Jimmy Kimmel Obsessed With UFO Story on ’60 Minutes’ and Is Surprised by Shaquille O’Neal’s Bombshell First-Time Confession to His Own Close Encounter Experience

The latest 60 Minutes episode featured an intriguing story on UFOs or, according to the U.S. government’s terminology, UAP, unidentified aerial phenomena. Jimmy Kimmel joined the audience watching at home and was fascinated by what he saw. 

On Monday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, the late-night host obsessively talked about UAPs throughout the show, starting in his opening monologue. Kimmel then steered the conversation to alien life form during interviews with both of his guests, Shaquille O’Neal and Patton Oswalt. He never could have anticipated what happened when the NBA Hall of Famer dropped a bombshell and confessed publicly for the first time to his first-hand close encounter experience.

Jimmy Kimmel obsessed by ’60 Minutes’ story on UAPs

During the opening monologue of Jimmy Kimmel Live, Kimmel brought up the 60 Minutes story and discussed how it included interviews with several credible former Pentagon and military officials who had video and eyewitness accounts of objects that can fly 13,000 mph, drop 80,000 feet in less than a second, and go underwater. 

He expressed surprise more people weren’t talking about the government’s admission but also jokingly acknowledged he understood the reason why.

“I feel like if this story had been on 60 Minutes in 1988 it would be the only thing we’d talk about for the next 30 years,” Kimmel said. “It would have been the biggest news story of the year. Now, it’s like, ‘Yeah, I heard that. I also heard that Bill Gates was trying to get freaky with one of his employees, right?'” 

Shaquille O’Neal tells Kimmel about his own personal UFO experience

Kimmel never hesitated and opened the conversation with O’Neal talking about the UAPs and asked the NBA Hall of Famer for his take on the situation. After initially joking about his experience with an alien in the form of Charles Barkley’s body, O’Neal struck a more serious tone.

“You know what’s crazy? I never told anybody this story,” O’Neal said. “In 1997, me and one of my good friends, Chris Flores, we were on a double date. The girl he married, her name is Melissa. Her friend was named Melissa. We were on a double date. We were coming from Hollywood Video in Madera, California. Right when we passed the fairground by this big open lot, I could have swore I saw a flying saucer come down, with all the lights, and it was spinning, and it just (makes sound). And it took off. Everything happened in less than five seconds, and we all looked at each other and was like (looks from side to side). I know that it was a UFO. I don’t care what anybody says.”

“You never told anybody about that?” a surprised Kimmel asked. 

“No, you’re the first person I told because I don’t want people thinking I’m crazy,” O’Neal said to a laugh from the audience. “But since I know you’re crazy and you believe in UFOs, it’s time to the let the world know that Shaq believes in UFOs.” 

Patton Oswalt’s father had an experience with UFOs

After the surprising O’Neal reveal, Kimmel interviewed Patton Oswalt and talked about his upcoming animated stop-motion series M.O.D.O.K., based on the Marvel super-villain character from Captain America.

Not surprisingly, like with O’Neal, Kimmel couldn’t resist and brought up the UFOs story, which Oswalt admitted he watched. While he had never personally witnessed a UFO, he said he knew others who had, including his father.

“My dad was a test pilot in the Marines all through the 1960s and 1970s and when he was stationed at El Toro, he said you talked to any pilot, they see all kinds of weird stuff up there but they just don’t report it because they don’t want to go in a crank file,” he explained to Kimmel. “He said he was on a test flight, and he saw a bunch of objects. He said they looked like glowing balls of energy in like these round metal cages. And they were keeping track with the jets. They would do these turns that you couldn’t do under those g-forces and would disappear.”

Oswalt explained when his father returned to the ground and talked to his base commander to share what he and his squad had witnessed, the commander preemptively asked if they were “metal cages with energy balls.” When asked if he wanted to file a report, his father declined, knowing it wasn’t anything new.

For years the U.S. government denied the existence of any such aerial phenomena. This acknowledgment is a huge step but just the beginning of trying to understand what exactly these objects are and how they might affect the security of the world. It sounds like a pretty big news story and Jimmy Kimmel wants everyone to know that. 

Like Showbiz Cheat Sheet on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter @cheatsheet.