Jay Leno reveals why he let Jimmy Kimmel humiliate him on his own show

Jay Leno is looking back at the infamous incident that sparked his long-running feud with Jimmy Kimmel.

While appearing on “The Jay Leno Show” in 2010, Kimmel repeatedly took shots at Leno over the notorious “Tonight Show” debacle involving Conan O’Brien. 

On Wednesday’s episode of “In Depth With Graham Bensinger,” Leno, 64, shared his regrets over the on-camera encounter with Kimmel, 57, and revealed why he decided not to cut the comedian’s jabs at him from the final broadcast.

“When Kimmel came on my show and humiliated me on my own show, I let it happen. I didn’t edit it,” Leno recalled.

He continued, “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 have edited it out of the show.

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“Why didn’t you?” Bensinger, 38, asked.

“Because it happened,” Leno explained. “It’s real — it happened. It’s my mistake. That’s how you learn.”

When Bensinger questioned if Leno’s decision was a “mistake” because the interaction made for “good TV,” the comedian said he didn’t view it in that light. 

“It’s not good TV for me because it started a whole thing that continues to this day, really,” he said. “But it’s okay, it’s alright. He’s a comic — you do what you gotta do. I mean, I wouldn’t have done it, but that’s okay. That’s alright. It is what it is.”

The 2010 incident with Leno and Kimmel stemmed from a widely-publicized conflict over the succession plan for NBC’s hit late-night show “The Tonight Show.”

In 2009, Leno agreed to step down as host of “The Tonight Show” so O’Brien could take over. In return, Leno was given his own primetime talk show, “The Jay Leno Show.” 

When both shows struggled in the ratings, NBC proposed moving Leno’s show back to late night and pushing “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” to a later timeslot. O’Brien refused and left the network while Leno returned to hosting “The Tonight Show.”

The fiasco resulted in a major backlash against Leno and NBC. Kimmel, who was a supporter of O’Brien, made headlines for his appearance on Leno’s talk show a year later during which he called out the host for his role in the controversy.

When Leno asked Kimmel about the best prank he had ever pulled, Kimmel joked, “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 then I took it back almost instantly.”

Earlier this week, Kimmel also addressed his feud with Leno during an episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

On Wednesday, the comedian teased guest Ben Affleck as the actor walked on stage, saying, “You have that look on your face that you sometimes have when I see you, where you’re like, ‘What is he gonna do? Is he gonna do something?’

“I’m not going to do anything,” he assured Affleck before adding, “It’s not going to be like when I came to your house for Christmas, and I walk in the door and then Jay Leno walks right in after me and then we’re both uncomfortably making small talk with you and you go, ‘Oh yeah, you both have something with each other?’ and then I had to stay in there.”

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“Believe it or not, I didn’t follow the nuance of your gossip history,” Affleck told him.

“No, you just dropped a grenade right on us,” Kimmel quipped.

Affleck recalled witnessing the pair’s uncomfortable exchange, remembering, “It was like, ‘This is painful enough. What’s weird? Is something weird? Have you guys been insulting each other publicly for decades?”

While the two comedians have publicly traded barbs over the years since the 2010 incident, Kimmel revealed in 2017 that they had mended their rift.

The late-night host told The Hollywood Reporter that it was the birth of his infant son that broke the silence between the two men.

“Jay and I have made peace. After my son had his operation, he called me and he was very nice.”

Kimmel’s son, William John, now 8, was born with a heart defect that required emergency surgery.

Looking back, Kimmel said the rivalry was rooted in his love for David Letterman. Letterman had hoped to take over hosting “The Tonight Show” following Johnny Carson’s departure in 1993, but he left NBC for CBS when Leno was tapped for the role instead. 

“You have to remember how much I love David Letterman. When all that stuff happened, I was just a fan, reading Bill Carter’s book [1994’s The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Network Battle for the Night.] and there was a villain and a hero, and Dave was the hero and Jay was the villain. I started off with a negative feeling about it. I sometimes insert myself into situations I have no business inserting myself into.”

However, Kimmel said he had softened his stance on Leno following the kind-hearted phone call.

“You can’t argue with [Leno’s] success and his longevity. I will say, when I was in high school and college, he was one of my all-time favorite comics.”