ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why did you decide to do this?
Nothing is more simultaneously exhilarating and fear-inducing than hearing you have 10 seconds in the Super Bowl.
We were banging heads together.
How do we come close to topping the last one?
Then Dave got this idea.
I have to give Les credit … he got it immediately.
She laughed for a good minute and said Jay would want to call.
I hung up, and two minutes later it was Jay.
He said This is the way show business should be.
Debbie then cleared it with NBC Entertainment Chairman Jeff Gaspin and NBC-Universal CEO Jeff Zucker.
How did you manage to pull it off without the press catching wind of it?
We began having logistical meetings that would make the CIA proud.
We had to figure out a way to keep it a surprise.
Jay wore a disguise …a hooded sweatshirt, dark sunglasses and a mustache.
Fifteen minutes later, Oprah arrived … but not in a disguise.
We shot it in the balcony of the Ed Sullivan Theater.
What was it like when Leno and Letterman first saw each other?
It was great, very professional, very cordial.
We shot it in 25 minutes, and it went really, really well.
It felt like one of those things where you wake up and say, I had the strangest dream.
There was no frostiness.
We were focused on trying to execute the joke.
It would have been a more taxing event had it been us all going out to dinner.
If anything was awkward, it was how it wasnt awkward.
Are we rehabilitating Jays image?
Dave has a simple edict: If its funny, we do it.
Then we learned we had another five seconds.
You and Dave must have realized you had the potential to upstage the Super Bowl.
Well, thats not our problem!
[He laughs].
My response is: They had a year, millions of dollars, and 30 seconds!
We had one week, no money, and 15 seconds.
Watch Leno and Letterman declare a grumpy truce during the Super Bowl
