Jay Leno

By STV News always wants as much real estate as they can get, and so does entertainment. I don't know that I've ever met [ABC News chief] David Westin, to be honest with you. I just stay out of it. I'm the action figure in their playground, you know, in their bat cave. But it's weird to be part of this circle...

By Seth NBC Also Orders Three Additional Episodes for Final Season of "ER" – Moving Two-hour Series Finale to April 2 These and other announcements were made today by Angela Bromstad, President, Primetime Entertainment, NBC and Universal Media Studios.

By Kyle Buchanan So Mr. Zucker turned to another NBC Universal property, the USA cable network. Mr. Leno could have 11 p.m. (even though that would have cut into Mr. O’Brien’s “Tonight Show”). “That sort of seemed like living in the basement of your own house,” Mr. Leno said. “I’m still old enough to think network is t...

By McCluskey and Miller Shatner's Raw Nerve [10 PM, Biography Channel] - Jenna Jameson, Jimmy Kimmel. Somehow, we don't think Captain Kirk is worried about Leno barging in during his slot. USA Today describes Shatner's interviewing style as "part Charlie Rose, part James Lipton and part Dr. Phil." That's good com...

By McCluskey and Miller The Tonight Show with Jay Leno [11:35 PM, NBC] - Senator John McCain returns to the public eye as he sits down with Jay Leno to discuss the election results. One assumes he'll be jovial and frank in tonight's interview, though he probably won't give the honest answers to the Palin questions. T...

By McCluskey and Miller The Tonight Show with Jay Leno [11:30 PM, NBC] - Tune in tonight to see Jay Leno make benign, lighthearted conversation with Michelle Obama, Chris Rock and former Blowfish Darius Rucker. The ultra-rare African-American guest trifecta is reason enough to endure the monologue. TiVo KILL

By STV So Jay Leno must have said no to that primetime variety show NBC had in mind for him, because Defamer HQ opened for business this morning with flocks of winged monkeys dropping pamphlets promoting Rosie's Variety Show, Rosie O'Donnell's live, hour-long mash of song, dance, comedy and te...

By Kyle Buchanan Though Ellen DeGeneres still hasn't announced a major donation to the campaign to fight California's homophobic Proposition 8 (despite hosting a fundraiser for the animal rights-friendly Proposition 2), she at least denounced the proposition last night while guesting on The Tonig...

By Kyle Buchanan At least McCain's team will always have the hospitable Tonight Show with Jay Leno as a safe haven — though only until next year! New host Conan O'Brien may seem inoffensive enough, but we hear that NBC already has their censor button ready... MAD ABOUT LETTERMAN [NY Post]

By Kyle Buchanan Following John McCain's tough appearance on The View last week, members of the McCain family are finally taking their gloves off. First, wife Cindy complained at a fundraiser that Whoopi & Co. had "picked our bones clean," and now potential First Daughter Meghan McCain has waded into...

By Seth Armed with his own circuitous logic and a disarming smile, Shia LaBeouf has proven himself as masterful at one-handed P.R. spin as he is twirling a stiletto. Remember how he turned his Walgreen's arrest into a hilarious comedy pitch about a young movie star's escalating feud with a drugstor...

By Seth Sitting down with Rolling Stone for a rare interview, David Letterman opened up on his two-step process of alienating and courting some of his most famous guest-emies—towering pop culture figures like Madonna, Oprah, and Richard Simmons—as well as his own plans for retirement. ("I wou...

By Mark Graham Now that Jay Leno has entered the lame duck phase of his relationship with the Peacock network, it appears that he's decided to abuse his position as America's top-rated celebrity interviewer as fuel for his sexual reveries for many moons to come. While interviewing a crestfallen Scarle...

By Mark Graham · NBC announced that Jay Leno will be abdicating his Tonight Show throne on May 29, 2009 while a disguised Jay Leno sat in the audience cracking wise. Meanwhile, Jimmy Fallon will be spinning his wheels online for a few months before they let him loose on air.

By STV The news comes just as the Peacock is said to be courting exiting Tonight Show host Jay Leno for a similar gig. It's possible O'Donnell's series would be a fallback in case Leno defects to ABC after his late-night reign ends next year (as many expect he will). NBC was unavailable for comment.

By Seth At NBC's TCA press conference yesterday, network co-chairs Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff confirmed their plans to eject Jay Leno from The Tonight Show via jerry-rigged catapult device on May 29, 2009. That gives them only three rushed days to erect a new set and change the dressing room d...

By Seth Maybe it came out of concerns over his tepidly reviewed performance at Just For Laughs, where the straight-faced-challenged former SNL star delivered on the audience's darkest fears with groaner ditties like "You Spit When You Talk" and "Car Wash For Peace." In any case, the strange tal...

By Molly Friedman After hungrily leaning forward in his sweaty seat to probe Justin with those standard women's magazine questions ("Are you engaged?!" and "Is anyone pregnant?!"), Timberlake does his best to affect charm by avoiding the issues at hand and turning to his well-worn, though never well-r...

By Molly Friedman Poor Ryan Phillippe. First, he earned a reputation as a shameful cheating husband who hurt the precious piece of Oscar-winning apple pie that is Reese Witherspoon, then gay-basher-turned-gay-lover Jay Leno urged Ryan to look “gay” on national television, and then his role in Stop Loss...

By Molly Friedman Everything is truly coming up roses for gay love in California this spring. The state’s gay marriage ban was lifted, Ellen DeGeneres got down on one trousered knee, and tonight, everyone’s favorite homophobic “comic” Jay Leno will put on his gayest face, prove just how much he adores boys...

By Mark Graham · Certainly, Tom Cruise has had better weeks. MGM tried to spin Valkyrie's second release date pushback as a B.O. ploy, but we knew better. · Artie Lange and Charlton Heston both had shitty weeks, too. Artie resigned from the Howard Stern Show and Charlton, well, he died.

By Molly Friedman We will leave the decision up to you, the educated Defamer reader, to decide whether or not Page's brevity in conversation and pleasure in killing cows means she wants to hug another woman with her legs in friendship. Us, we're more disappointed in her too-cool-for-school attitude and re...

By Seth Hollywood's highest-paid scab Jay Leno's recent solicitation of Ryan Phillippe's "gayest look" for his cameras, part of a longer, excruciatingly unfunny and offensive bit about the actor's role as TV's first gay teen on One Life To Live, has now spawned a website, called My Gayest Look...

By Seth On last Wednesday's The Tonight Show, Towleroad notes, Ryan Phillippe popped by to promote Stop-Loss. Host Jay Leno—a man being courted aggressively by studios and networks, with promises of eight-figure contracts and brand new theaters bearing his name—opened the interview with qu...

By Seth NBC executives, including the chief executive of NBC Universal, Jeff Zucker, have reaffirmed their commitment to Mr. O'Brien. And if they did change their minds, they would owe Mr. O'Brien a penalty payment: an estimated $45 million.

By Seth The decade's best Oscars host Steve Martin (we still cherish his Best Actor intro line, "gay poet, crazed artist, a shipwrecked victim, a roman gladiator....but enough about me...") stopped by the Late Show with David Letterman last night to catch up with his old friend. Touching upon the topic o...

By Mark But he has also, the associates said, used his skills as a mechanic — Mr. Leno's chief non-show-business passion is working on cars and motorcycles — to retool old jokes. One longtime writer said that Mr. Leno was taking lines he used about earlier politicians and refashioning them to involv...

By lianeb No, Conan O'Brien isn't scheduled to take over the festering pustule of unfunniness that The Tonight Show has become under Jay Leno's whine of terror until 2009, but he's making it abundantly clear that there will be no lingering goodbyes for the Chin by buying a big ol' mess of real estate...

By Mark Always one to look on the bright side, Leno revealed a pleasant consequence of The Tonight Show's current guest-draught: being freed up from having to watch the kind of paycheck-passion projects mentioned above—a point Kimmly quickly rebutted by reminding Jay that they'll both soon b...

By Mark · How is the writers strike affecting Canadians starved for imported American TV content? Click through and find out! [THR] · Christian Bale is "in negotiations" to join Michael Mann's movie Public Enemy as the FBI agent hot on the trail of Johnny Depp's legendarily beschlonged mobster...

By Mark Did upward-failing NBC Universal Chief Executive Golden Boy Jeff Zucker, enraged at the galling disloyalty of striking SNL writers who planned to participate in the delivery of a Top Ten list on hated CBS talk-show rival David Letterman's WGA-sanctioned return to the airwaves last We...

By Seth The WGA's displeasure with The Tonight Show host Jay Leno's self-penned monologues only continues to grow—while Conan O'Brien seems to get a pass, exempt under the "Actually Funny" clause—to the point where NBC has felt the need to issue a statement on the matter. Meanwhile, with SAG boy...

By Mark Though WGA member Jay Leno seemed to think that writing his own monologue on last night's Tonight Show wasn't flouting the Guild's strike guidelines, the union this afternoon announced via this terse public statement that it had a little heart-to-heart with the host about the matter: "...

By Mark · Overcoming the apparently mild inconvenience of putting on shows without their striking writers, Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien still triumphed over fully staffed talk-show rivals David Letterman and Craig Ferguson in Wednesday night's Nielsen battle. In fairness to the WGA-approved...

By Seth Hoping to win back The Tonight Show audiences (who, let's face it, just want their nightly dose of Kevin Eubanks and could really give a fuck what the Writers League of America wants or needs), Jay Leno bounds over picket lines and back into our hearts with a heartfelt plea for the livelihoo...

By Seth While it's definitely a step in the right direction, it's worth noting that this "dramatic illustration" took two weeks and several "terse" statements before being hammered out. Should The Tonight Show fail to reach its own agreement, it will be interesting to see how the two longtime la...

By Mark It's looking like our long national nightmare of a rerun-plagued late-night network schedule is finally coming to an end, even as the WGA strike stretches on into the new year; over the weekend, the NY Times reported that David Letterman's Worldwide Pants, the independent producer of T...

By Mark Perhaps wounded that some disgruntled, newly laid-off Tonight Show staffers anonymously griped that their early-bonus-proferring boss had failed to equal the generosity of peers like eventual successor Conan O'Brien, who'd previously pledged to financially support every last s...

By Mark Though they did last a little longer than the mid-November date initially threatened by NBC, about 120 staffers at The Tonight Show were laid off today. On the bright side, the freshly pinkslipped employees were handed early Christmas bonus checks courtesy of Jay Leno; still, at least on...

By Mark Responding to Tuesday's reports that not only was Carson Daly choosing to be the first late night talk show host to cross the WGA picket line and return to work without his striking scribes, but that he'd undertaken a hilariously ill-advised e-mail campaign to organize friends and famil...

By Mark The big day that everyone in Hollywood has been anticipating with a mixture of dread, fear and, well, a deeper kind of dread that chills to the very bone is finally here. At midnight tonight, the Writers Guild's contract with the studios expires, a development that could quickly lead to the...

Today's most popular headlines are Seinfeld To Letterman: 'What's The Deal With That Crazy Woman My Wife Stole All Her Cookbook Ideas From?' (8,293 views today), The Triumphant Return Of Merry Miller, Perpetrator Of The Worst Interview In TV History (3,557) and NBC's Zucker Reminds Ja...

By Seth In today's episode: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winters, Pharrell Williams, and Takashi Murakami; Jack Nicholson; Jason Schwartzman; Don Johnson and Michael Rapaport; Jay Leno and Coley Laffoon; Steve Perry; Brad Garrett; Kal Penn; Zachary Quinto; Adrian Grenier; Chris Sarandon; Nicky Hi...

By Mark Perhaps hoping to avert an ugly incident in which obsolescent Tonight Show host Jay Leno makes a last-ditch effort to save his job by chaining himself to his desk while wrecking balls emblazoned with a cheerful peacock logo demolish his beloved Burbank studio, NBC Universal boss Jeff Zu...

By Mark · Tonight on Conan: the host is annoyed by the unwelcome interruption of a fire alarm until a producer informs him the piercing siren was sounded to alert the Late Night staff to a Leno-led assassination attempt. · Being on a bad show is making James Woods a big old crankypants.

By Mark But balancing the Peacock's excitement about its big move is its growing apprehension about the inevitably problematic transfer of The Tonight Show from Burbank to the Universal lot's soon-to-be refurbished Studio One, as a smooth handoff from Jay Leno to Conan O'Brien seems increas...

By Mark Most Hollywood talent agencies have contingency plans to cut their staffs in the event of a walkout. Even without the threat of a strike, agencies have been under steady pressure in recent years to increase revenue and cut expenses as studios make fewer movies in the face of spiraling mark...

By Mark Since we're assuming that you forgot to tune into the Tonight Show last night to watch Hollywood-related political history being made, here's a clip of the district attorney from Law & Order dramatically stating his intention to become the President of all the U.S. Americans, an anno...

By Seth In today's classic episode: Jay Leno; Sacha Baron Cohen; Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Paul Reubens, John Hensley, Steve Coogan, John Stamos and Bob Saget; Reese Witherspoon; Paul Haggis; Steven Bochco and Kevin Dillon; Teri Hatcher, George Lopez and Jane Leeves; Jeremy Piven; Julian McM...

By Mark · Saw Jay Leno coming out of a Burbank bookstore in the Media District followed by a dude with a cellphone to his ear. I've seen Leno several times in the Valley, and he's always dressed the same - blue work shirt and jeans. The other dude talked into his cellphone as Leno signed a couple autograp...