Jay Leno Falsely Claims He Was Tricked Into Not Wishing David Letterman Well After His Heart Attack
These days, late-night talk show hosts are quite friendly (perhaps a little too friendly). But back in the ‘90s, the behind-the-scenes drama surrounding Jay Leno and David Letterman’s rivalry was just as interesting as anything happening on camera.
Leno arguably betraying his old friend in order to claim the Tonight Show desk for himself was positively Shakespearean. At the very least, HBO TV Movie-ean.
Leno recently gave a lengthy interview to In Depth with Graham Bensinger and in addition to chatting about his former stand-up comedy days and his various life-threatening injuries, naturally he discussed Letterman. “I still love Dave. Makes me laugh. Still the best. Still the greatest time of my career was going on (Letterman’s Late Night show),” Leno told Bensinger.
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When the prospect of a possible reunion between the former competitors was raised, Leno made it clear that he was open to seeing Letterman, but wouldn’t be the one reaching out. “I tend to get my hand bitten when I instigate those kinds of things,” he claimed.
As an example of how his kindness has been thrown back in his face by Letterman, Leno described how, after Letterman underwent emergency quintuple-bypass surgery in 2000, a Late Show staff member convinced him not to mention it on The Tonight Show. “When Dave had his heart attack, somebody from the show called me and said, ‘Listen, please don’t say anything about Dave’s heart attack on the air,’” Leno explained. While Leno protested, expressing a desire to wish his old friend a speedy recovery, he was told, “No, please, Dave doesn’t want you to. Please.”
“Two or three weeks later I read in The New York Post, ‘The only person who didn’t give Dave good wishes was Leno,’” the accident-prone comedian recalled. “Uh, I walked into that. I just got set up by that. And of course everybody jumped on that story. So I was like ‘Alright, I learned my lesson.’”
In 2023, Leno told the same story, almost word for word, on Blocks with Neal Brennan, using it as an example of how he was “hurt” by his feud with Letterman.
The only problem with this story is, it doesn’t seem to be true. We obviously have no way of knowing whether or not anyone from The Late Show requested Leno’s silence, but a Washington Post article from the day of Letterman’s surgery noted how “Leno tonight said that he and his staff wish Letterman a speedy recovery.”
And the day after the surgery, The New York Post — you know the paper that Leno specifically cited as the one that threw him under the bus for not wishing Letterman well — reported that “Leno offered his ailing competitor his regards last night, saying, ‘I wish Dave a speedy recovery.’”
Either Leno is misremembering events, or he’s invented a story that conveniently makes him seem more sympathetic.
Given this turn of events, maybe they need to reopen the case of the Hampton Inn hill incident.
