Yahoo Lifestyle David Letterman Crashes Jimmy Fallon’s Monologue, Says He Used to Do a Show Like This… Minus the ‘Chuck E. Cheese Crap’
Late-night TV legend David Letterman returned to his former stomping grounds at 30 Rockefeller Plaza Monday for a surprise appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
His cameo doubled as a reunion with former bandleader Paul Shaffer, who’s filling in this week while Fallon’s house band The Roots is in rehearsals for Saturday Night Live’s celebratory weekend.
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“We used to do a show pretty much exactly like this,” Letterman told Fallon. However, “we didn’t do the Chuck E. Cheese crap.”
Fallon then offered Letterman the chance to take over the monologue — something that his longtime rival Jay Leno has done whenever he appears on Fallon’s Tonight Show — but he declined. After pretending to read several cue cards in preparation, Letterman declared that there were no jokes worth telling.
In a sign of just how much late-night TV has changed, Letterman then begrudgingly agreed to shoot a “viral video” with Fallon — which, as per usual, involved the 50-year-old Tonight Show host chasing a Gen-Z trend. That was followed by Letterman asking the audience if anyone had any tortillas on hand, which he then used to smack Fallon in the face.
Letterman has never before appeared opposite Fallon — either on Late Night or The Tonight Show. Since his Late Show retirement in 2015, Letterman has only ever been a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, The Late Late Show With James Corden and Late Night With Seth Meyers. In fact, at the height of the infamous Tonight Show debacle of 2010, which led to Conan O’Brien’s ouster and Leno’s return to 11:35, Letterman didn’t even seem to know who Fallon was, referring to the SNL alum as “Lonny Donagan” during a desk bit riffing on the mess over at NBC.
Watch Letterman’s Tonight Show appearance above, then hit the comments with your reactions.
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