By NELLIE ANDREEVA
When The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon premieres on Feb. 24, it will feature Will Smith as first guest and U2 as musical guests. Smith has been on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, while this will be U2′s first visit with Fallon who had been pursued the Irish band for a long time.
Fallon addressed his relationship with his predecessor, Jay Leno, and the Tonight Show host transition, going back to the time immediately following the Jay Leno-Conan O’Brien debacle when Leno was moved to 10 PM and then reinstated at 11:30 PM, with O’Brien pushed out. “After the Jay-Conan stuff, I called Jay and told him, “I want to let you know that I’m not gunning for your position. I’m very happy at 11:37 PM, I’m here in New York and… very happy at my job. When you decide to step down, (I hope) it’s done the right way. We talked every two weeks. One day he called me and said, ‘I think this is going to be the year, and I’d love you be the next guy’.” Fallon is not worried if Leno surfaces somewhere else or gets a new program on NBC. “The more Jay, the better,” he said. “Maybe he can be the new detective on The Blacklist.”
Fallon will bring the tone of Late Night to Tonight Show, which also will be a throwback to the show’s early days. “When Steve Allen and Johnny Karson invented it, it was was silly and goofy.” Fallon was asked to differentiate himself from his new rival at 11:30 PM, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel. “We’re in New York…. last names?” He called all the stories about a future rivalry “fan fiction.”
http://www.deadline.com/2014/01/tca-jimmy-fallon-announces-first-tonight-show-guests-talks-jay-leno-transition/