Jay Leno’s life has been filled with comedy milestones, heated celebrity feuds and one major career U-turn.
The standup comedian disrupted the entire TV landscape when he was hired as Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show replacement in 1992 — setting off a chain of events in late-night TV that would continue into the 2000s. All told, Leno spent the better part of 22 years at the helm of the Tonight Show, establishing an undeniably significant yet complicated comedy legacy along the way.
Keep scrolling to look back at Leno’s esteemed career, marriage to wife Mavis Nicholson and his most notorious public feuds:
Early Career
As luck would have it, Leno had his big career break on The Tonight Show 15 years before he started hosting it. He performed standup comedy on a 1977 Tonight Show episode and soon became a staple in comedy clubs around the country.
Leno began regularly substituting for Carson as the “permanent guest host” on The Tonight Show in 1986 and was also a regular guest on Late Night with David Letterman, which aired directly after The Tonight Show on NBC.
Mavis Nicholson Marriage
Leno met his future wife in 1976 and they tied the knot in 1980. Nicholson has kept a notably lower public profile than her husband, given her work as a human rights activist.
Nicholson was the chairperson for the Feminist Majority Foundation’s campaign to end gender apartheid in Afghanistan in the 1990s — for which the group received a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.
“The recipe for peace is simple and obvious to state, but harder to achieve,” Nicholson said in 2001 about her work in Afghanistan. “It is the eradication of poverty, abuse, and injustice, which is the breeding ground for rage.”
Leno spoke in 2002 about the secret to his then-22-year marriage, revealing that the couple have a rule about his standup comedy tours.
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“I always fly home the same night. And if I go somewhere interesting, Mavis goes with me,” he shared.
Discussing Nicholson’s activism, Leno joked, “I’ve always wanted a situation where people would go, ‘Oh, that’s Mr. Mavis.’ That would make me laugh … I’ve done what I want to do, and now it’s my turn to help her.”
“It’s a matter of priorities, and it makes the marriage better,” he added. “Remember, if you eat the whole pie, you’re going to choke. I love it when she goes to these functions where people think she’s just another empty-headed starlet, and afterward they go, ‘She knows what she’s talking about.’”
Comedy Store Strike
Long before a writers’ strike knocked his TV show off the air in 2008, Leno was involved in a strike at Hollywood’s famed Comedy Store. At the heart of the dispute was Comedy Store owner Mitzi Shore’s alleged refusal to pay her comics — instead she offered exposure on her stages that could lead to paid work elsewhere.
Leno and David Letterman were among the comics who picketed outside the Comedy Store in 1979, seeking a standard wage for comics. Speaking to TIME in 2008, Letterman recalled Leno “couldn’t sit still” as the Comedy Store performers discussed a walkout.
“He was behaving like a hyperactive child: jumping up and down, being funny and distracting, to the point where everybody sort of thought, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t tell Jay about the nxt meeting,’” Letterman quipped.
Leno paid a physical price for being on the frontlines of the strike when he was struck by an unknown driver trying to disrupt the movement. Comedian Tom Dreesen told Time that Leno feigned injury in order to boost the striking comics’ cause and, before long, a settlement was reached to pay comics $25 per set at the Comedy Store. The Comedy Store’s official retelling of the strike mentioned that those events “changed Mitzi forever,” from “the innocent Artist’s Colony cheerleader” to “a driven businesswoman.”
‘Tonight Show’ Hiring Controversy
By all accounts, Letterman was the favorite to become the host of NBC’s Tonight Show once Carson retired. NBC had different plans and once Carson did officially confirm he was stepping down from The Tonight Show, Leno was picked as his replacement.
NBC’s decision to go with Leno over Letterman kicked off a spiral of events that would cause controversy for The Tonight Show into the 2010s. After being passed over for The Tonight Show, Letterman announced he would leave NBC to host The Late Show on CBS in direct competition with Leno. (Letterman was subsequently succeeded by Conan O’Brien as the new host of Late Night on NBC.)
Carson made his preference known by regularly submitting jokes to Letterman’s writing staff for years after his retirement. Leno tried to stay above the fray with a tongue-in-cheek tribute to Carson’s 30-year Tonight Show stint on his first official episode as host on May 25, 1992.
Leno walked out on the Tonight Show stage to a standing ovation and subsequently joked, “Let’s see how you all feel in 30 years.”
David Letterman Feud
Letterman spent most of the 1990s regularly zinging Leno — both on air and off. While the two were friends since the earliest days of their career, they became direct competitors in 1993 when The Late Show with David Letterman on CBS aired in the same time slot as The Tonight Show on NBC.
In a 1993 interview with Rolling Stone, Letterman insisted he never personally blamed Leno for taking the Tonight Show job.
“I speak to Jay now with the same regularity that I have always spoken to Jay. Which is not much. There’s no ill will personally,” Letterman insisted. “If I felt I was deprived of something that was rightfully mine, if I had fantasies about being hoodwinked or misled – then there might be ill will. I’m not the kind of person that wants to see somebody else fail on television. Whatever the future holds, I’m in pretty good shape. So, no, I’m not upset with NBC, I’m not upset with Jay.”
However, the two continued to trade public barbs for the rest of their careers. Leno offered an olive branch in 2009 by inviting Letterman to be a guest during his then-final week on The Tonight Show, but his rival declined. They did appear together in a 2010 Super Bowl commercial.
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Letterman told Neal Brennan in 2022 that the media hype over his past with Leno was “embarrassing.”
“I don’t want to be the guy who’s pissed off because, ‘I didn’t get so and so,’” Letterman insisted. “I didn’t truly feel that way … Nobody ever came to me and said, ‘We would like you to host The Tonight Show.’ So, OK, they didn’t want me to host The Tonight Show. I can live with that.”
For his part, Leno told “In Depth with Graham Bensinger” in 2025 that he was willing to reconcile with Letterman.
“I would like to do that. I think I have no problem with it,” Leno said. “I think Dave might be awkward.”
Hugh Grant Interview
The Tonight Show secured a longstanding ratings dominance over Letterman’s Late Show by the mid-1990s, potentially because Leno seized on pop culture events like the O.J Simpson double murder trial as regular fodder for his nightly monologues.
One of the most infamous Tonight Show interviews in history took place on July 10, 1995. Leno’s guest was Hugh Grant, who had been arrested for suspicion of lewd conduct with a sex worker by an L.A. vice squad one month earlier. (Grant eventually pleaded no contest, paid a fine and served summary probation to resolve the case.)
The Tonight Show studio audience erupted into cheers when Leno greeted Grant with a blunt first question, “What the hell were you thinking?”
Grant paused before telling Leno, “I think, you know, in life [there’s] what’s a good thing to do and what’s a bad thing, and I did a bad thing … and there you have it.”
This interview helped propel The Tonight Show to its first nightly ratings win over The Late Show. Leno largely kept his ratings edge over Letterman for the next 14 years.
Howard Stern Feud
The shock jock was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show in the mid-1990s, but that all changed when Leno hired Stern’s radio employee John Melenedez to become his new announcer.
Stern infamously blasted Leno on his morning radio show throughout much of 2004, accusing Leno of stealing from his comedy arsenal to bolster The Tonight Show. The DJ later took the beef directly to late-night by appearing on Letterman’s show to rip Leno in 2013.
“Jay Leno will forever blow my mind,” Stern ranted to Letterman. “He took The Tonight Show from you, you were [so] close to getting it … You had such a dream and Jay snatched it from you!”
Leno largely refrained from commenting on Stern over the years, but did reveal on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen in 2019 that he wasn’t willing to feud publicly with the former America’s Got Talent judge.
“I didn’t get into the feud, because you’re not going to win a feud with Howard. Howard is good. If you start that feud, boom, you’re down,” Leno said. “So if you just let it roll, it’s fine … I don’t hold any grudges. I listen to him now, he’s funny, he’s good.”
First ‘Tonight Show’ Exit
NBC wanted to avoid more trouble with its Tonight Show line of succession at all costs, so in 2004, it signed Late Night host O’Brien to a new five-year contract that stipulated he would take over for Leno in 2009.
However, NBC wasn’t willing to let go of Leno either so the network hired him to host a new primetime variety show airing five nights a week at 10p.m. ET.
When it came time for Leno to sign off from The Tonight Show on May 29, 2009, he introduced his wife, Nicholson, to a standing ovation from the studio audience. Leno told viewers he “couldn’t be prouder of” his successor O’Brien, calling him a “terrific guy and a good friend.”
Jay Leno Show
Leno launched his primetime variety series, The Jay Leno Show, on September 14, 2009. The series partially resembled Leno’s Tonight Show format with a standard comedy monologue and celebrity interviews, along with retaining his popular “Headlines” and “Jaywalking” comedy segments.
NBC tried to differentiate The Jay Leno Show from the new Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien with segments like the “Green Car Challenge,” where celebrities competitively raced electric Ford Focus cars around a track. The “Ten at Ten” segment involved Leno asking ten rapid fire questions to a different celebrity guest each night.
The Jay Leno Show started off with solid ratings but quickly fell off. By January 2010, NBC announced it would shift The Jay Leno Show to 11.35 p.m. ET for a 30-minute slot, thus bumping O’Brien’s Tonight Show to 12.05 a.m. ET.
‘Tonight Show’ Return and Conan O’Brien Feud
O’Brien announced on January 12, 2010 that he would not “participate” in what he called the “destruction” of The Tonight Show by moving it back to 12:05 a.m. ET.
“For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news,” he noted in a press release. “I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show … So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it.”
NBC and O’Brien reached a settlement that allowed the comedian to leave The Tonight Show. The network then cancelled The Jay Leno Show entirely so Leno could simply return as host of The Tonight Show.
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During his final Tonight Show episode host on January 22, 2010, O’Brien landed a parting shot at NBC.
“Every comedian dreams of hosting The Tonight Show, and — for seven months— I got to do it,” he told viewers. “And, I did it my way, with people I love. I do not regret one second of anything that we’ve done here.”
Leno returned as host of The Tonight Show on March 1, 2010.
Jimmy Kimmel Feud
The Jimmy Kimmel Live! host took repeated on-air potshots at Leno throughout the upheaval at The Tonight Show in 2010, including dressing up as Leno (complete with a prosthetic chin) for one of his monologues on ABC.
The two came face-to-face via satellite in one of the last Jay Leno Show episodes in January 2010. Kimmel took part in Leno’s “10 at 10” segment where he had to answer rapid-fire questions — only to turn most of his answers into jabs at Leno for taking the Tonight Show back from O’Brien.
Asked by Leno about “the best prank” he’d ever pulled, Kimmel quipped, “I think the best prank I ever pulled was I told a guy that, ‘Five years from now, I’m going to give you my show.’ And then when the five years came, I gave it to him and took it back almost instantly.”
Leno admitted in a 2025 interview on “In Depth With Graham Bensinger” that his dispute with Kimmel was one of the biggest “mistakes” of his career.
“When Kimmel came on my show and humiliated me on my own show, I let it happen,” Leno said. “I didn’t edit it. It was my mistake, I trusted somebody. I went, ‘Ah, I made a mistake. OK, I should pay the price.’ And it’s fine, it’s fine. I mean, we could’ve edited it out of the show … It’s real — it happened. It’s my mistake. That’s how you learn.”
Tonight Show Exit, Part 2
Leno’s second stint on The Tonight Show lasted from March 1, 2010 to February 6, 2014. This time around, Leno bowed out for good and handed over the reins of The Tonight Show to Jimmy Fallon.
His final Tonight Show episode featured cameo appearances from then-President Barack Obama, Billy Crystal, Kim Kardashian and Jim Parsons. Crystal — who was Leno’s first Tonight Show guest in 1992 — led the star-studded guest lineup in singing “So Long, Farewell” from The Sound of Music to Leno.
“I want to thank you, the audience,” Leno told viewers. “We wouldn’t be on the air without you. This has been the greatest 22 years of my life. I am the luckiest guy in the world.”
Falling Down Hill
The comedian kept busy after leaving The Tonight Show by hosting automotive series Jay Leno’s Garage on CNBC and continuing to perform live comedy.
Leno was so dedicated to his standup schedule that he headlined a November 2024 gig in Highland, California after falling down a hill hours earlier.
“I went out and the restaurant was [at the bottom of a hill] but to get to it — I didn’t have a car — so you had to go about a mile and a half around,” Leno told TMZ at the time. “Well, I said, ‘The hill doesn’t look that steep, maybe 60 to 70 feet. Let me see if I can go down the hill.’ And then I fell down and boom, boom.”
Leno confirmed he’d “hit [his] head on a rock” and injured his eye, but refused to call off his comedy show.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” he said of his injury. “It’s alright.”
Caring for Mavis Nicholson
According to NBC News, Leno was granted a conservatorship over his wife’s estate in 2024 after she was diagnosed with dementia. Leno told “In Depth With Graham Bensinger” in 2025 that he wanted to ensure Nicholson received the best medical care since they’d been married for 45 years.
“When I got married, you sort of take a vow, [like,] ‘Will I live up to this? Or will I be like a sleazy guy, if something happens to my wife, I’m out banging the cashier at the mini-mart?’ No, I didn’t,” Leno said. “I enjoy the time with my wife. I go home, I cook dinner for her, watch TV and it’s OK. It’s basically what we did before, except now, I have to feed her and do all those things.”
Leno added, “She’s a very independent woman, so I like that I’m needed. And I need to be there, and it’s good.”
The former Tonight Show host acknowledged that it was a “challenge” to adjust to his wife’s diagnosis.
“When you have to feed someone and change them and carry them to the bathroom and do all that kind of stuff every day. It’s a challenge,” he said. “And it’s not that I enjoy doing it, but I guess I [do] enjoy doing it.”
