Jimmy Fallon Photo: Frazer Harrison
There’s some good news for fans of playing popular music with toy instruments, that “apology notes” bit, and the timeless comedic art of “breaking” today, as NBC has extended Jimmy Fallon’s contract as the host of The Tonight Show through the end of 2021. That almost certainly means that Jimmy Fallon will be sticking around, but history has shown us that NBC telling someone they’re hosting The Tonight Show doesn’t always mean they get to keep hosting The Tonight Show. Either way, Jimmy Fallon is currently the host of The Tonight Show and he will continue to be the host of The Tonight Show until the end of next year—assuming he doesn’t get another extension or Jay Leno shows up again and decides that he would rather have the job again. Do we make a similar joke every time something happens with The Tonight Show? Yeah, probably, but repeating a joke has never stopped us before.
This comes from Deadline, which notes that this extension comes as Fallon’s Tonight Show has a new showrunner (Jamie Granet-Bederman, stepping in for Gavin Purcell, who left to pursue a development deal with Universal Television). Also, apparently NBC is pulling for a Joe Biden win tomorrow since it will most likely mean “more of the levity that Fallon provides” in comparison to the political commentary of contemporaries like Stephen Colbert, whose Late Show started trouncing Fallon in the ratings during the Trump regime. Plus there’s the fact that the media will have fewer excuses to bring up that time Fallon playfully tousled Donald Trump’s hair if Biden wins. We’ll still bring it up all the time, but it won’t be as justified. But yeah, The Tonight Show will be more fun if Biden wins, and that’s as good a reason as any to hope things work out that way. Well, maybe not a good reason, but a reason, certainly.
