Unraveling The Truth Of Jimmy Fallon
Jimmy Fallon holds the most prestigious gig in late-night, host of NBC's "The Tonight Show." It's not hyperbole to point out that Fallon — who took over as host in 2014 — paid his dues before stepping into the shoes of predecessors including Jay Leno and Johnny Carson.
Prior to "The Tonight Show," Fallon spent several years as host of "Late Night," which he took over from Conan O'Brien in 2009. Of course, his fans are well aware that Fallon got his start on "Saturday Night Live," joining the show in 1998 and exiting in 2004. Fallon's profile during his "SNL" tenure was elevated when he was tapped to co-anchor Weekend Update alongside Tina Fey, arguably the show's cornerstone since its early days. In between his "SNL" and "Late Night" jobs, the comedian embarked on a movie career, which resulted in such films as "Taxi" and "Fever Pitch," starring alongside Queen Latifah and Drew Barrymore, respectively. In addition to all that, Fallon also recorded the 2012 comedy album "Blow Your Pants Off," which won a Grammy Award the following year.
All told, Fallon has been keeping audiences laughing for a solid quarter-century. Yet how much do his fans really know about this talented TV host?
Jimmy Fallon almost became a priest
Jimmy Fallon grew up in a Catholic household, hardly surprising when you consider his mother's somewhat unique background. "My mom was a nun at one point. Isn't that bizarre?" Fallon revealed during a visit to "The Howard Stern Show." According to Fallon, his mother wasn't married to the church for all that long. "For like a week," he said. "But technically it counts." His parents, in fact, got together after she'd quit being a nun, leading Fallon to quip, "She married Jesus as her first husband," with co-host Robin Quivers interjecting, "And then cheated on Him!"
Fallon revealed that he himself once flirted with joining the church as a priest by becoming an altar boy. "I loved it. I really got into it," he shared on the radio show of his ambitions, but admitted that the notion didn't survive beyond the eighth grade. Appearing at the New Yorker Festival, Fallon shared more memories of his near-miss with the priesthood. "I loved the whole idea of it," Fallon said, as reported by Page Six. "I loved dressing up. I loved the smell of incense. I mean, I loved the whole idea."
Appearing on NPR's "Fresh Air," Fallon explained that he has come to realize there were showbiz motivations behind his interest in becoming a priest. "It's my first experience on stage is as an altar boy," he recounted. "You're on stage next to the priest, I'm a co-star."
His teacher predicted he would be a late-night host
Once he moved on from the idea of the priesthood, young Jimmy Fallon set his sights on the entertainment industry. During an episode of "The Tonight Show," Fallon displayed his eighth-grade yearbook, opened to a page in which his teacher made predictions about the futures of her students. The camera panned down the page to a photo of his younger self sitting in front of a computer. He read the teacher's prediction: "James Fallon will replace David Letterman on the Late Night Show." Fallon jokingly added, "I want to go to the racetrack with this teacher ... pretty close."
By the time he hit adolescence, Fallon had become obsessed with "Saturday Night Live." So intent was he to not miss even the tiniest nuance, he insisted on watching each episode alone. "I just didn't want anyone ruining my experience," he told Vanity Fair. "No small talk. I wanted to see the sketches, the new characters, what the angle was."
His parents leniently allowed him to enhance his viewing experience by enjoying a few brewskis, despite his not being old enough to legally drink. "I'd just sit by myself, and I would have a six-pack of Pabst," he said. "I don't know if I made it all the way through the six, but I'd just sit there and watch the show. And tape it."
His big break came from a comedy contest
During his teen years living in upstate New York, Jimmy Fallon discovered he had a talent for mimicry. One day, his mother was listening to the radio when she caught wind of a contest seeking the funniest undiscovered comedian in the Hudson Valley. "It was at Bananas Comedy Club in Poughkeepsie, New York, and it was two or three minutes of an impression," Fallon recalled in an interview with USA Today. "My mom said, 'Jimmy, you should do this, because you do all of these voices in your bedroom, and I can hear you!' And I'm like ... 'What else can you hear? Because this is creepy.'"
Fallon decided to give it a go. He put together a bit in which he impersonated 12 celebrities vying to be the spokesperson for a Troll doll — and won! "I won a lot of money — I want to say, like, $500. So for two minutes of work — and I had been working since I was 13 — that was so much money," Fallon recalled. "I freaked out and said, 'This is my future! This is it!' The cold hard truth was, no. You don't make $500 every two minutes."
Encouraged, Fallon began signing up for talent shows, and wound up honing his standup skills when he landed a gig as the emcee at that same comedy club. "On weekends I would do standup, adding more voices and then eventually adding music," he said.
Fallon made his TV debut in Spin City
Nearly graduating from the College of St. Rose, Jimmy Fallon decided to drop out of college and move to Los Angeles to pursue a career in comedy. He spent his first few months there sleeping on a friend's couch until finding his footing. "I did improv, I took classes at The Groundlings, I was very lucky out there," Fallon told USA Today. "I got to do a lot of cool things." One of those "cool things" was landing a bit part in the Michael J. Fox sitcom "Spin City," Fallon's very first screen credit, playing a photographer.
Interestingly, another future star may have been responsible for Fallon landing the gig. When Chris Evans appeared on "The Tonight Show," the "Avengers" actor confirmed that he was working as an intern in the "Spin City" casting office at that time, in 1998. "Did I give you your first job?" Evans asked. "I feel like I owe my whole career to you!" Fallon joked.
Looking back at his audition, Fallon recalled, "I didn't do anything that special, so I'm like, 'I'm not gonna get this.'" Evans, however, pointed to the randomness of the casting process, remembering that he'd have a huge stack of envelopes containing headshots and resumes on his desk — from which his boss would pull out two or three and then toss the rest into the trash. "And you were just like, 'Wow, this industry is brutal!'" Evans added.
He tanked his first audition for Saturday Night Live
It wasn't long after booking his "Spin City" role that Jimmy Fallon landed an audition for "Saturday Night Live." "I went to the Comic Strip in New York City, and I did my Troll doll act, and I totally bombed it and it was terrible," Fallon told USA Today about the reaction from his audition audience, revealing it was Tracy Morgan who was hired for the show instead of him.
Fallon returned to Los Angeles, feeling as if his dream had slipped through his fingers. One year later, he was invited to audition again, but specifically instructed to lose the Troll doll. "I wrote a whole new act, came back to New York and auditioned on the stage of 'Saturday Night Live' ... I had a great audition," he recalled. After being repeatedly warned that "SNL" creator Lorne Michaels never laughs during auditions, Fallon was shocked when his impression of Adam Sandler did the trick. "And I made Lorne laugh — he put his head in his hands, and he laughed, and I thought, 'Wow!' I remember just floating out of there."
Tina Fey also watched that audition and recounted that she realized immediately what Fallon could bring to the show. "He's one of two people I've ever seen who was completely ready to be on the show. Kristen Wiig is the other one," Fey told Vanity Fair. "And Jimmy was ready — like, if there had been a show to do that night."
His SNL crackups irked the rest of the cast
One of Lorne Michaels' first "Saturday Night Live" edicts was to insist that the cast members not break character and laugh during a sketch, something that had become a staple of "The Carol Burnett Show," but which Michaels felt was a ploy to elicit cheap laughs.
Jimmy Fallon, however, became known for his frequent onstage crackups, to the point that the act of breaking character has since come to be known as "Jimmy Falloning." While audiences seemed to like it, his giggle fits weren't always appreciated by his "SNL" co-stars. That was particularly true of Tracy Morgan. "That's taking all the attention off of everybody else and putting it on you, like, 'Oh, look at me, I'm the cute one,'" Morgan told Penthouse, as reported by Page Six. "I told him not to do that s*** in my sketches, so he never did."
Fallon has been insistent that he never intended to crack up all those times, but simply couldn't help himself. "I think you should not break. I never did it on purpose, and I always felt bad if I did, but I tried my hardest not to," he told Interview. "And then people started knowing that I was an easy laugh, so Will Ferrell or Molly Shannon would go out of their way to make me laugh ... There's probably a bunch of sketches where I laughed that no one talks about, but there's a few that got famous."
He once modeled for Calvin Klein
One of the strangest footnotes in Jimmy Fallon's career was his short-lived side gig as a model. In fact, he was tapped to appear in some print advertisements for Calvin Klein in 2002. "I really snuck that one in there," Jimmy told Paper (via Good Housekeeping) back in 2001. "When it was all done, no one made fun of me or anything. As a comedian, you don't really think that you're good-looking, so when someone asks you if you'd like to model Calvin Klein, you're like, 'Oh my God, yes — yes, I want the billboard to be right over the Improv."
Fallon resurrected his ad campaign in a 2019 Instagram post. "This was a great year for Calvin Klein," he wrote. He also displayed the pics on "The Tonight Show," where he compared his Calvin Klein spread to that of guest Jamie Dornan. Dornan's ad features the "Fifty Shades of Grey" star displaying his ripped physique while wearing only a pair of CK undies, while Fallon is fully clothed in his ad. "Since when does Calvin Klein make mechanics' outfits? I couldn't have more clothes on," Fallon quipped, as reported by BuzzFeed.
Fallon referenced his ad during a different bit for "The Tonight Show," in which he wrote thank you notes. "Thank you, new Calvin Klein ad with Shawn Mendes, for being the second-hottest Calvin Klein ad of all time," Fallon quipped, as his ad appeared onscreen.
He totally blew a chance to date Nicole Kidman
Nicole Kidman's 2015 appearance on "The Tonight Show" proved to be exceptionally memorable when she revealed she was once interested in dating Jimmy Fallon — but he totally botched it. It all began when a friend called him up and said he was with Kidman, who wanted to meet with him about a potential role in her upcoming comedy, "Bewitched."
Fallon admitted he panicked when the friend told him they were 10 minutes away. "I don't have dinner parties, I don't have people over to my house, I have video games and sneakers," he explained. At that point in the story, Kidman interjected, "I just remember I liked you." Fallon appeared stunned to realize, all those years later, that Kidman's intentions were romantic. "Wait, what?" he blurted out. "Did I date Nicole Kidman?! Did we go on a date?"
According to Kidman's recollection, Fallon was a dud, hardly saying a word to her while they hung out at his apartment. "And you wouldn't talk. You didn't say anything, you were like, 'Hey [mumbling].'" Then, she recalled that Fallon completely doused whatever tiny spark of romance that may have remained when he began playing a video game. "It was bad," Kidman told the audience, remembering that after about 90 minutes she decided it was time to bail. "I left and went, 'Okay, no chemistry,'" she added. "I thought 'Maybe he's gay.'"
He's known to spontaneously break into song
Jimmy Fallon has spent decades as a performer, and his urge to entertain is apparently one that he doesn't easily shut on and off. In fact, according to various reports, Fallon has been known to unleash his musical gifts, often times when the cameras are off. One of those occasions was reported by Dan's Papers in 2013, when Fallon broke into song at the Old Stove Pub in the Hamptons, where he was filmed leading a raucous singalong of Billy Joel's "Piano Man."
Fallon pulled a similar stunt while vacationing in the Bahamas. According to the Caribbean Journal, the comedian led a group of patrons to sing Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," accompanied by a piano player at the Graycliff Hotel and Restaurant in Nassau. As seen in a video uploaded to Facebook, Fallon then segued into Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock & Roll," and then went into Freddie Scott's "(You) Got What I Need." He then sang a second Queen song, "We Will Rock You," and then launched into a Backstreet Boys number. It turns out "The Tonight Show's" love for musical segments — like the Wheel of Musical Impressions series — stems from the host himself.
This is why he gave Seth Meyers a giant pickle
Jimmy Fallon is part of a late-night tradition at NBC — which happens to involve a gargantuan pickle. When Fallon was nearing the end of his run as host of "Late Night" before taking over "The Tonight Show," he welcomed new host Seth Meyers to the show. During their conversation, Fallon recalled that when the show's former host, David Letterman, exited, he presented incoming host Conan O'Brien with a giant faux pickle, which O'Brien proudly kept in his office.
When O'Brien left to host "The Tonight Show" (albeit not for long), he passed the pickle to Fallon, who in turn left it with Meyers. When Fallon received the pickle from O'Brien, there was a note attached, which read (as reported by People), "Whenever you're done — which won't be for a long time — make sure you pass it on to the next sap. Knock 'em dead."
Interestingly enough, that isn't Fallon's only experience with pickles. As he revealed during a visit to "Live with Kelly and Ryan," he began making his own pickles as a hobby. "I know, I'm really into it," he said, revealing that he received pickling advice from none other than celebrity chef Martha Stewart.
He nearly ruined his cameo in Band of Brothers
While Jimmy Fallon was still a cast member on "Saturday Night Live," he began booking acting roles. Among these was a brief cameo in HBO's World War II miniseries "Band of Brothers." During an episode of "The Tonight Show," he recalled that his inability to drive nearly wrecked the whole thing.
"That episode was directed by Tom Hanks, and I was so nervous," Fallon said, as recounted by Parade. "I had to just drive a jeep and say my line, 'Good luck, boys.'" One big complication, however, was the fact that Fallon was tasked with driving a vintage WWII jeep, with a standard transmission. "I don't know how to drive," Fallon explained. "And I just say my line, and I'm supposed to look really heroic."
Try as he could, Fallon couldn't get the vehicle to move. As a result, Hanks enlisted a couple of crew members to push the jeep while Fallon was filmed reciting his line. "So I'm so nervous," he admitted. "There's like 200 extras. So I drive, I hit my spot. I go, 'Good luck, boys,' and I forget to press the clutch, and these two dudes are pushing the car, and the wheels aren't moving because the clutch isn't in." Somehow, the moment was captured by the camera, although just barely. "I don't know how they made it work," he added, "but they made it work."
He had a mole removed on live television
There's no denying that Jimmy Fallon has brought viewers a plethora of memorable moments on "The Tonight Show," from impersonating Neil Young while singing a duet of Willow Smith's "Whip My Hair" with Bruce Springsteen, to getting his ear pierced (for real!) by Harrison Ford.
However, in terms of sheer surgical shock value, nothing can top Fallon's 2011 visit to "The Dr. Oz Show" to have a mole on his hand removed and then biopsied. "Jimmy arrived in a hospital gown and, despite some nerves, he put his trust in the hands of Dr. Oz and physician Dr. Arthur Perry," a press release stated, as reported by UPI. "As he sat in the operating room chair and doctors made incisions and sutures, Jimmy turned his eyes away, unable to watch." In order to take his mind off of what was going on, Fallon sang the national anthem while the audience cheered him on.
According to Dr. Mehmet Oz, Fallon was far from the ideal patient. "We had to struggle to get him downstairs to the studio after wrestling him to the ground. He yelled and screamed throughout this. God knows why. It was a tiny little needle," he joked in the press release. "What a cry baby. I didn't even get his co-pay. I'm going to send him a bill. A big bill." Ultimately, the news was good, with the biopsy determining that the mole was not cancerous.
Two flavors of Ben & Jerry's were created in his honor
Ben & Jerry's develops ice cream flavors for certain iconic celebrities, including Cherry Garcia, the creamy tribute to the late guitarist for the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia. Late-night comedian Jimmy Fallon also has a popular variety of the brand's ice cream to honor him. That flavor is The Tonight Dough, boasting two different types of cookie dough — both chocolate chip and peanut butter — within a mixture of caramel and chocolate ice cream.
That isn't the only ice cream to have been created with Fallon in mind. Prior to his becoming host of "The Tonight Show," Ben & Jerry's developed another variety referencing his gig hosting on "The Late Show." That ice cream was Late Night Snack, introduced in 2011, and most notable for the addition of chocolate-covered potato chips mixed in to provide some crunch.
When Fallon left "The Late Show," so too did Late Night Snack vanish from shelves. In early 2015, the flavor was gone. "It was a [slow] phase-out," a representative for Ben & Jerry's told Yahoo! Life. "It is pretty unlikely that there is any left on shelves at this point."
He met his wife through former co-star Drew Barrymore
Jimmy Fallon's 2005 comedy "Fever Pitch" was significant for a number of reasons. Not only did the film chronicle the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series for the first time in more than 80 years, making the film was also how he came to know his future wife, Nancy Juvonen. Juvonen first met Fallon on the set of "Saturday Night Live" in 2004, while supporting her best friend, Drew Barrymore, when she hosted the show.
It was while filming "Fever Pitch" alongside Barrymore on location in Boston, however, that Juvonen — one of the film's producers — really began crushing on Fallon. "But then on the set, we were on location and that really creates this camp feel for everybody. And he was just so friendly and fun and welcoming and he loved music," Juvonen recalled on "The Tonight Show." What sealed the deal for her was when she saw Fallon joyfully playing with the young children of another of the film's producers. "So I think that's when my heart just sort of melted even more," she added.
They got married in 2007 and welcomed two daughters: Winnie Rose, born in 2013, and Frances Cole, who arrived in 2014. Viewers came to know Fallon's wife and kids when he presented "The Tonight Show" from his home during the pandemic, with Juvonen operating the camera and their daughters often serving as guests.
The Tonight Show faced some ugly allegations
In September 2023, Rolling Stone published a shocking exposé, based on interviews with more than a dozen former and current staffers of "The Tonight Show." Those staffers alleged that Fallon had created a toxic workplace behind the scenes. Among the allegations were that Fallon had a mercurial temper (there were "good Jimmy days" and "bad Jimmy days"), which created fear of being on the receiving end of one of Fallon's angry outbursts. "It's a bummer because it was my dream job," one former "Tonight Show" staffer told the publication.
Fallon responded to the allegations from that article, but in private. "It's embarrassing and I feel so bad," Fallon told his staff, according to some who spoke with Rolling Stone. "Sorry if I embarrassed you and your family and friends ... I feel so bad I can't even tell you." He did not, however, offer any public acknowledgement of the allegations, which angered one of the former employees who spoke to RS for that original story.
"Would I have loved that apology to some extent, whether it be from NBC or Jimmy directly, have gotten to former staff? Yes," the staffer told Rolling Stone. "I would think that that would be the most accountable and responsible thing to do, especially when you consider the turnover that has happened since 'The Tonight Show' started and so many people who spoke up no longer work at the show."