Jimmy Kimmel says it'll be a 'great story' if the WHCD doesn't go well. | JAY WESTCOTT/POLITICO Kimmel on WHCD: 'I'm nervous'

While the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is an annual highlight for most Washingtonians, there’s one group who views it with dread: comedians. Even though the gala has been able to reel in top names such as Jay Leno, Stephen Colbert and Conan O’Brien over the years, the gig is considered one of the most difficult around.

This year’s headliner, Jimmy Kimmel, is well aware of that.


“I’m nervous. I’m nervous right now talking about it,” Kimmel, 44, told POLITICO in an interview in his Hollywood office. “I’m anxious about it.”

( See also: POLITICO's guide to the White House Correspondents' Dinner)

“With something like this, there’s so many unknowns, so for me, there’s no good that comes out of this. It’s either a relief — OK, that went OK — or it’s terrible — that went badly.”

While Kimmel regularly covers politics during his late-night show — ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” — he’s not primarily known as a political comedian, a la Bill Maher, Jon Stewart or Colbert. Kimmel’s been hosting his show since 2003 and became a household name prior to that, thanks to his work on Comedy Central’s “The Man Show,” a testosterone-fueled show that Kimmel co-hosted alongside Adam Carolla.

For comedians of all stripes, there are all too many reasons why the Hilton’s main ballroom is not as comedy friendly as, say, the Laugh Factory, and Kimmel knows them all (he’s actually performed there before, when he headlined the National Italian American Foundation’s annual gala in 2009).

First, there’s the massive room, with its 2,000-plus capacity.

( PHOTOS: Correspondents’ Dinner guest list)

“It’s never easy when people are seated at a table — a round table — and they can talk to each other and they actually have utensils in front of them and there’s the possibility that dessert is coming while you’re talking,” Kimmel said. “It’s not ideal. Imagine going to the movies and it’s like wedding seating. Nobody is going to be paying full attention to the movie. You want people at the very least to be paying attention to what you say.”

Second, there are the attendees, with their finicky, sensitive sense of humor — and heightened sense of themselves.

( PHOTOS: Presidents get the last laugh)

“It’s a very different crowd. When I do my show, I just say my name and everybody laughs hysterically. So I have to be very choosy about what I say. There’s no bull——ing your way through. … You really have to be prepared. This is a big event so everything has to be, if not a home run, a triple or a double at least. Whereas on my show, we do it every night and the expectation is you go in there with solid material, but it doesn’t have to be fantastic. With something like this, you’re evaluated so intensely, so it has to be very, very solid going in.”

Colbert revealed how difficult it can be to navigate the murky waters of Washington humor in 2006, when his performance earned some jeers within the ballroom from a crowd that thought his material about President George W. Bush — seated just feet away — crossed the line from comedic to cruel. And yet that same performance was viewed outside Washington quite positively, with the video becoming a bestseller on iTunes.

“I still can’t figure that out,” said Kimmel, calling Colbert’s performance “great.”

“It’s hilarious and the jokes are funny and the presentation is great. And then he gets nothing back from the audience. And that’s the scary part of it. It’s one thing when you go to a comedy show, if the comic’s funny, everybody laughs. They’re there to be entertained. But this is a unique situation where you can go to a venue to do comedy and do great and not get much in the way of response. That’s the situation I’d prefer to avoid.”

And finally, there’s the president.

“The president: A) is funny B) it’s easy for the president to be funny because it’s like when your grandpa says something funny, you’re going to laugh. Not that [Obama’s] an old man, but you know what I’m saying. And then you have to follow that. And it’s not like he’s going to run his jokes by me beforehand so he may actually use up some of the jokes, or at least the premises that I’m going to have jokes about that.”

“He’s your opening act, but he really should be the closer. I don’t know why it works like that.”

And Kimmel said that material-wise, this president doesn’t provide much.

“He’s the worst. He really has not helped us at all. He’s just kind of a cool guy. He doesn’t try to open doors that are locked. Somebody hands him a basketball and he makes the shot. His grammar is perfect. He’s funny when he needs to be funny.”

It’s a stark contrast to Obama’s predecessor.

“George Bush set a bar that is almost impossible to clear. It’s like he won eight gold medals at the Olympics of presidential comedy and now we have Obama. It’s such a contrast.”

There is one way, however, that the president helps the headliner, Kimmel noted. “You can kind of target them and, if they’re laughing, there will be some comfort and ease in the room.”

It’s advice Kimmel got from just about everybody he spoke to regarding the gig.

“I talked to Seth [Meyers], to Stephen [Colbert], to some other people who have been to the event a number of times. Everybody seems to say, ‘You need to make the president laugh. That’s the key.’”

So with all these daunting challenges, why would Kimmel ever decide to sign on to such an event?

“The way I think is, if it goes great, that’s great. If it goes terribly, it’s a great story that I have for the rest of my life. And there’s always a possibility that that can happen. In fact, it seems like most of them go terribly.”

Why many do go terribly is not simply because they’re not very funny (see: Rich Little, 2007) but also because some violate the event’s unwritten code of conduct: The comedy should “singe, but not burn” (see: Colbert, above). With the first couple on the dais (to say nothing of the countless other dignitaries throughout the ballroom), the event’s comedic tone has been defined over the years as a delicate dance: Ribbing of politicians is allowed, but don’t get too carried away to the point of nastiness.

“I was told you can pillage but may not rape, no?” Kimmel joked. “No, there definitely is a line.”

Kimmel, however, is used to flying afoul of those lines, as he’s become a master of the art of “roasting,” in which comedians mercilessly rib someone during an event held in their honor. Kimmel served as roastmaster for roasts of Hugh Hefner and Pamela Anderson.

So can Washingtonians expect to be roasted on Saturday?

“A little bit, yeah. Not entirely. There is an element of that. You’re there to make fun of people, so it is a roast. Otherwise, if you’re just up there doing your material, what’s the point of it?”

“I’m not going to curse. I’m going to be respectful. It is on C-SPAN so that’s big. There will be some edgy material in there but there are definitely some [proposed jokes] I’ve said, ‘Eh, that’s a little bit too much.’”

Kimmel walks into the event on the heels of the recent Washington controversy over the Radio & TV Congressional Correspondents’ Dinner, in which the original headliner, Louis C.K., pulled out after a minor storm brewed over some of his previous inflammatory remarks. But the uproar didn’t add to Kimmel’s nervousness. Quite the opposite.

“I didn’t even think about it, to be honest with you. I’ve been on television for a long time, so I think everything I’ve said, I’ve said on television. Whereas, Louis’s work was mostly in comedy clubs. But I don’t really care. F—k them. I don’t give a sh-t, to be honest with you.”

And as for Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren, who came to be seen as the anti-Louis C.K. leader after she said she’d boycott the dinner if he served as headliner, Kimmel said, “How dare she? With the people that she interviews that she would boycott Louis C.K.?”

Comedy aside, Kimmel is serious about one thing in particular: Washington’s dysfunction.

“It’s definitely not uplifting. I always used to think it was a lot like professional wrestling, where they got on television and argued and they ran their ads criticizing each other and they debated and they fought. But then, at the end of the day, they were all on the same team.”

That was then. Now, Kimmel said, “I feel the animosity is real and it’s almost like sports in a way. It became something to argue about and something to follow very intensely. And I think that the fact that we have these cable channels now that are dissecting everything everyone says. If you’re running for office, there’s no margin for error. You stumble over one word and the guys who watch TV here are running it up to my office like, ‘Look what he did!’ I think the microscope is focused too closely, and it’s become like sports. People are born Republican or Democrats, and they root for that team kind of blindly. It’s not even about the politics anymore. It’s about analyzing the politics. It’s about rooting for your team and, if anything, we might take sports more seriously than we do politics, which is really stupid.”

On his own show, Kimmel is cognizant of his own role in shaping people’s perceptions.

“Typically, I think late-night talk shows will turn these politicians into cartoon characters — Mitt Romney’s the flip-flopper, Ron Paul is the Keebler Elf, Newt Gingrich is fat. Comedians do have a lot of power because there’s an element of trust between the audience and the host of the late-night show that they watch. So when you say things about people, even if they are jokes, part of them takes it seriously, especially with young people. I think a lot of attention is paid to what Jon Stewart thinks of this person or that person. You base your opinion on someone else’s opinion, and I think we facilitate that.”

When Kimmel has politicians on his show, he’s impressed that they bring their A game.

“They’re much better than your average guest because they’re used to fighting, they’re used to speaking to people, they’re used to speaking in public. And if you’ve reached a certain level of office, I think you have to have some charisma. Some people have more than others, but it’s pretty rare that you get a politician that’s reached the level where he could be invited on a late-night talk show — or she — that doesn’t have a lot of charisma.”

But proving that the intersection of politics and Hollywood is now fully embedded, the cameos don’t exactly translate into ratings.

“It doesn’t even register anymore. You don’t see a big jump in the numbers when Michelle Obama goes on ‘The Tonight Show.’ It’s just pretty much like any other guest because I think people have gotten used to that.”