The allegations surrounding the behind-the-scenes drama of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon sound like the stuff of a TV movie, and maybe there should be one. Frankly, HBO already created a great movie about the personal rivalries that set the stage for deciding who would be the new host for The Tonight Show following Johnny Carson’s retirement in the 1990s. So why not make a sequel?
Following Carson’s retirement in the early ’90s, two comedic forces quickly became the standouts as obvious candidates for his replacement: Jay Leno and David Letterman. With Leno, a frequent guest host for The Tonight Show at the time, and Letterman hosting the talk show that aired afterward Late Night, it’s obvious why these two became rivals. The fascinating political struggle behind the scenes, which ultimately saw Leno crowned as Carson’s successor and Letterman the host of his rival show on another network, Late Show, is the subject of the excellent 1996 HBO drama The Late Shift.
What made The Late Shift great and why it needs a sequel
Despite sounding like the premise for a Hallmark original movie, The Late Shift is actually a compelling drama, thanks in part to a script co-penned by a New York Times reporter, Bill Carter, who wrote the original book on which the film is based. This basis in authenticity makes the entire movie feel like we are a fly on the wall of corporate boardrooms and talk show greenrooms. For the more famous characters, the film cast look-a-like actors, notably Daniel Roebuck as Leno and John Michael Higgins as Letterman. However, the unexpectedly crass and wholly fascinating performance by Kathy Bates as Leno’s bullish manager, Helen Kushnick, really shines in the movie.
There has been plenty of drama in the world of late-night talk shows, and The Tonight Show specifically since The Late Shift originally aired. If the latest allegations of the toxic workplace environment behind The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon is any indication, now would be the perfect time to consider a sequel to The Late Shift.
Finding the right storytelling approach for The Late Shift sequel about Jimmy Fallon
When it comes to the behind-the-scenes drama for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, it is a very different kind of story than the struggle for succession that we saw unfold in The Late Shift. Hence, the narrative for its sequel would probably benefit from an entirely different structure.
What we know about the allegations stems almost entirely from a Rolling Stone article citing two current and 14 former employees, all of whom remained anonymous for the piece, who claimed Fallon had engaged in erratic and sometimes abusive behavior, such as berating an employee in front of other staff members. Accusations also flew that some employees suspected Fallon had been intoxicated with alcohol or was nursing hangovers at work. It was also reported employees routinely let out sobs in guest dressing rooms due to the high-pressure environment made worse by frequent leadership changes.
To complicate things further, Jerry Seinfeld, who was referenced in the Rolling Stone article, publicly disputed one aspect of the story. The article claimed an employee said Seinfeld jokingly told Fallon to apologize to a cue card handler he criticized in front of the comedian. Though the employee characterized the moment as “awkward,” Seinfeld later clarified it wasn’t uncomfortable and didn’t play out the way it was recounted, from his point of view, calling it an “Idiotic twisting of events.”
Though Fallon reportedly later apologized for his behavior at work, that still leaves various points of view that don’t always consistently line up. Hence, rather than taking a straightforward biopic style of turning a true story into a movie, the Fallon drama would be perfect for receiving the Rashomon treatment. That is to say, the film can present the events as recounted by Fallon, the employees, Seinfeld, and others in a fragmented storytelling style. Each version of events will be slightly different, with the unspoken understanding that no human on Earth is a 100 percent reliable narrator, just like the Akira Kurosawa classic Rashomon so effectively conveyed.
Team Coco: The other The Late Shift sequel that absolutely needs to get made
If we’re going to be honest, the Fallon drama-related movie adaptation should actually be The Late Shift 3. You see, The Late Shift 2 should still be designated to the PR nightmare for NBC involving the botched succession of Conan O’Brien to take the throne of The Tonight Show more than a decade ago. What happened there is that O’Brien had become the host of The Tonight Show for a brief period, only for NBC to essentially change their minds on giving him the coveted timeslot and effectively reinstating Leno. The public largely took O’Brien’s side, birthing the slogan “Team Coco,” which is now the comedian’s brand of content.
From there, Fallon took over The Tonight Show from Leno in 2014. As we previously pointed out, all of this current Fallon drama might not even be playing out today had O’Brien and NBC not parted ways. It’s entirely possible that if O’Brien never left, he’d still be the host of The Tonight Show to this day.