Entertainment

Leno says he was asked by NBC to leave ‘Tonight’ show

Funnyman Jay Leno claims he was “devastated” when NBC asked him to leave “The Tonight Show” in 2004 because they wanted to give the late-night program to Conan O’Brien.

Leno also took a jab at O’Brien — saying the ratings for “Tonight” were so low over the past few months, it was becoming “destructive to the franchise.”

Leno told Oprah Winfrey in an interview that will air today that he told audiences “a white lie” when, in 2004, he said he was going to retire.

Instead, Leno said he assumed he would find another job in show business.

“It broke my heart. It really did. I was devastated,” Leno said, according to excerpts of the interview released in advance. “This was the job that I had always wanted and this was the only job that ever mattered in show business — to me. It’s the job every comic aspires to. It was just like, why?”

“I’m not a person who carries my emotions on my sleeve,” he added. “But you know something, I’m happy with what I had. [‘The Tonight Show’] was a tremendous success up to that point.”

NBC recently unseated O’Brien from “Tonight” and moved Leno back to the program he had hosted for 17 years.

“The Jay Leno Show” will air its finale on Feb. 9, three weeks before Leno’s March 1 return as host of “Tonight.”

When Winfrey asked whether having O’Brien host “Tonight” at 12:05 a.m., following a proposed 30-minute Leno show, would ruin the show made famous by Johnny Carson, Leno didn’t hold back.

“Well, if you look at where the [Conan’s ‘Tonight Show’] ratings were, it was already destructive to the franchise.”

When it came to competing at 10 p.m., Leno said, “If I’m in late-night, I know I’m competing with Dave [Letterman] every night. … We could book against [other late-night shows]. To book [guests] against the ‘CSI’ evil twin episode, that’s going to be very hard to do.”

Leno, meanwhile, said he and O’Brien never spoke to each other during all the late-night drama of the past few weeks — and they still haven’t spoken.

“I haven’t talked to him through all this,” he said.

Leno added, “It wasn’t my place to call Conan. They made this offer to me. And I said, ‘Do you think Conan will go for this?’ And they said, ‘We’ll ask him tomorrow.’ ‘OK, let me know what happens.’ And then thing you know, I guess Conan had his article in the paper and that was that.”

Oprah asked Leno that “America has taken sides” and that “a lot of people are not on your side.”

To that Leno replied, “It all comes down to numbers in show business. This is almost the perfect storm of bad things happening. You have two hit shows — ‘Tonight Show’ No. 1 and Conan No. 1. You move them both to another situation. And what are the odds that both would do extremely poorly? If Conan’s numbers had been a little bit higher, it wouldn’t even be an issue. But in show business, there’s always somebody waiting in the wings. Being me.”