Not much could throw Jimmy Fallon off his game – but Nicole Kidman did when she appeared on his show in 2015.
“Nicole Kidman totally blindsided me on my show,” Fallon, 49, recalled during an interview with Deadline on Thursday, April 25. “We were just there to talk about one of her movies or something she was going to win an award for. She was great and she looked amazing and we were talking and she goes, ‘Did you know that we dated? Do you remember like I had a crush on you and I came over to your apartment?
Fallon, who has hosted The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon since 2014, was completely caught off guard and shared that his face “just melted.”
“It was the most embarrassing thing,” he added.
In January 2015, Fallon shared that he had met Kidman, 56, after a mutual friend brought her to his apartment out of the blue.
“I’m walking down the street in New York City, and my friend Rick calls me and says, ‘Dude, what are you doing? I have Nicole Kidman with me and she wants to meet you to be in Bewitched or something. I can be in your apartment in 10 minutes,” Fallon told the actress who was appearing as a guest on the episode, adding that he was not prepared because he wasn’t used to having people over.
After Fallon shared the funny story, Kidman shocked him by admitting that she had a crush on him.
“I just remember I liked you. Not now, I’m married now,” she shared, referring to her husband Keith Urban whom she’s been married to since 2006. “But Rick was like, ‘Jimmy wants to meet you and you can go over to his apartment,’ and I was single.”
Fallon, who has now been married to Nancy Juvonen since 2007, was confused by her revelation and replied, “What are you talking about? Could I have dated Nicole Kidman?”
Kidman went on to explain that when she went over to Fallon’s apartment, he didn’t make an effort to woo her over.
“You wouldn’t talk, you didn’t say anything. You were like, ‘Hey, mmm, mmm, mmm!” she joked.
Fallon admitted that he was “nervous” and didn’t know what to say.
“I didn’t know this was a thing, I thought it was a movie or something,” he explained before Kidman replied, “Well it was like a hang and then you put a video game on or something and I was like, ‘This is so bad.’ And you didn’t talk at all. So after about an hour and a half I thought, ‘He has no interest, this is so embarrassing.’ So I left, and went, ‘OK, no chemistry. Maybe he’s gay!’”
Following Kidman’s comment, Fallon couldn’t take any more embarrassment and ended up leaving the set.
Nearly a decade after the viral interview, Fallon said that he and Urban, 56, make fun of the moment to this day.
“I went up to [Keith] at the Met Gala, I saw him last time and I go, ‘Hey, I think that we might have dated once,’ and he was laughing,” he told Deadline on Thursday. “He goes, ‘Nicole’s talking to someone across the table. Why don’t you go and just hold her hand? She’ll think it’s me and then I’ll go around the table and wave at her.’”
While Fallon admitted he didn’t want to get “slapped,” he still went through with the prank.
“I went in, I sat next to Nicole and I grabbed her hand and she held it like it was Keith’s probably,” he explained. “She was kind of like rubbing it and having this conversation. Then [Keith] went across the table to the person she was talking to and he’s like, ‘Hi Nic,’ and she’s like, ‘What?! Jimmy what are you doing?’ and I was like, ‘It was his idea!’”
