(
)
Jimmy Fallon has reason for this VERY big smile — his boss just called him the next Johnny Carson.
NBC’s “Late Night” host posed for GQ’s April style issue, accompanied by a profile that includes executive producer Lorne Michaels predicting that Fallon will one day take the “Tonight Show” mantle from Jay Leno, who inherited it from the legendary Carson.
“I’m not allowed to say it — yet. But I think there’s an inevitability to it. He’s the closest to Carson that I’ve seen of this generation,” Michaels tells the magazine.
Brooklyn native Fallon, 38, insists it’s no big deal.
“I’d love it, but it’s not on my mind,” he said while taking in a basketball game at the Barclays Center, adding of his fellow late-night TV hosts that Stephen Colbert is “underrated” and that Jimmy Kimmel’s recent switch to 11:30 p.m. is a “good move for him.”