Jimmy Fallon Will Be ‘The Tonight Show’ Host Through To 2021
It’s safe to say that Jimmy Fallon is doing a great job hosting the Tonight Show. After a false start with Conan O’Brien, it seems like NBC found the best man for the job. And as it turns out, NBC seems to think so as well.
According to TVLine, NBC just locked down Jimmy Fallon through 2021. NBC’s president Bob Greenblatt announced at the TCA presentation that Fallon’s contract was renewed through to 2021. At the time he said, “Jimmy is the best that there is. How elated are we that he’s going to be around for a long time in the role he was born to play?”
Of course not everyone agrees that Fallon is the best. A few months ago a Conan writer, Andres du Bouche, went on an epic rant about Jimmy Fallon on Twitter. Although the tweets have been deleted, nothing truly ever dies on the internet. Uproxx saved a copy of the following tweets:
“Comedy in 2015 needs a severe motherf—ing shakeup. No celebrities, no parodies, no pranks, no mash-ups or hashtag wars. I’m fat.”
“And shove your lip-synching up your a–.”
“Prom King Comedy. That’s what I call all this s–t. You’ve let the popular kids appropriate the very art form that helped you deal. F–k.”
“None of the funniest stuff ever involved celebrity cameos.”
Although he tried to backtrack on his tweets, he still wanted to preserve his point that hosts like Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel don’t “deserve” their success.
Conan O’Brien even tweeted about the ego tripping.
I wish one of my writers would focus on making my show funnier instead of tweeting stupid things about the state of late night comedy.
— Conan O’Brien (@ConanOBrien) April 19, 2015
That said, Jay Leno, the old Tonight Show host has gone on record in saying that Jimmy Fallon makes a fine host.
“I like Jimmy [Fallon]; I think he’s terrific. Every host brings his own personality to the show. It’s different now than when I was there, just like the show was different than when Johnny Carson was there. That’s part of the legacy of the show. Everybody who has ever hosted Tonight has been number one when they left, and there’s a lot to be said about that. I think Jimmy is doing a great job.”
Since he took the hosting gig Fallon has been compared to Johnny Carson, who carried a huge legacy with the show.
[Photo by NBC]
