Jay Leno got his career started in comedy in the 1970s.
He’s noticed some big changes in humor with the rise of cancel culture.
And Jay Leno revealed one fact about comedy that the woke outrage mob will hate.
Jay Leno talks about the changes in comedy
Jay Leno started as a stand-up comedian in the 1970s before he eventually stepped in for Johnny Carson as the host of The Tonight Show in 1992.
He’s seen some big changes in comedy during his five decades in the entertainment business.
Leno told Fox News Digital that some things never change in comedy.
“Comedy hasn’t changed,” Leno said. “It’s exactly the same thing. It doesn’t change. Things come in and out.”
He pointed to silent film star Buster Keaton as an example.
“If I showed you a Rudolph Valentino movie from the ’20s, you wouldn’t think it was sexy. You’d think, ‘Oh my God,’” Leno explained. “But if I showed you Buster Keaton falling off a building, it would be just as funny now as it was then. So, comedy doesn’t really change a whole lot.”
Leno weighed in on former NFL quarterback Tom Brady’s Netflix roast where some of the edgy jokes were considered to have crossed the line.
“Again, if it’s really funny, all bets are off,” Leno said. “See, the trouble is only when it’s inappropriate and not funny. Then people [go], ‘Oh, now I’m offended! I’m offended because A. It’s not funny because it’s inappropriate.’ Then they’ll go, ‘It’s inappropriate, but it’s really funny!'”
He highlighted the performance of comedian Nikki Glaser at the Brady roast.
Glaser received some criticism for her edgy jokes about Brady and his ex-wife supermodel Giselle Bundchen.
“She killed me. She was really funny,” Leno remarked. “A lot of people might say it’s inappropriate, but if it’s really funny, it makes it OK.”
“I’m not a big roast person, it’s not something I do, but it’s just a different kind of comedy, and it’s fine, it’s good,” Leno added.
Jay Leno has adjusted his comedy style over the years
Leno said that he’s adapted his comedy style over the years to fit the audience or the times.
“When I do a gig in Utah, and they’ll go, ‘Look, we don’t want any drug jokes, we don’t want any sex jokes. I go, ‘OK, I’ll take those out,’ and I do something else,” Leno told the Los Angeles Times in a 2021 interview.
Sometimes he said a comedian just has to adapt to the circumstances.
“With the #MeToo movement, all of a sudden the sexist jokes everybody used to do, you can’t do anymore,” Leno said. “So you either change with the times or you die. You adapt to the circumstances.”
Leno apologized after making a joke about Koreans eating dogs during a 2021 bit on NBC’s America’s Got Talent.
“At the time I did those jokes, I genuinely thought them to be harmless,” Leno said. “I was making fun of our enemy North Korea, and, like most jokes, there was a ring of truth to them.”
Comedy is undergoing a change for the worse with the rise of cancel culture.
