Jay Leno returned to “The Tonight Show” Tuesday, doing what he used to do best — give a monologue at the top of the hour on the show that is now hosted by Jimmy Fallon.
The former “Tonight Show” host made a surprise appearance in order plug the series premiere of his CNBC reality show “Jay Leno‘s Garage.”
The iconic late night host also recently addressed why he didn’t make an appearance at David Letterman‘s “Late Show” finale earlier this year.
“Well, I asked Dave to do a 10-second tape for us [when I left]. Anything, just, ‘Leno who?’ They said no, they didn’t want to do it,” he told AdWeek. “Well, why am I going to run all the way to New York? I mean, quid pro quo. I just said, ‘No, that’s kind of silly.’”
Leno has always maintained that he feels “loyalty” toward NBC for his decades on “The Tonight Show,” and singled out network late night hosts Fallon and Seth Meyers as the only shows he still watches in their respective time slots.
He also revealed the highlights — and lowlights — of his job as host of “The Tonight Show.”
“Doing the monologue every day was great fun. That was 80 percent of my day — writing the jokes,” he said, however, “I don’t miss a lot of publicists. My favorite one we had was some ice skater who had won some gold medals, and then 10 years later, she’s in Playboy.
“She comes and the publicist pulled me aside: “We’re not discussing the Playboy issue.” I’ve never said this before, but I said, ‘Why don’t you take your client and go home. She’s only here because she took her clothes off in a magazine after winning gold.’ I mean, I’m not going to insult her. I’m not going to make her feel cheap. But if you don’t want to discuss it, I can get a comic here in six minutes.”
“Jay Leno‘s Garage” was a popular web series hosted by the TV personality, which is making its cable debut Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET on CNBC.