It was an excellent morning for “Emilia Pérez,” “The Brutalist” and “Wicked,” which lead the nominees for the 97th Academy Awards, introduced early Thursday.
And because the countdown begins to Oscar night time on March 2, Jay Leno is rooting for first-time host Conan O’Brien.
“I think he’ll be great,” Leno, 74, solely instructed The Publish. “He’s a very funny guy. He’s very creative. I’ll watch, sure. He’ll do good.”
Clearly, there is no such thing as a unhealthy blood following all of the drama that went down between the 2 comedians after O’Brien changed Leno as host of “The Tonight Show” in 2009 and NBC arrange the latter with “The Jay Leno Show.” Seven months later, “Leno” was given the “Tonight” time slot and O’Brien left the present. And after serving because the “Tonight” host from 1992 to 2009, Leno returned to the late-night discuss present in 2010 for 4 extra years.
“You know something, that whole thing was really NBC trying to have their cake and eat it too, trying to please everybody at the same time,” stated Leno, who performs Ed Sullivan within the new film “Midas Man,” a biopic of Beatles supervisor Brian Epstein.
Though Leno has by no means hosted the Oscars himself, he has been provided the coveted gig.
“I did get asked twice,” he stated. “And I sat down with my employees and stated, ‘What do we do? We have to do a show the day before the Oscars. We have to do a show the day after the Oscars. Do we save our best jokes for our show? Or do we give all of our best jokes to the Oscar show?’
“And we realized that when you see somebody on TV every night, it’s not special to see them hosting the Oscars. That’s my feeling. You’re on TV too much. I think Conan will be good, because he’s not on every night like he used to be … I think he’ll do fine.”
Leno did get some useful recommendation about changing into the Oscars host from his “Tonight Show” predecessor, Johnny Carson, who presided over the Academy Awards 5 occasions between 1979 and 1984.
“I asked Johnny, and he said, ‘You’re either too funny or you’re not funny enough.’ That was a criticism,” Leno stated. “This is the industry and now you’re here making fun of it. Johnny really felt it was a no-win situation.”
After ending his “Tonight Show” run — for the second time — in 2014, Leno has seen the late-night panorama change.
“When [David] Letterman and I were competing, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed all of it,” he stated. “And it’s a really hard job. I commend all the guys, the men and women doing it now. It’s just different now. In those days of appointment television, people turned on Letterman and I to see what we had to say about whatever the story was. Now you can just get it anytime without having to watch the show.”
He added, “I think we got out just in time.”
And after years of chatting up visitors on “The Tonight Show,” Leno doesn’t tune in to at the moment’s late-night TV talkers.
“The reason I don’t is more to do with the commercials,” he stated. “It’s five minutes of show, five minutes of commercials, six minutes of show, eight minutes of commercials. When you can watch the entire ‘Godfather’ trilogy uninterrupted streaming at the same time.”
“If I see Jake from State Farm again, I’m gonna pull my hair out,” the comic stated. “They just run the same commercials over and over. I can’t stand it.”
