Dana Walden Talks About CEO Race & Jimmy Kimmel Suspension

Dana Walden has gone on the record on two topics that have swirled around Hollywood this year: the Disney CEO race and Jimmy Kimmel.

Walden, who is Co-Chairman, Disney Entertainment, opened up about both topics in an interview with Bloomberg’s The Circuit with Emily Chang.

Asked what it’s been like being one of the candidates to replace Bob Iger as CEO, Walden said, “Well, being pit against my colleagues, I don’t appreciate because we have incredible relationships. We are a very tight organization. But I have enormous faith in where this company’s going. There is a world class team at this company who is navigating the path into the future.”

Walden is widely considered to be in a two-horse race against Josh D’Amaro, Chairman of Disney Experiences, who runs the parks division. While there have been rumors about external candidates, Walden’s colleague Alan Bergman, who is also Co-Chairman of Disney Entertainment, and who oversees the film business, and ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro are not thought to be in the running.

One person who would like Walden to become Disney CEO is Jimmy Kimmel. The late-night host recently said that it would be “very foolish for me to answer that question but I happen to love Dana Walden very much, and I think she’s done a great job”.

Kimmel was taken off the air on September 17 after his comments about the killer of Charlie Kirk kicked off a major storm. That suspension, which came after local affiliate groups Nexstar and Sinclair pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live! from their stations, lasted about a week with Kimmel returning to air on September 23.

While President Trump celebrated that decision, the Commander-in-Chief did not reach out to Disney. Asked whether Trump called Walden or Iger, she said, “He did not. We did not hear from them.”

Walden added that the company suspended Kimmel to “take the temperature down”.

“We were thinking about one only thing as we made that decision very close to his show going back up on that Wednesday, and that was, the situation was extremely heated,” she said. We wanted to take the temperature down. We didn’t think that was gonna be possible that night, so we hit pause to have conversations with Jimmy. We wanted to resolve the situation in a certain way to protect our employees, to think about our audience.” 

While JKL! was off the air, it was reported that Disney lost a number of subscriptions to streaming services such as Hulu. But the former Fox executive said “those reports were highly exaggerated”. “You saw the number of subscribers that we reported during our earnings. We had a very strong quarter. I think that this issue is firmly in our past,” she added.