‘The Tonight Show’ Heads Back To Jimmy Fallon’s Home To Mark One-Year Of Quarantine Editions

Peter White
·3 min read
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The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon is going back into quarantine – at least for one night.

The NBC late-night show is returning tomorrow, Friday March 19, to Fallon’s house to mark one year from when the host started filming his At Home shows.

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Fallon was one of the first hosts to film content and then a show at his house after the Covid-19 pandemic hit the U.S. It was his kids that became breakout hits during these shows, which were filmed by Fallon’s wife Nancy Juvonen.

The former SNL star will interview Matthew McConaughey and Megan Rapinoe on the show, which features musical guest Morris Day ft. Trinidad Jame$.

The show has also teamed up with State Farm as it continues to support food bank charity Feeding America. As part of the 1-Year Anniversary At Home special, State Farm will match up to $100,000 in donations made to the charity.

Supervising producer Sarah Connell told Deadline about the experience of making those shows at home.

“When we all said goodbye to each other we really thought we’d be back in two weeks,” she said. “When it became clear that definitely wasn’t the case, we heard from Jimmy immediately. He wanted to do the show from home to help lift people’s spirits during this time. We also knew that we wanted there to be charitable element to it so we could help people at the same time, so, every night we highlighted a different charity that was helping people through this pandemic.”

The first guest during the At Home edition was Lin-Manuel Miranda. Connell said that normally there’s a process to preparing such an interview, Fallon and the segment producer go over a plan, the guest arrives at 30 Rock, the producer briefs that guest and then the audience starts to get excited as The Roots begin to play.

“In the studio, you can hear the audience and feel the energy, there’s instant feedback. The At Home Show was different. Suddenly, you now have two people clicking on a Zoom link at the same time, there’s no big ramp up to the moment, it’s just two people hanging out on Zoom from their homes. It was an unusual feeling to let go of that in studio process and welcome this new way of doing things,” she added. “It set the tone for what Jimmy is best at: connecting and relating to someone while also making the viewers feel like they’re just as much a part of it, especially at a time when we could all use some laughs.”

Connell admitted that there were times that doing the shows from home proved challenging.

“It turns out not every celebrity has great wi-fi,” she said. “For example, when we had David Chang on the show, his wi-fi wasn’t working. The interview started with his face frozen on screen. So after a few moments, he told Jimmy he was going to drive to the liquor store down the street because it had good wi-fi. We could have easily suggested that they reschedule, but instead they went with it because it was real life. David ended up doing the interview from his car while his wife filmed him on an iPhone. And the interview was great. It’s one of our favorite moments from the At-Home shows because it was spontaneous and real.”

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