LOS ANGELES — Walt Disney Co. will bring Jimmy Kimmel back to ABC on Tuesday night, reversing its suspension of the late-night talk show after the host’s comments about the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk set off a political firestorm.

“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” the company said Monday in a statement. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive.”

“We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”

Kimmel’s representatives declined to comment.

The breakthrough came as Disney faced withering pressure on multiple fronts.

Protests grew loud and some consumers, including radio personality Howard Stern, announced they had canceled their Disney+ subscriptions to lodge their dismay. More than 400 celebrities, including such Disney talent as Selena Gomez, Martin Short, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kerry Washington and Lin-Manuel Miranda, signed an open letter decrying attempts at government censorship, which “strike at the heart of what it means to live in a free country.”

The Kimmel suspension put Disney executives, including Chief Executive Bob Iger and Disney Entertainment Co-Chairman Dana Walden, in the center of the nation’s debate over free speech.

President Donald Trump last week celebrated what he viewed as Kimmel’s cancellation, while those on the opposite side blasted Disney for seemingly pulling the corporate rug from under one of ABC’s biggest stars for two decades. At a crowded protest outside the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood on Monday, a demonstrator hoisted a hand-made sign that said: “The Mouse is a Cowardly Louse.”

The late-night program has been dark since Wednesday, when the Disney-owned ABC network announced in a terse statement that it would be “preempted indefinitely.”

The move followed decisions by two major owners of ABC affiliate stations to drop the show because of Kimmel’s remarks about the suspect in Kirk’s shooting death. ABC’s decision to suspend the show came about an hour before Wednesday’s taping as dozens of fans waited outside the theater.

Behind the scenes, Disney’s Walden had debated with Kimmel over an appropriate response to the ballooning controversy. Walden and other Disney executives were concerned that Kimmel’s planned retort for Wednesday’s show would inflame the situation rather than “bring the temperature down,” according to two people familiar with the conversations but not authorized to comment.

The uproar began after Kimmel, on last Monday’s show, seemed to suggest during his monologue that Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused in the shooting death of Kirk, might have been a pro-Trump Republican. He said MAGA supporters “are desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Trump supporters were livid. The remarks prompted a widespread conservative backlash on social media, including demands for Kimmel’s firing. Kimmel, who has expressed sympathy for Kirk’s family online, has not yet commented but is widely expected to address the flap on Tuesday.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr had called for Disney to take action against Kimmel during a podcast interview that aired Wednesday. Last week, Carr said there could be consequences for the TV stations that carry his show.

Carr, a Trump appointee, did not immediately comment on Kimmel’s return.

Some Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Carr went too far. A growing backlash from conservatives gave Disney an opening to try to balance two constituencies in a bid to shore up the network’s principles and First Amendment rights.

Cruz, in a podcast, criticized the FCC chairman, saying conservatives might ultimately regret what he saw as government overreach. Cruz took issue with Carr’s posturing, when, during an appearance on a right-wing podcast, said, “We can do it the easy way or the hard way.”

“That’s right out of ‘Goodfellas,’ ” Cruz said. “That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar, going, ‘nice bar you have here, it’d be a shame if something happened to it.' ”

Anna M. Gomez, the lone Democrat on the three-member FCC, said Monday: “I am glad to see Disney find its courage in the face of clear government intimidation.”

At the gates to Disney’s Burbank headquarters, a cheer went through the crowd of demonstrators around 12:30 p.m. when the company announced that Kimmel was coming back. Car horns sounded and hoots rippled along Hollywood Boulevard.

“We did it!” Jessica Brown, a SAG-AFTRA member who works as a background actor, yelled into oncoming traffic. “It only took them six days to go back. ... It resets the tone for what corporations can and can’t do.”

“Welcome back, Jimmy,” shouted Manuel Barrera, 82, a retired entertainer. “This is a win for the American people.”

The furor over Disney’s handling of the matter threatened to stain the legacy of Iger and his television chief Walden, who is an internal candidate vying to replace Iger when the CEO is expected to retire next year.

Before the Kimmel fiasco, Iger was seen as a champion of the creative community.

Three decades ago — early in his tenure as entertainment president of ABC — Iger faced a crisis over Steven Bochco’s police drama “NYPD Blue,” which was met with boycott threats and affiliates refusing to air the program in its first season.

Iger was unwavering in supporting the series, which became a hit.

Several former ABC executives said privately that Disney appeared to forget the cultural resonance that late-night shows still have despite their declining ratings and revenues. While the traditional TV audiences are smaller, comments and gags by the network comedians are widely shared on Instagram and TikTok.

Critics of Kimmel’s suspension decried what they saw as corporate capitulation.

“Where has all the leadership gone?” former Disney CEO Michael Eisner said Friday in an X post that shined a harsh light on Disney’s handling of the crisis. “If not for university presidents, law firm managing partners, and corporate chief executives standing up against bullies, who then will step up for the first amendment?”

It wasn’t clear on Monday that all TV stations groups will accept Kimmel’s return. Nexstar and Sinclair did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Nexstar did not set conditions for putting Kimmel back on its stations, said a person briefed on the matter who was not authorized to comment. Some of its ABC affiliates are located in Trump strongholds, such as Panama City, Florida, and Salt Lake City.

Sinclair Broadcast Group has demanded a personal apology from Kimmel to Kirk’s family and a “meaningful financial contribution” to his organization Turning Point USA. Kimmel is unlikely to acquiesce to such a request.

Without the two station groups, the program would still reach 75% of the country, making it viable for national advertisers.

Inside Disney, executives were also reeling from the vitriol coming from all sides. Some executives received threatening emails, according to a person familiar with the matter. In Sacramento, a person fired at least three bullets into the lobby of an ABC affiliate station. No one was injured and a suspected gunman is in custody.

Some Disney employees compared the tense mood within the company to the employee uproar over the company’s muted response in 2022 over a Florida law that restricted classroom teachings about sexual orientation and gender identity.

Disney in December agreed to pay $16 million to end a lawsuit Trump brought against ABC and anchor George Stephanopoulos over misstatements. Some observers said capitulating again would only encourage more pressure from the administration.

“When someone threatens you, or bullies you, and you give in, the bully doesn’t say: I’m not going to do it anymore,” said Joel Kaplan, a journalism professor at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communication. “They just say: It worked, I’m going to keep doing it until you give me everything you have.”

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(Los Angeles Times staff writers Cerys Davies, Kaitlyn Huamani, Samantha Masunaga, Stacy Perman and Matthew Brennan contributed to this report.)

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