Matt Damon Nearly Chokes to Death During Dinner at Jimmy Kimmel's House

Jimmy Kimmel may have a longstanding satirical feud with Matt Damon, but the late night host quickly sprang into action to save the actor’s life.

“Matt Damon was over at my house one night for dinner. I made pork ribs,” Kimmel told Variety on Monday, August 18. “He came late, was very hungry and started eating fast. He started choking on a pork rib. It was stuck in his throat for about an hour and a half. His brother was there.”

He continued, “I said, ‘We have got to get him to the hospital,’ because if he dies in my house, I’m going to prison for the rest of my life. I will never be able to explain this as anything other than a murder.”

Kimmel said that he started frantically searching for methods to help Damon remove the piece of food from his throat.

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“We did a lot of YouTube-ing and finally concluded that eating little bits of bread was the way to get that rib to work its way down into his stomach — and bread saved him,” Kimmel said. “We tried the Heimlich many times. It was too far down.”

Damon and Kimmel’s fake feud has been a bit on Kimmel’s show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, since 2005. The fake drama started when the host hilariously said, “Apologies to Matt Damon, but we ran out of time,” during a season 3 episode of the show. Damon was not scheduled to be on the show that day, nor did he have anything to do with the segments that were featured. As the seasons went on, Kimmel made it his catchphrase.

“People started to call me and ask like, ‘Hey, what’s your connection to this guy?’ And I’d never met Jimmy,” Damon said during a 2021 appearance on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show. “He literally pulled my name out of thin air one night.”

Matt Damon and Jimmy Kimmel Lester Cohen/WireImage

Damon said that Kimmel used his name “kind of as a throw away” on his show.

“He could’ve said, you know, George [Clooney] ― he could have said somebody else. But he just, for some reason, maybe I had a movie out that week or something, but he just said my name,” he continued. “And it changed the course of both of our lives. We’ve kept this feud going for, you know, it’s gotta be 15 years now. I’ve had a lot of fun doing it.”

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Damon made his first appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2006, and the rest is history. The feud has been the center of Kimmel’s hilarious commentary over the years, including when he hosted the 89th Academy Awards in 2017.

“Unfortunately, we’ll see Matt Damon,” Kimmel said on Good Morning America before the awards show. “Of course, I’m rooting against him.”