Comedian Pete Lee Finds Levity With Jimmy Fallon About Palisades Fire: “My House Burned Down. I Can Tell Jokes About This”

Comedian Pete Lee found an unconventional way to deal with the loss of his home in the Palisades fire: he went on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon Thursday to joke about it.

Considered a regular on the NBC late night show because of Fallon’s affection for him and his comedy, Lee started his appearance by saying “I don’t mean to be a bummer. This is a comedy show. I’m a comedian, but my house burned down yesterday.”

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Fallon then displayed a before and after picture of Lee’s oceanfront home.

“The producers asked me, they’re like, ‘are you sure you even want to do the show?’ And I was like, yeah. I want to do this. This feels therapeutic,” said Lee, who once got a standing ovation on The Tonight Show for his standup. “It also gave me something to focus on …I go Jimmy, I might cry. Like it’s totally possible that I might cry. By the way, there’s a take that comedians have been doing like, ‘hey, don’t feel sorry for these people in the Palisades. They’re all rich.’ I’m not rich. Okay?”

Lee talked about posting about the loss of his home on Instagram and how he was crying so hard that he sounded like “pulling a straw in and out of a fast food cup.”

After the fire, Lee told Fallon, he immediately started writing down jokes. “I learned something Jimmy that when your house burns down, dry January is over,” he said. “I got so drunk. I was drinking like prohibition is going to start up again tomorrow.”

He also made a crack about watching his home in flames on CBS News while he was at a friend’s home. “My friend goes, ‘which one is your house?’ And I go, the orange one. I used to be white but now it’s blaze orange. Dude, my house looked like the logo for a Guy Fieri restaurant.”

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