CusickGallery.net: Henry Ian Cusick

Jimmy Fallon says his Late Night gig is “the most fun job in the whole wide world,” but that doesn’t mean he isn’t aware of the potential pitfalls.

“People are always saying, ‘Would you want to host The Tonight Show?’ and I always say, ‘The one thing I’ve learned’ — because I’m filling in the shoes of David Letterman and Conan O’Brien — ‘from those guys is that hosting Late Night is the one-way ticket to not hosting The Tonight Show.'”

Ah, yes. Coco.

“Listen,” Fallon said, responding to my question at the summer meeting of the TV Critics Association in Beverly Hills, Calif. “If it wasn’t for Conan, I wouldn’t have this job. He kicked butt for 16 years, 17 years doing Late Night, and then I came in. So I owe him a lot. When we followed him on his last night, we just wanted to treat him with  respect. But our number one job is also to make people laugh, so we had to walk a fine line there. We sang Voice to the Man and I poured a 40-ounce on the stage in his honour, and it kind of worked because it paid respect, but it was also funny.”

Fallon is riding a whirlwind of good will and glad fortune at the moment. Somehow, the late-night controversy left him unscathed: His ratings are solid, and he has drawn the younger audience his former Saturday Night Live colleagues always said he would. Together with his time-period rival Craig Ferguson, Fallon emerged as the good guy in the whole Conan-Leno mess.

“I just kept my head down and kept working hard and looking for the next joke,” Fallon explained, quietly. “I wasn’t really in the mix. I just stuck to my thing. I had good people, like Lorne Michaels, giving me advice.”

Ferguson is a class act, Fallon allows.

“He did a bit recently, where he put on a Mickey Mouse glove and said, ‘I want to wave at Jimmy Fallon,’ and he waved at me. And somebody called and said, ‘Are you going to wave back at Craig Ferguson?’ And I go, ‘I don’t know what this is but, yeah, sure. What does he want me to do?’ I talked to him, and we had a great conversation. God, he’s just a nice guy. And he’s a funny dude. As far as show-wise, we’re two totally different shows.”

Fallon says Late Night has been a blessing. He’s allowed be serious, when the occasion calls for it. He’s allowed to be goofy, when he wants to be. And he’s allowed to be nutty and just go nuts on occasion.

“I was a human celery stalk. I jumped into the world’s largest Bloody Mary. And then Horatio Sanz jumped in after me. He came and tackled me. He jumped in. It was real vodka, everything. It was an actual functioning Bloody Mary — with ice cubes. Which we really didn’t need. It was fun. It was like we were actually drinking it, but I swam in it.”

Fallon says the moment you realize you’re a real, live late-night talk-show host is the moment someone brings animals that can bite onto the set.

“You just think of all those Johnny Carson moments when a yak peed on him.”

One of Fallon’s Late Night highlights was the night Mick Jagger agreed to do a parody of Lost as Desmond Hume, the hapless character played by Henry Ian Cusick who is forever destined to punch a combination of numbers into a computer, or else the mystery island will blow up real good.

“That was one of the most surreal weeks of my life, just doing comedy with Mick Jagger,” Fallon recalled. “He’s going, ‘Now why am I screaming? Why am I yelling, doing that?’ And I go, ‘Well, it’s just this guy, Desmond.’ He goes, ‘I know Desmond, yeah.’ He loves Lost. He’s like, ‘Why am I not typing? Why am I yelling?’ And I go, ‘Because you’re funny when you yell.’ He’s like, ‘All right. I don’t get it, but—’ And then he did it, and everyone laughed. And he went, ‘Oh, I got it now.’

“We made him do Pros & Cons, and he was like, ‘I don’t want to do this joke about KFC Double Down.’ I go, ‘Trust me. Just you saying you like KFC Dpuble Down will get a laugh.’ And he’s like, ‘I don’t think so.’ I go, ‘Mick, why are you fighting me on this? I swear  — just try it.’ So he did it, and everyone laughed. He was like, ‘The Rolling Stones will not sell out unless it’s for a KFC Double Down. I mean, it’s two chicken breasts with bacon in-between. Come on, man. That’s crazy, crazy delicious.’ And he nailed it. One of the biggest laughs we ever got.”

Fallon has had the occasional non-starter, too, but he’s survived. Robert De Niro was the marquee guest on Fallon’s first show, but it wasn’t terrific.

“First of all,” Fallon said, “I just want to say how cool Robert De Niro was to come on the show. He had nothing to promote. He just did it because he’s a New Yorker, and he did me a favour.

“That being said, he does not like to talk. It’s a lot of head-bobbing and one-word answers.”

Fallon says he booked De Niro for his first show because he wanted a baptism by fire right off the top, as it were.

“Jump into the fire, baby — let’s see what it’s going to be. There are so many things now I wish I had done. I could have made the temperature cooler, because I was sweating so much flop sweat during that first show it was like I just came off a water slide. Oh my God. I was so dewy during that interview. I was like, ‘Waaa.’

“My mom and dad wanted to come to the first show. I was like, ‘Can’t you come to the 10th show? Can’t you come to any show but the first?’ It’s worked out, though.

“We’re a different breed of show. Our show is friendly. We’re a very positive show. We always have been. That’s just who we are. It’s who I am.”

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