When I was growing up, late-night TV viewers were either Jay Leno fans or David Letterman fans, with little overlap. In the early '90s, during the Late Night Wars, the heir apparent to Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show, Letterman, was passed over for Leno, leading to a rivalry between the two. Now, over 30 years later, Dave is discussing a possible reunion with his former rival, doing so in true Letterman style.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, the man who helped build The Late Show as direct competition for Leno’s Tonight Show talked about the franchise’s cancellation, the current state of late-night TV and whether he would ever have his former competitor on his Netflix interview series, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction. When asked about the possibility of a reunion, he said:
We think about it from time to time. This is not a bad idea. In answer to your question, of course I would love to. I’m sorry, did I say ‘love’? Of course I can imagine having Jay.
That is pure Letterman. Even when he is saying something generous, he cannot resist sanding the sentiment down with a little dry sarcasm. Would he even be David Letterman if he didn’t toss in one perfectly timed verbal elbow?
Still, the former CBS host also made it clear that his feelings about his old rival are not entirely defined by past network drama. He spoke about how much he admired Leno before The Tonight Show, back when the car-loving comic was known first and foremost as a killer stand-up comic. He added:
When I was a kid, he was the funniest man in comedy. So, just based on that alone, why wouldn’t you?
That gets at the strange, complicated place Leno occupies in comedy history. Before he became the face of The Tonight Show, Leno was widely respected as a sharp, relentless stand-up. A comedian’s comedian, in a lot of ways. But, after the Late Night Wars, fair or not, many people started looking at the stand-up veteran differently, especially within the comedy world.
That reputation only became more complicated years later when the NBC host found himself at the center of another late-night mess. In the late 2000s, he stepped down from The Tonight Show and handed the reins to Conan O’Brien. Seven months later, O’Brien was out, and the denim-loving late-night staple returned to his old time slot, where he stayed for nearly four more years.
During that stretch, Johnny Carson’s eventual successor became the symbol of the company man. He was also the punching bag for just about every late-night host on TV at the time. Jimmy Kimmel famously dressed up as Jay and later agreed to appear on Leno’s show, only to spend the interview taking shots at the whole Tonight Show shake-up.
The king of dry late-night sarcasm did not exactly stay quiet, either. He came out in support of Conan and cracked plenty of jokes at Leno’s expense on The Late Show. If there was a late-night scoreboard back then, Letterman was not pretending to be neutral.
There doesn’t seem to be hard feelings, at least from David Letterman, or at least not hard enough to keep him from imagining a sit-down with Jay Leno on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction. Honestly, that would be fascinating TV.
Nothing is set in stone yet, though. Until it is, fans of late-night TV and its messy history will just have to see how Netflix's streaming schedule shakes out. In the meantime, all six seasons of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction are streaming with a Netflix subscription.
