Jay Leno knows a thing or two about hosting – but he’s officially put late night in his past. “It seems like 100 years ago, and it feels like yesterday,” the Jay Leno’s Garage star, 68, told Us Weekly when he stopped by our studio to discuss his chat partnership with Amgen to launch Cholesterol 911.
“I don’t really [miss it]. I loved it when I did it,” he continued. “But at some point, you can’t keep pretending you know all of Jay-Z‘s music. When you get to be my age, [it’s like,] ‘Oh yeah, right, right.’ I’m at the point now where I’m hearing oldies I didn’t hear the first time. That’s an oldie now? I didn’t even hear it when it came out in ’98. No, I missed it. So that’s where it’s at.”
Leno hosted The Tonight Show from 1992 to 2009 then returned from 2010 to 2014. Jimmy Fallon took over following Leno’s last night hosting on February 6, 2014. Since then, he’s been running his own show about motor vehicles, Jay Leno’s Garage, and he has no plans to return to late night.
In fact, the Emmy winner feels that in general, “TV is basically a young person’s game. …You do it for as long as you can, and then you hand it off. Handing it off to Jimmy was a great thrill.”
Watch more from our interview with Leno above.
