Jay Leno Tells Oprah About the “Huge Mess”

By Amanda Pendolino on January 27th, 2010

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It kind of sucks to be Jay Leno right now. Sure, he “won” The Tonight Show back after NBC’s disastrous decision to replace him with Conan O’Brien and give him a new show at 10 pm. And he’s got plenty of cash. But I bet he feels like the reject sitting alone in the school cafeteria right now.  Conan earned everyone’s sympathy and spawned grassroots campaigns like “I’m With Coco.” You don’t see anybody walking around with big “Chin Power” signs, do you?

The Los Angeles Times reports that in order for Jay to take back The Tonight Show without looking like a colossal d-bag, NBC has to successfully engineer a campaign to restore Jay’s public image. Naturally, that involves going on Oprah. The funnyman taped an interview with the big O that will air tomorrow, Thursday Jan 28, and there are some pretty juicy clips at Oprah.com.

Oprah asked Jay if he has talked to his rival CoCo at all. ”I haven’t talked to him through all this. No. I haven’t,” he said. Did he want to pick up the phone? Jay says, “Yeah, but it didn’t seem appropriate.” He says that maybe after things cool down they’ll talk.

She also asked Jay if Conan’s many Jay-bashing jokes were hurtful. “No,” he said. “They were jokes. And that’s OK. I mean - It’s what we do, you know?  You can’t — it’s like being a fighter and say when you got punched in the head, did it hurt?  Well, yeah.  But you’re a fighter.  That’s what you do.”