Spencer Pratt compared Jimmy Kimmel to disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein after the talk show’s wife, Molly McNearney, shared a story about their early romance when he was her boss.
“Isn’t this what Harvey Weinstein did?” Pratt, 43, wrote via X on Monday, August 24, while sharing an article titled, “When Jimmy Kimmel’s wife knew he ‘wanted to f***’ during ‘bad idea’ romance: ‘He was my boss’.”
Weinstein, 74, married his assistant, Eve Chilton, in 1987. The exes, who share three daughters, divorced in 2004. He later tied the knot with English fashion designer and actress Georgina Chapman in 2007, and the pair welcomed a daughter and a son. In 2017, after Weinstein was accused of sexual harassment, assault and rape by more than a dozen women, Chapman, 50, announced their separation. The divorce was finalized in 2021.
Following the sexual abuse allegations, Weinstein was dismissed from his entertainment company, Miramax, and expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He was later convicted of four sexual assault charges in separate trials in New York and Los Angeles, although he has denied any wrongdoing.
During a joint appearance on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast on Monday, McNearney, 48, recalled the early days of her relationship with Kimmel, 58.
“I met him a couple weeks into working at the show,” McNearney, who is a co-head writer and executive producer on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, said. “I went into the office with the executive producer at the time. … I don’t think Jimmy even looked up from his desk [when I was introduced to him].”
McNearney’s boss told Kimmel that she did triathlons, to which the comedian replied, “How stupid.”
“That was it,” McNearney added, insisting that she did not “look at him [in a romantic] way at all” and was “intimidated” by Kimmel for years before she became fond of him.
McNearney then recalled that eight years into her working on the show, someone asked staff members to share their five favorite foods during a meeting. She “rattled off, ‘Pizza and gnocchi, crab claws, BLT and chocolate chip cookies’” — all foods that Kimmel cooked for her six months later.
“Talk about a long play,” McNearney quipped. “I go to Jimmy’s house, he asks me to come over after work … and he opens up the door, and it smells delicious, and he’s like, ‘I made some things,’ and it was pizza and gnocchi, crab claws, chocolate chop cookies and BLT.”
When asked whether she “immediately register[ed] that as, ‘Oh, he wants to f***,’” McNearney said, “Yes! It made me very excited and very nervous. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, no. This is a bad idea.’ He was my boss.”
When Kimmel said he “didn’t have that thought at the time,” McNearney added, “The person in power usually doesn’t, but I was very nervous about it. I thought it was a terrible idea. … I was very skittish. I just kept thinking statistically this is not going to work out and your life isn’t going to change, but mine does. And that’s what freaked me out. Because I had worked really, really hard.”
McNearney said she and Kimmel “did some sneaking” for a bit before they went public with their romance in 2009.
“The first few months, we were very very quiet,” McNearney recalled. “I was very nervous about it changing the work dynamic, and I was in a room of mostly men, and we had a great thing going on … and I didn’t want it to change.”
McNearney and Kimmel ultimately tied the knot in 2013 and welcomed daughter Jane, 12, and son Billy, 9. The late night host is also a dad to daughter Katie, 34, and son Kevin, 32, from his previous marriage to ex Gina Maddy.
Kimmel and Pratt have been trading barbs for months. After the Hills alum lost his bid to become the next mayor of Los Angeles in June, the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire host jokingly rented a U-Haul truck so that Pratt could make good on his promise to leave the city in the event that he came up short during the election.
Us has reached out to Kimmel’s reps for comment on Pratt’s X post.
