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Jimmy Fallon on the Today show.

Jimmy Fallon Breaks Down How He Nearly Ruined His Macy’s Parade Performance In a Chaotic Moment

Live TV isn’t for everyone. There are so many moving parts, and things can go wrong. However, NBC does its best every year to pull off the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade without a hitch. Well, late-night host Jimmy Fallon had other plans, nearly derailing it on two separate occasions.

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Fallon, who headlines The Tonight Show for NBC, attended the parade to promote his upcoming holiday album, Holiday Seasoning, and his special on the network, which will air on December 4th. However, since the parade didn’t slow down for anyone, Fallon nearly missed his float while talking to Al Roker.

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A few days after the parade, Fallon went on the show Roker hosts, The Today Show, to reveal what happened while the two were talking on air. “I go, ‘Anyway Al, the album is coming out,’ and you go, ‘Hey, you gotta go,’ and I go, ‘Yeah, I know,’ but I was trying to help you out because it was raining,” Fallon explained. “And you’re like, ‘Jimmy, you have to go’ as this choo choo train is going by, and I’m like running after it.”

There was also a second incident during the parade that Fallon had to talk his way out of, which saw him unable to answer any questions because he couldn’t hear anything. “The other thing that made me laugh was that once I was talking to Savannah [Guthrie], and we had the earpiece, and she was like, ‘What’s your Thanksgiving tradition?’ as a literal marching band goes through me, like a high school marching band,” he said. “‘I have no clue what you’re saying at all, but I’m going to join this band, and we’re gonna do Beetlejuice.'”

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Fallon and The Today Show hosts made light of the situation, but the Internet had a field day with the former Saturday Night Live star, which is something he didn’t address. Throughout the parade, Fallon was wearing sunglasses. It was a gloomy day in New York, so some of the viewers at home suspected something was going on with him. They accused him of being hungover or having done drugs and wanting to avoid public embarrassment by covering it up.

Of course, those rumors are unfounded. The noise and speed of the parade are to blame for Fallon’s less-than-stellar appearances, and there are countless explanations for the sunglasses. In fact, another TV personality, former NFL wide receiver Randy Moss, who works at ESPN, wore sunglasses during an appearance on Sunday NFL Countdown because he’s battling a health issue. So, while celebrities may share their lives with their audience, they can still be dealing with things behind the scenes and deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Watch Jimmy Fallon’s Holiday Seasoning Spectacular, with special guests like The Jonas Brothers and Justin Timberlake, on Wednesday, December 4th, at 10 PM EST.


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Jackson Hayes
Associate Editor
Jackson Hayes is an Associate Editor at The Escapist. Starting his writing career in 2017, he quickly rose the ranks and became an editor. He's spent the last six years working at outlets such as CBR, Heroic Hollywood and Full Circle Cinema, where he's covered various sports games, Call of Duty, the MCU, and other major properties. You can follow him on Twitter @jacksonhayes67