Jason Kelce recently revealed that he will be hosting his own late-night talk show on ESPN throughout the NFL playoffs from Union Transfer in Philadelphia, Pa. The program, which is titled They Call It Late Night with Jason Kelce, will air as the action takes place and feature football legends, former teammates, coaches and celebrities as special guests. Kelce formally divulged the project on an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live earlier in November, and he recently released a behind-the-scenes look into the inner workings of starring on the production. Before the video began, Kelce explained that Jimmy Kimmel offered to show him around the set and also gave advice pertaining to his upcoming venture.
Kimmel explained that the typical rehearsal process for his show involves sifting through 20 items within the news, determining what to use and writing jokes around them. Making the comparison to a newspaper, he delineated that it is important to determine which items are essential and will ultimately make the publication. There are also instances, he elucidated, where things change close to showtime because of a developing story that cannot be ignored. From there, Kimmel asked Kelce what he will do upon walking out on stage to host his new show.
“I don’t know,” Kelce replied. “What do you think I should do? You’re the expert. I know the conventional way is the suit.”
Responding to Kelce, Kimmel expressed that he was not sure that he should wear a suit unless he wants “to make a goof out of it” or something along those lines. Kimmel added that people seem interested in the stupid decisions he has to make. Kimmel then began to explain how it feels to begin hosting a show, equating it to drowning without any islands for support until you find a signature bit, along with how to approach his monologue.
“When you’re doing a show like this, you want to look right into the camera,” Kimmel advised. “The audience is there for a reaction, great, but you are broadcasting to a bunch of people. You’re not, ‘Hey everybody!’ You’re talking to one person because people watch TV by themselves, so everything that you say should be geared towards just [imagining] one person watching television is how I do it.”
Kimmel explained that the audience is an important element of the show and that it is good as the host to be as close to them as possible. As a part of his program, he routinely speaks to them during the commercials, always doing so after the completion of his monologue. Before the show drew near, Kimmel closed by offering Kelce a tip about how to approach scripting the program and differentiating between reading and speaking.
“When you go through the copy – you guys will write the copy, then you go through it – if any word feels like a word you wouldn’t say, or even like I have intentional grammatical mistakes in my monologue because there’s something about reading that’s artificial just to start with,” Kimmel said, “and then if you can just do that extra 10% of the work and just tweak it to your [liking] – anything that feels weird, any word that doesn’t feel right – it’ll make a huge difference.”
Kelce’s show will make its official premiere on Saturday, Jan. 4 airing at 1 a.m. EST on ESPN and run over the ensuing four weeks. The final episode of the program airs at 1:30 a.m. EST on Saturday, Feb. 1, eight days ahead of kickoff for Super Bowl LX from Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, La.
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