“Mainstream Guy” Leno Shares “Perverse Pleasure” In Proving You Wrong

Jay Leno‘s 10pm show premiered in in mid-September, and he’s taken heat as ratings continue to drop and affiliates have started speaking out about the move.

Now Broadcasting & Cable’s Ben Grossman interviews the late night host on a wide range of topics – and finds out whether Leno has been personally affected by all the bad press.

“I’m the mainstream guy,” says Leno. “You could go out there and be the niche guy…My thing is to balance mainstream and try to find that happy medium.”

It is this line that Leno drives home throughout the entire interview, that proves especially revealing because of his brutal honesty. “I know you said you didn’t believe me, but I do take a certain perverse pleasure in this. See how low you can go, rock bottom, before you can keep crawling back up again,” he says, seeming to revel in the shots the media have taken at him.

As much as other people can write and say about the comparisons between David Letterman and his former competitor Leno in the wake of Letterman’s sex scandal, hearing it from the NBC late night host himself is something new and jarring:

Dave has never set himself up as [a model citizen]. If it were me, it would kill me. I’m the guy who’s been married 29 years. But Dave has never pretended to be Mr. Moral America, he’s never set himself up that way. He’s not a hypocrite. I don’t know how it will be viewed. He doesn’t do corporate days like me, he’s not as advertiser-friendly as I am. I’m the guy when Coke or Pepsi is here, I come down and shake hands and take pictures, but he doesn’t do that. I don’t think it will have a big effect at all.

There’s something else the interview reveals, and its a new character that has never been seen during Leno’s 17 years as Tonight Show host – Blue Leno. If only there were video of this quote:

Physically I tried boxing and I got the shit kicked out of me. But emotionally I can take body shots all day long and that doesn’t really bother me. I realize that’s where my strength is. I see other comics say, “Fuck that, I’m not going back to that club, they treated me…” [And I say], “Great, I got that one.”

And as Grossman pressed him several times to admit he wanted to be back at 11:30pm and that he took some satisfaction in seeing his replacement, Conan O’Brien, struggle in the ratings, Leno stayed gracious toward the new Tonight Show host. But this comment about whether he’d accept the 11:30pm gig if it was offered to him won’t be ignored either: “If it were offered to me, would I take it? If that’s what they wanted to do, sure. That would be fine if they wanted to.”

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