LENO TAKES ANOTHER ONE ON THE CHIN

Now even Jay Leno’s guests are firing zingers in his direction. Without mentioning Leno by name, Alyson Hannigan, who co-stars on CBS’s How I Met Your Mother, complained, “Certain [late-night] hosts have you do your pre-interview and then you have to go on the show and retell every story verbatim or you’re not coming back.

… There are a lot of other hosts where it’s OK to tell this story or that story, and if it veers off it’s fine because the host is secure enough to go with you, and vice-versa.” Hannigan’s comments came during a Funny Women of 20th panel discussion at the Television Critics Association meeting in Pasadena, moderated by ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel (who may have fired the most damaging comedy shots at Leno during the Leno-Conan O’Brien fiasco last year). When Kimmel was asked whether he had anything negative to add about Leno, he responded: “Slam Leno? I think Alyson just did.” Meanwhile, when O’Brien was asked later at another TCA news conference whether he’d ever speak to Leno again, he replied, “No, I don’t think so. … We all know the story and we all know what happened. Life is short.”