharing weekly Zoom meetings during the work stoppage, with this project just an expansion of their collaborative discussions.
The quintet said they’d first conceived the idea back in May when the Writers Guild of America (WGA) kicked off this summer of strikes. Their weekly Zoom chats, which they thought would be somber affairs, instead became “a series of hilarious and compelling conversation,” per the press release for the podcast.
Unlike the tense days of yore when late-night was a bitter landscape of ambition and brutal competition, the current hosts are incredibly supportive of one another, and have even appeared on each other’s shows and collaborated in fun and surprising ways.
Now, they’re taking that collaborative energy to do some good for those people who’ve worked so hard for them, and now find themselves unable to work due to the ongoing strike efforts. Both writers (WGA) and actors (SAG-AFTRA) are currently on strike with no clear end in sight.
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Presented by Mint Mobile and Diageo, the five hosts will all feature in every episode, but they’ll take turns serving as host to steer the conversation.
All proceeds will go to support staffers at Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Stephen Colbert, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
The WGA strike kicked off on May 2 after the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) could not agree to terms about writers rooms and pay in this era of growing technology and streaming.
On July 14, the AMPTP also failed to reach an agreement with SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) amid their concerns about AI, pay and more, leading to the first concurrent strike since 1960.
The first episode of Strike Force Five hits Spotify and other major podcast platforms on Wednesday, August 30, with new episodes expected for at least 12 weeks.
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