Jimmy Fallon is sitting in a crummy-looking chair in his new corner office on the seventh floor of NBC’s Rockefeller Center headquarters, a decent space with a decent view, but hardly the setting in which one imagines a talk-show titan conducting business. The drab old furniture is temporary—“I gotta get Thom Filicia in here,” says Fallon, referencing the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy design guru. But the comedian, who will take over Late Night on NBC in March when Conan O’Brien jumps to The Tonight Show, is hardly the type to pull a diva act over upholstery—or anything, for that matter.
In fact, Fallon looks perfectly comfortable reclining in this beat-up armchair the color of days-old oatmeal, talking into the tiny microphone that’s hooked to the collar of his untucked button-down. He is recording a voiceover for one of the short videos he’s been posting almost daily on the Late Night With Jimmy Fallon Web site. Lorne Michaels, the show’s executive producer, came up with the idea of the “Webisodes” as a way of both attracting advance fans and getting Fallon, who’s done movies for the five years since he left Saturday Night Live, back into the groove of interacting with an audience. In this case, the audience is virtual, and interaction involves viewer comments left on the Web site. “They are just brutally honest,” Fallon, 34, says softly. “I’m embracing it. When it’s constructive, it’s good. They’re like, ‘You touch your hair too much. You say “um” too much.’ And you’re like, ‘You’re right, I gotta stop that.’ But when it’s like, ‘Jimmy Fallon’s a douche bag,’ what am I gonna do? I don’t wanna be one. But I don’t know what to do differently to make that guy like me.”
Today’s Webisode is a humorous meditation on New Year’s resolutions, and creating it essentially involves Fallon being filmed in his office by Gavin Purcell, a young coproducer whom he hired away from Attack of the Show, a technology-oriented pop-culture variety hour that airs to a cult following on cable channel G4TV. “I’m going to quit running up stairs two or three at a time,” Fallon says in a low, contemplative tone that’s reminiscent of Jack Handey’s classic “Deep Thoughts” bit from SNL. “It’s dangerous, and it’s uncalled for. I will stop referring to my food as ‘fuel,’” he continues, “as in, ‘I’ve gotta get fuel in me, and quick.’”
A couple of writers, all clad in the requisite slacker-wear, observe from couches, spontaneously suggesting new lines and offering criticisms of Fallon’s delivery. “I’d do that part much slower,” says one, and Fallon obliges. There is no star in this room, no outsize ego, just a bunch of guys (six of the show’s seven writers are men) trying to make one another laugh.
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