For Jay Leno, laughter has been one of the best medication in dealing with spouse Mavis’ ongoing battle with dementia.
“I still make her laugh every day, and that’s always fun,” Leno, 74, advised The Publish.
In actual fact, the couple — who’ve been married for 45 years — share some laughs rewatching a few of his humorous moments from internet hosting “The Tonight Show.”
“We go back on YouTube — they have all the ‘Headlines’ [segments] that we did over the years. And my wife enjoys those, and it’s like she forgets that she just saw it, so she laughs again at the same jokes. So for a comedian, that’s great.”
Final 12 months, Leno revealed that Mavis, 78, suffers from superior dementia and was granted conservatorship over his spouse. Whereas court docket paperwork disclosed that she generally doesn’t acknowledge him, the comic mentioned that “it’s OK.”
“She’s not in any pain. Anybody that’s dealt with this knows that,” he mentioned. “You know, I enjoy her company. I would still rather be with her than not be with her … But is it ideal? No.”
Regardless of the challenges they now face, the spouses nonetheless preserve a few of their particular rituals.
“When ‘The Tonight Show’ finished, I would just come home every night and work on the monologue and be with my wife, and we’d watch a movie or watch TV,” mentioned Leno. “And it’s pretty much like that now, same thing, except now I just kind of go, ‘You know, honey, you know what this movie is about?’ You just have to explain.”
After internet hosting “The Tonight Show” from 1992 to 2009 after which once more from 2010 to 2014, Leno at present performs Ed Sullivan in “Midas Man,” the brand new biopic of Beatles supervisor Brian Epstein streaming on Olyn.
“I just got a phone call one day from England,” mentioned Leno of getting the position of the TV legend who gave The Beatles their US TV debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
“I loved it. It was enjoyable. I did this perhaps three years in the past, and I questioned, ‘What happened to that movie that just disappeared?’ It went by means of a few completely different administrators, after which impulsively in the future it popped up.
“It’s a pleasant movie,” he continued. “It really does hark back to that era of optimism.”
And as a comic, Leno continues to be booked and busy.
“I’m trying to get out of stuff, so I’m fine,” he mentioned with fun. “I enjoy being a comedian. I enjoy going on the road. I’m not a Netflix special guy. I don’t want to do my act once and get a huge check. I’d rather do it hundreds of times for small checks.”
