Can Jimmy Fallon save late-night? Inside his next act | Exclusive

• Jimmy Fallon is experimenting with new formats, including a short-form "microdrama" series.
• "The Tonight Show" has seen a ratings boost, placing it first among adults 18-49 for a recent week.
• Fallon's show format has helped it gain more than 100 million social media followers.

NEW YORK – Jimmy Fallon can't sit still. Part of the problem is that he has spilled salad dressing on his khaki pants. More than a few drops – a hand-sized explosion. 

At 51, he knows he needs to be healthy, hence the salad. "Not full-on lettuce," he says, joking about the cyclospora outbreak linked to explosive diarrhea. "That's extreme weight loss."

His lunch, he clarifies, was Pura Vida salmon with avocado. Sleek silver weights taunt him from the floor of his corner office at 30 Rock. They're a counterbalance to the Levain cookies and large bowl of Bjorn Corn popcorn on his oval table, where his "Tonight Show" writers meet regularly. 

He and his team have been busy: "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" is coming off a major week with the World Cup and most of the stars of "The Odyssey" coming by the studio. The double whammy led to viral hits – including a retelling of "The Odyssey" in 60 seconds and Holland vs. Halaand, in which Fallon compares the "Spider-Man" star to the Norwegian footballer – and a ratings boost that pushed the show into the top slot among adults 18 to 49, the young demo coveted by advertisers. 

Some 51-year-olds would be content to just keep doing what he's doing. But not Fallon. On Monday, July 27, he launched the show's first microdrama, one of those ultra-short, fast-paced video series with one- to two-minute episodes shot vertically for smartphones.  

"It seems to be kind of the trend. So we wanted to spoof it as soon as we could," he says.  

It took several weeks to develop, write and secure the cast, which includes Fallon, John Stamos and Delaney Rowe, but they filmed it in one day on the show's usual day off.  

"I don't even know if it's funny," he says as he sits down to preview the first two episodes for USA TODAY. 

Fallon, if he is capable, can relax: It's funny.  

And yet again, he's showing he's not afraid to get out from behind the desk and try something new. Even as he deals with a condiment catastrophe.  

Jimmy Fallon never planned on reinventing late-night 

Late-night TV has had a tough year. There was the cancellation of "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" on CBS. Jimmy Kimmel was forced into a brief hiatus for comments he made about Charlie Kirk's assassination, and ABC still faces threats from the Federal Communications Commission.  

With Colbert’s departure, Fallon feels some responsibility to carry late-night into the next generation. "The idea of it is that it's just someone that you can talk to that's there for you, that you can laugh, and you can know what's going on in pop culture in the world," Fallon says. "I think that's just needed."

But even before 2026, the once coveted time slot on the major networks at 11:35 p.m. had its challenges. Much like most of linear TV, viewership has fallen by roughly 50%, and revenue has followed.  

When Fallon took the helm in 2014, he of course knew the DNA of "The Tonight Show."

"I remember coming out the first night, and I wanted to explain to everybody who hadn't seen 'The Tonight Show' what it is," he says. "These are The Roots; they're the greatest band on Earth. That's [Steve] Higgins; he's our announcer. We'll banter back and forth. I read some jokes based on what's going on in the news. And then I go sit over there and interview celebrities, and then we’ll have a musical guest."

But the trick was that Fallon did not follow the script of the typical late-night show. Right out of the gate, he relied less on interviews than his predecessors or his peers, with 37% of his show devoted to "talk" compared with 51% for Jay Leno, Johnny Carson, Seth Meyers and David Letterman, and 48% for Jimmy Kimmel. Monologues were roughly the same, with Fallon using 23% of his time on comedy sketches and 14% on music, according to a 2014 study. 

It was a recipe for the digital age, when beats make clips travel far and wide on TikTok and sketches are perfect for Shorts on YouTube. The format also relies less on politics than some of his competitors. Though "The Tonight Show" isn't winning the Nielsen ratings, it wins on YouTube and social: It has more than 100 million followers and subscribers, and it's the third-highest TV show for engagement (the metric that measures active participation, such as liking or sharing content rather than auto views), behind SportsCenter and Netflix's "Stranger Things," according to NBC.

Fallon says the social-first nature of his show wasn’t planned. "I wanted to build that audience along with the show, and it's helped," he says. "We just keep our heads down and keep doing comedy and whatever we can do to make people laugh."

Once the "SNL" newbie, now he’s an elder statesman in the building. "It's a grind after you do this for so many years. [You think], what can inspire people? And you go, 'Dude, this is so weird. Let's go.'"

The microdrama, "Who Billionaire? Me Billionaire," has the feel of an "SNL" daytime soap opera spoof with hilarious cliffhangers at the end of each episode. Viewers will binge through the series in less time than it takes for a Pura Vida delivery – and that’s OK, since Fallon has plenty more ideas. He has helped revive the game show "Password" and is producing a new Wordle show, starring Savannah Guthrie, expected to be released next year.

"We were going to tape it earlier," he says, acknowledging the tragedy of Guthrie's mother's disappearance. "[I told Savannah] don't worry about us. We will wait for whenever it's the right time. And so we did."

They recently filmed in the U.K., and she's "crushing it," he says. 

He has similar praise for his "Password" costar, Keke Palmer. "Keke can honestly do everything," he says. "Her work ethic is crazy. Her thing is we're both Virgos; that's why we get along because we just love working."

A man of many hats, and many guests 

Fallon has jumped up to walk through future guests on the show. There are ideas for Matthew McConaughey, Callum Turner, Zoë Saldana. At night he fills up the voice memo app on his phone when anything pops into his head. He sits back down and cues up a recording of a whisper-y Fallon singing a half-baked holiday ditty about a father trying to get their kids to "put their coats on and get in the f---ing car." The jingle isn't done yet; he needs a twist at the end – maybe the kids need to pee after they are finally bundled up? – but it's July. He has time. 

His love of music, he says, comes from his parents, who listened to doo-wop while he and his sister, Gloria, preferred Michael Jackson. His parents spurred him on early; they'd give him a quarter for doing Rodney Dangerfield impersonations. When his mom heard about a talent contest, she suggested he enter. He won first place for his impressions, and $1,000. His parents let him keep the cash, which he spent on an electric guitar.  

At 15, he went to a friend's party and there was a band. "The guy in the band was like: 'I heard there's a kid here, Jimmy, that plays guitar. Do you want to play something?' I was like, 'I would never get onstage.'"

But his friend egged him on. "The guys were probably in their 20s, but to me, they were old men. And I played 'Wipe Out' in front of this whole party. That was my first time on stage going for it. And it crushed. I had the best night ever. So I think that kind of got me going."

"The Tonight Show" lets it all come together. "I think my wife is so happy for me to have this job because she's like, 'This guy's got a lot of ideas, man,'" he says. "She's the secret sauce to everything. I usually go to her to go, 'What do you think of this?'"

Fallon and Nancy Juvonen, a producer and cofounder of Flower Films with Drew Barrymore, have been married almost 20 years. They share daughters Winnie, 12, and Frances, 11. Juvonen lets her husband freewheel but also keeps him focused.

"When COVID happened, I went home and my wife was like, 'So what's the plan?' And I go, 'I think we're just off for two weeks.' She's like: 'Huh? You're not going to be off. You have to get out there and you have to do the show from your phone because everyone's going through this right now. They need you. This is why you do what you do.' I was like, 'Oh yeah, this is it.'"

There's another reason he does what he does: He loves showbiz. He wants to do his part to help keep it going.

"I love it. I really do. We just did a bit with John Cena where I was dipped in a thing of whipped cream," he says, and then lists the possible complaints: "It's going to take half an hour to shower it off. You have to shower with Dawn liquid soap to get the whipped cream off, which I didn't know – you learn these things. And I'm like, 'Yeah, but it's show business. We're putting on a fun thing.'"

What's next for 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon'? 

Fallon struggles to think of a guest he's still chasing, because he has had them all. Bruce Springsteen? Though the Boss protested, Fallon got him to wear a wig and put on his glasses from his Born to Run tour with a flat cap.  

"He walked out of the dressing room," Fallon says, "and his manager was across the hall, and they both kind of got emotional." Springsteen looked like his younger self.  

Carol Burnett? She slapped Fallon across the face in one sketch. Former President Barack Obama? He slow-jammed the news, twice. 

"I wanted to have the queen," Fallon says of Queen Elizabeth II, who died in 2022. "The pope maybe could be fun."

He doesn't always recognize the gravity of his guests in the moment, but as we walk through the antechamber to Fallon's office, it's clear he feels it.  

The walls are filled with mementos from past guests: a burlap bag signed by Michelle Obama from when they did a potato sack race together. Hand-drawn line art by Grace Coddington of Fallon hosting her on the show. A painting from Paul Newman (proceeds from Fallon's Tonight Dough ice cream benefit SeriousFun Children's Network, which was founded by the legendary actor). A photo from Brian Grazer, who, as a prank, leaves personal photos in places he has been. Artwork by one of Fallon's daughters. A poster that reads in big block type: "I love it, what is it?" Framed ticket stubs from his first shows. He can tell a story about each and every piece. 

During commercials, people in his studio audience sometimes ask him for advice for being a comedian or actor.  

"I'm like, 'Do it because you like it.' Don't do it for the money, because before this – I'm very lucky there’s money in it for me now – but there's no money in this. If you do it because you like it, you can do it forever."  

Which brings us back to the salad. He'll need to keep eating his protein and his greens, and lifting those weights. Because it's clear he wants to keep doing this for a very long time.

Wendy Naugle is USA TODAY's Executive Editor of Entertainment. Follow her on Instagram @wendy_naugle.