On July 10, 1995, Jay Leno presided over what would become one of the most singular moments in the history of late-night television. But had this reporter not reminded him, the 30th anniversary of Hugh Grant’s post-arrest Tonight Show appearance might have come and gone without Leno’s notice.
Twelve days earlier, Grant, one of the hottest male movie stars in the realm of romantic comedy, had been arrested in Los Angeles for paying a sex worker named Divine Brown for an assignation in a parked BMW on Sunset Boulevard (of all discreet locations).
The first question out of Leno’s mouth after Grant sheepishly took his seat, “What the hell were you thinking?” has since entered the official compendium of signature lines ever uttered on television.
That was validated most recently by a plotline on the HBO Max series Hacks in which the late-night host character Deborah Vance, played by Jean Smart, books a guest after a scandal similar to the one that engulfed Grant and opens her interview with the exact same line.
“It took 30 years, I guess,” Leno says with a laugh upon hearing that his Hugh Grant interview is considered a cultural touchstone.
Jay certainly recalls the craziness of the press attention leading up to that edition of Tonight. A “nuthouse” was what he called it then. Before he brought Grant on, he even led a camera out through the lobby of NBC’s Burbank studios and chatted up the throng of news crews.
But he says one of the prevailing themes behind the fevered coverage that day—that Grant had recklessly put his career in jeopardy—always felt like nonsense to him.
“It was a guy being naughty,” Leno says. “If it had been drugs or DUI or some thing in a car where people got hurt that would have been another thing. This was Hugh Grant, a cute guy, being a little naughty.”
Indeed, far from damaging his career, Grant’s shambling embarrassment and willingness to accept he had done something more fundamentally dumb than genuinely scandalous, only seemed to cement his appeal.
Outside with the paparazzi, the crowd mostly consisted of young women thrilled at the prospect of maybe catching a glimpse of the now “notorious” star. One woman held up a sign: “I Would Have Paid You, Hugh.”
And when Grant emerged from behind the curtains after Jay’s introduction and walked somewhat tensely to his place, the audience erupted in squeals that might have attended The Beatles in an earlier day.
For Leno, the booking was a genuine coup. Grant had been booked for weeks as part of the publicity campaign for his film opening that same weekend, Nine Months.
The big mystery in the week leading up to the show was whether Grant would honor the commitment and turn up, knowing he would have to address this less-than-dignified celebrity moment.
As Leno recalls, he and his staff did nothing special to cajole the star into showing up. They just checked as they would with any guest and were assured the booking would stand.
Jay did speak with Grant before the taping that evening. “I just went in to see him and I said, ‘I gotta ask this. I’m not going to ambush you or anything. But I gotta ask.’ He says Grant understood. “He was good guy about it.”
As Leno recalls, their interaction stood in contrast to a somewhat similar moment when the show had booked an Olympic athlete who had posed for Playboy magazine. When she arrived, her publicist began by saying Jay could not ask her anything about the magazine layout.
Leno says he introduced them to reality. “I told them: ‘I can get a comic here in about 10 minutes. This is why you’re here!’”
Grant apparently never made any such requests. He addressed the events leading to his arrest on air saying, “I think you know in life when you do a good thing or a bad thing. I did a bad thing, and there you have it.”
According to late-night lore, the Grant appearance was the launching pad to Leno’s eventual and lasting dominance in the late-night ratings, which until that night had been led consistently for about two years by David Letterman on his then-new CBS show.
But as Leno recalls it, the huge audience he received that night was more the nudge over the top after a steady upward climb for his show. Things had already shifted in his direction for a period of months, helped by adjustments he and his producer Debbie Vickers had made—moving Jay close to the audience for his monologue for example—improved NBC programming in prime time (ER had premiered the previous fall), and massive fumbles by CBS, led by losing rights to NFL football.
But big moments are easier to remember, and Hugh Grant’s honest and somehow sweet self-abasement before an audience of hundreds in a studio and multi-millions on TV certainly played like a watershed event.
For Leno, it’s just one moment among thousands on the late-night stage. He says he really was unaware of the date. “I don’t remember dates like that. I thought we started our show in April, and somebody mentioned to me it was really May.” (Indeed it was: May 25, 1992.)
While Leno may not spend much time thinking about the milestone moments on his own show, he says he does think a lot about his run as the most frequent guest in the breakout years for his old friend and future rival, Letterman, on NBC’s Late Night.
“I think that was the best time of my life in show business,” Leno says now. “Just coming on an ad-libbing with Dave. I would be backstage eating a meatball sandwich and he would walk by and say: ‘How can you eat that before you go on?’ He was so uncomfortable. We had so much fun.”
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