Comedian Jimmy Kimmel has disclosed a “secret” about his son that may spark further conversation about his increasingly politicized show.

The host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” used his newborn son’s congenital heart condition in 2017 as a means of chastising Republicans on health care reform, but he now says that behind his public activism was a “secret.” He told Oprah Winfrey for the April issue of “O” magazine that he subconsciously “didn’t want to get too close” to his son William as the child’s life hung in the balance.

Mr. Kimmel said that he recently discussed his true feelings with wife Molly McNearney.

“There were secrets we kept from each other that we revealed only after the second surgery,” the ABC celebrity said, “People” magazine reported Monday. “The biggest one was that, I think subconsciously, we didn’t want to get too close to the baby because we didn’t know what was going to happen.”

“I don’t know if that’s right or wrong or common or uncommon,” he continued. “But when I told her I was feeling that way, she said, ‘Oh I’m so happy you said that because I was feeling that way, too, and I didn’t want to express it.’ “

The comedian’s son, now 11 months old, required multiple surgeries for a condition known as tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia.

The child was successfully treated at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA).

“I am politicizing my son’s health problems because I have to,” Mr. Kimmel told his audience in September 2017. “Somehow Japan and England and Canada and Germany, France, they all figured health care out, and don’t say they have terrible health care, because it’s just not true.”

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