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30 replacements for Jimmy Fallon on Tonight Show

By Jeremy Dick

NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 03: Actor Aziz Ansari and host Jimmy Fallon appear on 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon' at Rockefeller Center on August 3, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by J. Kempin/Getty Images for NBC)
NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 03: Actor Aziz Ansari and host Jimmy Fallon appear on 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon' at Rockefeller Center on August 3, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by J. Kempin/Getty Images for NBC) /
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PARK CITY, UT – JANUARY 23: Chelsea Handler attends the Cinema Cafe Conversation on January 23, 2016 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Todd Williamson/Getty Images for Netflix)
PARK CITY, UT – JANUARY 23: Chelsea Handler attends the Cinema Cafe Conversation on January 23, 2016 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Todd Williamson/Getty Images for Netflix) /

1. Chelsea Handler

Chelsea Handler is a very smart and hilarious woman with years of talk show hosting experience. From 2007 to 2014, she hosted the E! talk show Chelsea Lately. The show won her a Teen Choice Award and a nomination for a People’s Choice Award. While maintaining its popularity for so many years, Handler still decided to leave the series due to the lack of creative freedom.

Since leaving Chelsea Lately, the comedian has been making a splash on Netflix. She filmed a documentary series called Chelsea Does before then recently premiering her own streaming talk show Chelsea. With more freedom to be herself, Handler is even more hilarious on the Netflix series than she ever was on E!

Handler might be having some success so far with her original Netflix series, but hosting The Tonight Show is the most prominent talk show gig of all. Supposedly, Jay Leno had been grooming Handler to be his own replacement before Jimmy Fallon got the job. Picking Fallon might have been the right call, but Handler would have been a fantastic runner-up.

And as Handler has only gotten funnier in the years since, one would hope she’d be the first person called in the event of Fallon leaving The Tonight Show.

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