One thing that sets him apart from his fellow hosts is his youthful love of all things pop culture. “My monologues will be more entertainment focused,” he says. “I really don’t know much about politics and sports. I’ve started reading all the papers, but before I did ‘Weekend Update,’ I only read USA Today. I liked the colors.” Concentrating more on, say, Britney’s love life than on Obama’s stimulus package may prove a boon, especially now that Leno has signed on to do a show at 10 p.m. “Leno’s going to be doing his great riffs on the day’s news at 10, and Conan will be doing the same thing at 11:30, and by 12:30, it’s like, okay, what are you going to talk about? I’d need to do stuff exclusively from, like, BBC News. People would be like, ‘I guess that’s funny…in India.’”
Nevertheless, he retains his trademark relaxed enthusiasm when he talks about the role of the late-night host as a sort of guide through public triumphs and tragedies. “Watching Dave Letterman after 9/11, as a New Yorker, I was like, ‘Wow, that’s exactly how I feel…,’” he says. “And hopefully I can be a voice of America like that; hopefully people will say, ‘I wonder what Jimmy Fallon thinks.’”
The only thing Fallon seems truly worried about is what will happen if he’s a great success. “If this works, it’s all you do,” he says. “There is no career after this. Seinfeld said to me: ‘If you’re good at this, you can’t quit. You do this till you die. It’s a Pope job.’” But it’s a fate he seems to have already embraced. “I can see myself settling into this chair,” he says, “and being here for a long time.”
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