LENO SAYS NBC “BLINDSIDED” HIM WHEN HE WAS REPLACED BY CONAN

Jay Leno insists he didn’t see it coming when the network told him that Conan O’Brien would be replacing him on The Tonight Show in 2009. “I was blindsided,” Leno told Steve Kroft in a 60 Minutes interview scheduled to air on Sunday. “[NBC executives said], ‘You’re out…’ and I went ‘OK.'” Leno compared the experience to being dumped by a girlfriend. “You know, you have a girl [who] says, ‘I don’t want to see you anymore.’ Why? You know, she doesn’t want to see you anymore, OK?” Asked about taking back his old hosting job on Tonight and the censure he received from critics for doing that, he said, “I didn’t quite understand that, but I never chose to answer any of those things or make fun of any other people involved. It’s not my way.” Asked about the decision to replace him a second time and whether he would like to have remained, he responded, “It’s not my decision,” although he acknowledged that if it had been, he would “probably have stayed a little longer.”