Joseph Gordon-Levitt to play Johnny Carson in biopic series King Of Late Night
After replacing Jack Paar, Carson ended up hosting The Tonight Show for 30 years
Aux News Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been tapped to play Johnny Carson in a forthcoming biopic series titled King Of Late Night. Penned by veteran TV writer David Milch (NYPD Blue) and directed by Jay Roach (Bombshell), the show is set to follow the divide between the longtime TV host’s work and off-screen life throughout his career.
After Carson’s time serving in the U.S. Navy during WWII, he began his comedy career in radio before making the jump to television. He eventually replaced Jack Paar on The Tonight Show, which he ended up hosting for 30 years from 1962 to 1992. His personal life was shaken up a little more frequently; Carson was married a total of four times before his death in 2005. Given the time range potentially being covered here, is the makeup artist from The Eyes Of Tammy Faye available?
As reported by Deadline, King Of Late Night is now on the marketplace after Milch began developing it five years ago. The series is a coproduction between wiip and Anonymous Productions, and Gordon-Levitt, Milch, and Roach will also serve as executive producers.
After stepping back from showbiz for a few years to focus on being a dad, Gordon-Levitt has recently returned to our screens with a full slate of projects. In 2020, he appeared in Netflix’s action flick Project Power and Aaron Sorkin awards player The Trial Of The Chicago 7. Last year, he wrote, directed, and starred in the heartfelt Apple TV+ series Mr. Corman, which also marked the onetime 3rd Rock From The Sun actor’s first significant return to television in his adult career.
He’s currently in Showtime’s Super Pumped, playing Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick. Beyond being in his prestige TV era, Gordon-Levitt will also be voicing Jiminy Cricket in Robert Zemeckis’ forthcoming live-action adaptation of Pinocchio for Disney+.
52 Comments
Johnny Carson died in 2005, not 1995, as it currently states in the article.
May a diseased camel relieve itself on Katie’s keyboard.
Good username, local man.
I think the confusion was from the fact that he retired in 1992 so he was off people’s radar after that. But I remember his death still being a big thing in the news in 2005.
I think the confusion is more due to AV Club not fact checking or having much of an editorial apparatus to back writers up.
This is a really interesting casting choice that makes me more intrigued by the project itself. By accounts, Carson could be a massive asshole and did wield that power in questionable manners, but he was also responsible for several big cultural moments. By having Levitt here, I can see them being able to lean on both sides of that personality instead of playing it too cute.
It’s incredibly funny to listen to the DVD commentaries by The Simpsons writers who worked for Carson and expressing their absolute, unbridled dislike of him as a notorious joke thief and someone who, by the last decade or so of his time on the show, was effectively only hosting it part-time.
I remember one of them mentioning they wrote a joke where the punchline was about the Stray Cats, but I guess he didn’t know who they were so he changed it to something else that nobody had heard of. When the joke inevitably bombed, he gave them both death stares, even though it was his fault for changing it.
Do you recall which season and episode? I would really like to hear that. Also; do the DVDs feature alot of creative’s commentary? It’s worth the price just to have those.
I have the first nine seasons on DVD and I believe every episode has commentary.
Thanks.
Not off the top of my head but they talk about Carson a lot in the commentaries, particularly Seasons 1-4 while Jay Kogan, Mike Reiss and Al Jean were all on staff, among others.The DVDs are worth every cent – every episode has an audio commentary by the writers, actors, animators who reveal some incredible stories. It was the big drawcard for me given I’d seen the episodes countless times.If you haven’t got them, go and buy them as soon as you can. You absolutely won’t regret it!
That is some weird, wild stuff
YOU ARE CORRECT!!!
Which begs the question, who’s going to play Ed McMahon?
Seth Rogen or GTFO.
Rami Malek
Meryl Streep.
Andy Richter?
Mitchell!
HOW WEIRD IS IT?!
Well, I have to say this casting is…pretty wild.
It is, but I could see him with a stronger likeness to Johnny than he had withBruce Willis in Looper, even with the prosthetic.
Perfect example of something that I have so little interest in as a TV show but would happily watch as a movie.
“Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been tapped to play Johnny Carson in a forthcoming biopic series titled King Of Late Night.”Interesting, I guess I can see it.“Penned by veteran TV writer David Milch (NYPD Blue)“Oh, wow, that’s cool!“and directed by Jay Roach (Bombshell) the show is set to follow the divide between the longtime TV host’s work and off-screen life throughout his career.”Great, the poor man’s Adam McKay.
I… did not know that.
That’s wild!
But… Jay Roach came first? And his serious stuff is pretty great?
Interesting, I guess I can see it.Never occurred to me before, but I see it now.
I see it a lot now.
Late night American talk shows have never been part of my life so my entire frame of reference for Carson is his appearance on The Simpsons and the hatred its writers had for him.Same goes for Jay Leno, who I entirely know from his appearances in movies playing himself on his show during the 90s/2000s.
Cool.
All of them are offputting, imo, including the current hosts.
Except maybe for Conan (who was a Simpsons writer himself having written some of the classic episodes like the one where Homer goes to college and the monorail episode). But I’m not even sure he has a show these days.
I did like Conan the first 5 years or so. I don’t know if that’s when he was doing the “Year 2000 skits.” It was cute. Then Triumph the Insult Dog got a bit too much play for a one-joke dog and…. He was always very attentive to his guests.
I like the actor, did not like Carson at all. He was an ill informed misogynistic creep and glory hog. Ugh!
You’re so brave
All true yet Leno made me miss him…
I won’t pass judgment on this casting until I see his Art Fern impression.
I wanna know who is playing Joan Rivers because they can’t leave that drama out
Melissa?
Ironically, she did a poor job of playing her mom in that Jennifer Lawrence movie. Like….oddly not a good impression despite already looking and sounding like her. Like was doing an SNL sketch,
What, really? I thought I was being silly, but Melissa Rivers did play Joan Rivers? I may have to look this up.
Katherine Hahn was going to play her for a bio project at Showtime so I nominate her.
FRONTIER BRIS!
I wonder what kind of ‘tone’ the biopic will have and what topics it will address. I was just a kid during most of his career but I paid enough attention to dislike him intensely. The endless stream of sex jokes and sexual innuendo and his style with women guests, etc never changed. Sex jokes are lazy and that lent a smarminess. Lettermen was worse and Leno a close third.I thought I saw a new(?) documentary available about the late night guys – maybe on Netflix.
I can’t wait to see him in a turban.
This casting doesn’t seem to be getting much approval. I think there’s a strong resemblance and don’t see any reason why JGL can’t handle the part. He can be funny. He can sort of dance like Janet Jackson – that’s range,
Yeah, I can absolutely see him as Carson. Maybe people are mostly thinking of Carson once he got up there in years.
I don’t see a single post here criticizing it. People just wanna do old SNL callbacks.
These kind of movies just make me want to watch a documentary instead:
It will interesting to see him chain-smoking and being cruel to women…..
Carson was a turd
my dude looks 15