Jimmy Fallon explains why Robert De Niro was his “most awkward” interview
Jimmy Fallon is now a veteran of the late-night talk show business, but initially, the Saturday Night Live alumni struggled to find his groove. For his first effort, Fallon managed to secure the booking of New York’s favourite son, Robert De Niro, but things didn’t work out well.
It takes years for a talk show to grow a reputation, and nobody knew if Fallon would be a success. Therefore, securing guests of a superstar calibre was a difficult task. There’s a risk attached to the show, and very few A-listers were willing to chance it. Today, thanks to being a staple of late-night television for over a decade, Fallon can get any celebrity to appear on his show. Still, somehow, he convinced De Niro to appear in the inaugural episode.
During an appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen in 2011, Fallon revealed that De Niro was the “most awkward” interview subject he’s ever had work with. However, the comedian puts this down to his own inexperience rather than De Niro being deliberately hostile.
Unlike most guests who appear on talk shows, De Niro, somewhat refreshingly, didn’t have anything to promote. On the one hand, this allowed the pair to talk openly about any subject they wanted. However, one drawback was that De Niro also didn’t need to sell anything enthusiastically, and it was up to Fallon to make him excitable.
“So I was like, ‘I want to get somebody A-list,’ and I want someone in New York,” Fallon explained to Cohen. “And here’s the coolness of Robert De Niro, he didn’t have a movie coming out, had nothing to promote, he said, ‘Absolutely, yes’, as soon as I asked him.”
Despite Fallon’s desperate attempts to get the conversation flowing between the pair, De Niro was less than impressed with his approach and replied as bluntly as possible. “It’s flop sweat coming down my face,” Fallon said about the incident. “My hair looked like it had a comb-over…At one point I was delirious, I couldn’t even see him…I was just getting loopy, but he’s the best.”
When De Niro appeared on The Tonight Show in 2015, the duo cleared the air, and Fallon apologised for his unprofessional handling of their previous encounter. “I gotta say, I had no idea what I was doing,” he said of that first episode and the awkward interview. “I ran out of questions to ask you because you don’t even like doing talk shows that much.”
Unfortunately, no footage exists of the interview from the inaugural episode of The Late Show with De Niro. However, you can watch Fallon describe and act out the nerve-wracking ordeal below.
