Sorry for not blogging in so long, as always, we've been busy. But for those of you who have been closely following our blog, we attended a live taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon this past Monday! When we booked the tickets, we didn't know who his guests would be, so we were a little nervous, but it turned out we picked a great day, as we got to see Anne Hathaway, SNL's Will Forte, and chef Mario Batali! Before we get into the actual show, I thought we'd give you a little behind the scenes report of how the show comes together.
So, when we first arrived at 30 Rockefeller Plaza at 3:30, (where all the New York based NBC shows are taped. 30 Rock, get it?), we were handed a ticket with a letter on it, and a wrist band to get in, and we were told to come back at 4:30. At 4:30, they arranged everyone with tickets in order of the random letter that they wrote on it (we happened to be V) and that is the order that we entered into the studio. (After all the letters they started going through numbers, and then they had people with stand by tickets in case people with real tickets didn't show up, so even though we were V, we were still pretty close to the front). Once we got in they told everyone where we should sit. Then, once we were all seated, they had some NBC comedian/producer guy come out to give us the ground rules while entertaining us. (No screaming in the middle of the show, don't stick your head into the shot if the camera is on someone else, etc.) He was talking to the crowd, making fun of random audience members, he asked who's birthday it was today and had 2 of them do a birthday dance-off for the audience, and the winner got a used copy of an etiquette book, etc. He was funny, and was obviously sent in to get everyone pumped for the show. Then, The Roots came out, and started playing a song for us, again getting everyone riled up as the show was just minutes away from starting. Higgins, the announcer/side kick came out and tells everyone that they are about to begin and to be quiet as they get everything set up.
And then, it started! The opening sequence plays on the screens in front of us, The Roots start to play the opening theme, and Jimmy comes out from behind the curtain! He does his usual monologue, making some jokes about the latest news headlines, but at one point in his monologue, after making one of his jokes (Microsoft just came out with a new XBox where you can play without using your hands. So now you can play with your XBox while you play with your Wii). he ran up to the cue card guy, took the cue card with that joke on it, and went into the audience and gave the card to a lucky audience member. No, it wasn't us, but she was right in front of us, and when he came up, we were clearly in the camera shot! So we got to be on TV!
After the monologue, he showed the exciting 4th episode of the Late Night parody of The Hills, "Seventh Floor West". It was interesting watching Jimmy Fallon's reaction to the show while we were all watching it. He just sat at his desk, laughing at it, as if he was watching something on TV, as opposed to a show that he starred in. Higgins came over to the couch and sat with him, and they watched together, just like they always joke about on the show, so that was really cool to see.
Then there was a commercial break. I always wondered what happened during commercial breaks, and if there even were commercial breaks during taping. Since the show doesn't air live, there really is no need for them when taping, but apparently they do take breaks. I guess they need to give everyone a little break and keep the pacing of the show. During the commercial breaks, The Roots played for everyone (you know how they always start playing when they go to commercial? They keep playing continuously until they return from commercial) and the hair and make up people come out and give Jimmy and his guests some touch ups. During one of the commercial breaks, The Roots stopped playing and the turned up the house lights, and Jimmy talked to the crowd for a little bit and answered some questions, so that was pretty cool. During another commercial break, they filmed some promos, that would air during the 11:00 news.
The rest of the show was great, Anne Hathaway played some guitar, Mario Batali cooked Italian food right in front of us and we could smell it cooking as we watched, and we even got to see Jon Favreau via web chat from the set of Iron Man 2 (we saw them set up the web chat during one of the commercials. Apparently at one point he could see Jimmy but Jimmy couldn't see him, so they had to fix that). However, out of all the guests, my favorite of course was Will Forte, from Saturday Night Live. He came out and told some funny anecdotes about his MacGruber sketch and about his sister wanting him to film her baby's birth, but my favorite part of the show was when Will Forte sang an original Late Night with Jimmy Fallon theme song that he wrote with all of the facts wrong. You can watch it here:
Also, for those of you keeping track, (and based on some comments we've received, you are!) since Will Forte is a cast member of SNL, we have to update our "SNL Cast Members on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon picture!
Jason Sudeikis will be on the show on Thursday (as well as previous cast member Rachel Dratch) so look for another update with him sometime shortly after that.Anyway, the show was a lot of fun, and hope we get to go back again soon!
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