Jay Leno Is Still Whining About Jimmy Kimmel Humiliating Him on ‘The Tonight Show’

Years after Jimmy Kimmel unleashed a public beatdown of Jay Leno on his own Tonight Show, Leno admits he had it coming. Not because Kimmel wasn’t an a-hole, but because Leno was dumb enough to book his rival in the first place. 

“When Kimmel came on my show and humiliated me on my own show, I let it happen,” Leno confessed this week on In Depth with Graham Bensinger. “It was my mistake, I trusted somebody. I went, ‘Ah, I made a mistake. Okay, I should pay the price.’ And it's fine, it's fine.”

Here’s a reminder of what happened on that 2010 appearance. The year before, Leno turned over the reins of The Tonight Show to Conan O’Brien, only to grab them back months later when the show faltered in the ratings. Especially because Leno conspired to steal the Tonight Show job from David Letterman in the first place, it was another heel turn that Kimmel was all too happy to call out on national television.

Leno tossed Kimmel a softball, asking about the greatest prank he ever pulled, and Kimmel responded with a grenade. “I told a guy that five years from now I’m going to give you my show,” Kimmel smirked. “And then when the five years came, I gave it to him, and then I took it back almost instantly.”

Leno said he consciously chose to leave Kimmel’s insults on the show when he could have easily edited them out before the broadcast. Why didn’t he? “Because it happened,” Leno said. “It’s real — it happened. It’s my mistake. That’s how you learn.”

Hey, Bensinger said, at least it was good TV. 

“It’s not good TV for me because it started a whole thing that continues to this day,” Leno said. "But it’s okay, it’s alright. He’s a comic — you do what you gotta do. I mean, I wouldn’t have done it, but that’s okay. That’s alright. It is what it is."

Leno wasn’t exaggerating when he said his feud with Kimmel hasn’t died down after all these years. Just last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host complained to Ben Affleck about the time Kimmel came to his house for Christmas. Kimmel arrived at the party, “and then Jay Leno walks right in after me and we’re both uncomfortably making small talk with you,” he told Affleck. “And you go, ‘Oh yeah, you guys have some thing with each other, right?’”

Not surprisingly, the biggest fan of the Kimmel-Leno feud was David Letterman. “Boy, I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed your participation in the Jay Leno scandal,” he cackled when Kimmel appeared on his show in 2010. 

“He asked me 10 questions about nothing, and I asked him 10 questions about stealing Conan’s job from him,” Kimmel laughed. “I don’t think Jay was happy because he went on the Oprah show and said I sucker-punched him. He’s always running to tattle to Oprah whenever something happens. I didn’t feel like I did sucker-punch him but then I looked it up in the dictionary and it turns out I did.”