It’s rare for The Tonight Show to include political jokes. In fact, as other late night shows all shared their thoughts, Jimmy Fallon made it clear that his show was never really about politics.
Things are slowly changing, though. Just recently, Fallon made a joke about Donald Trump, and now he’s made another one about a different Trump. It’s all about the Melania documentary.
What did Jimmy Fallon say about Melania?
During his Thursday night episode on Jan. 29, Fallon echoed much of what Jimmy Kimmel had previously said. As he focused on the movies coming out, he shared that Melanie and Send Help would both be released in theaters, and then jumped on the idea of the title of the Melania documentary.
"“Fun fact, [Send Help] was actually the originally title of the Melania movie.”"
This was a linked to the director behind the movie, Brett Ratner. He is considered a disgraced Hollywood director, and many of the crew involved in the creation of the documentary have distanced themselves from it. There were also comments about how much of a tyrant Ratner was on set, although Melania herself was described as being nice to everyone.
Despite the criticism, Melania has opened with $7 million at the Box Office, surprising many predictions, as it had been tracking for $3–$5 million, according to USA Today. Critics continue to pan the movie, but the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is strong.
Why is Jimmy Fallon suddenly getting into the political jabs?
With all of this, though, I have to question why The Tonight Show has suddenly started to get into the jabs against the Trumps. After all, Fallon was clear that the show wasn’t political. While he did the odd impression, he didn’t comment too much on what was going on in the news.
This could be one of two things. It could be coming from NBC, which wants to see a boost in The Tonight Show figures. When The Late Show ends, there will only be NBC and ABC with regular late night programming, and NBC will want to grab some of those people.
The other reason could be that Fallon has realized that he needs to do this to help his show. Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon are always mentioned by Donald Trump, so maybe this is the way to boost Fallon’s numbers.
Of course, it could just be that this is what people who tune into the shows want. You’ve got to give the people what they want in show business, right?
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon airs on weeknights at 11:35/10:35c on NBC.