After This, I Don't Know If I Can Put the Suit On Again
The coronavirus pandemic has already altered daily life beyond recognition. It will shape our lives for years to come, mostly in ways that are impossible to predict, let alone understand. Esquire asked twenty people to share their experiences in the first few months of the outbreak. Each of their first-person accounts is a reassurance that none of us are facing this alone. Check out the full list here.
I had to do something. You have to be there for the people—they were there for me for twenty years. I just didn’t know what I was going to do. But sometimes that’s the start of the best ideas. You just have to make a decision to do it.
After doing the show for ten years, you just keep adding more stuff, getting slicker. The production value heightens. When I’m wearing a suit and makeup and all that stuff, I really feel like there’s a lot of phoniness, or stuff that can come across as phoniness. The audience is laughing, but maybe they’re just being polite. Maybe what I just said wasn’t funny, I don’t know. And maybe you tense up. I’m not really a stand-up comedian. I don’t want to tell funny stories.
But when you peel it all back, it’s like, All right, who are you? It forces your brain to be creative in ways that I haven’t done in years. It reminds me of when I first started. I would either do routines in my bedroom, or—even sadder—for a full audience, and the reaction would be the same: No laughs. Here, I have no crew, no staff, no lighting. I'm printing out my own scripts. I bought a printer. I am the master of the Canon PIXMA. I am the master of that thing. I got reams of paper at Staples. I got four tripods at P.C. Richard. And I have a selfie stick.
I never thought in my life that I would have a selfie stick, but I do.
In these times, you got to go with what you have. I don’t know if it’s fight-or-flight, but your instinct takes over. It shows who you really are. It shows your character.
My wife is my director and my camera operator. Winnie [their older daughter] draws the graphics. She loves to draw. And Franny [their younger daughter] loves to joke, so she'll climb all over me during the show. It's real.
March 13: Date The Tonight Show suspended production
March 17: Date The Tonight Show: At Home Edition premiered on YouTube
March 23: Date At Home Edition premiered on NBC, alongside previously aired segments
If you do anything false, people are going to catch on pretty quickly. Just be yourself. That's who you are.
For me, the closest thing to this experience was New York after 9/11. I was on Saturday Night Live and I didn’t know what to do, where to turn, or whom to talk to. I remember going to the late-night hosts—I’d watch Conan, Jay Leno, David Letterman—to hear what they were saying. And I remember David Letterman had a great line about courage: that sometimes pretending to be courageous is just as good.
My role is to be there for people in some way. I’m lucky to be in a position to maybe help someone get through this by giving their brain a little balance with all of the awful out there.
We’ll see what we end up with when this is over. The show will look different. Then again, it might feel just right. It's definitely going to change.
I don’t know if I can put on a suit again. I would feel odd coming out in a suit. It's as loose as loose can be. I was talking to Blake Shelton, and Gwen Stefani came in out of nowhere and started shaving his head with a buzzer. That would never happen in the studio.
That's what I've been getting from these interviews: They're just genuine. It's been eye-opening to see how intimate they can get. Today, Hugh Jackman called and said, "do you want to bake some bread?" I go, "Yeah, sure. Why not? I've been making a lot of banana bread." Actually, I can't even smell banana bread anymore.
That's really the one thing I'm getting from this: I'll never have banana bread again.
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