Jay Leno On State Of Late-Night: "It's All Depressing Trump Stuff"

THR: What do you think of how late-night has evolved to cover the Trump administration?

Late-night has always been pretty topical. The only trouble is now everyone has the same topic. (Laughs.) It's all depressing Trump stuff. And they all do a great job. Seth Meyers is a great writer; Jimmy Kimmel does a good job; Jimmy Fallon does a great job. I like Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah [on Comedy Central] and Samantha Bee [on TBS]. The trouble is that there's such negativity now. When I did the show, Bush was dumb and Clinton was horny and it was human problems. Now it's all anti-women, anti-LGBT, anti-Muslim, anti-Mexican, anti-Salvadoran; it's such a negative thing. God bless all the late-night hosts, they make it funny, but ultimately, it's depressing. You don't really watch late-night TV to get away from reality anymore; now it's more in your face. You laugh but then you go to bed going, "Oh man, the world is really pretty rough." And it's not, it's one man that causes all these problems!

THR: Who are you watching? Who do you think is doing their best work right now?

I'm a joke guy; I don't really watch the celebrity interviews because I've interviewed all those people already. I watch Seth Meyers, Fallon, Kimmel. I do try to watch them all. I like to hear their jokes. That's the hardest thing to do — write a joke — and it's really hard when you have to write basically the same joke every night. I don't mean that in an insulting way. And they do it, they're really creative and really funny. It's not the lazy kind of version of a joke you've heard before. People are really writing good stuff and it's impressive.