Why Jimmy Fallon Left SNL

Jimmy Fallon served six years at "Saturday Night Live," and although he got plenty of flak for breaking too often in his sketches, he was still a popular member of the cast. He was a more family-friendly version of Pete Davidson, in that he had the It factor that drew in audiences despite the other cast members being stronger performers. He could've gone on for seven seasons if he wanted to, possibly even eight or nine. 

Instead Fallon left at the end of season 29 in May 2004. He left for reasons similar to Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler before him: to be the leading man of his own movies, not just an ensemble player in a 10+ person cast. As Fallon mentioend to Entertainment Weekly at the time, he was getting a lot of movie offers as a result of his popularity on "SNL," but the demanding "SNL" production schedule meant Fallon couldn't commit to as many of those offers as he'd have liked.

After Fallon left, we saw a string of promising comedic movies with Fallon as the leading man. The big one was "Fever Pitch," a romantic comedy where he starred alongside Drew Barrymore. The movie was supposed to cement Fallon as serious leading man material, but the reviews were mixed and the box office returns were underwhelming. He also starred in the action-comedy film "Taxi" alongside Queen Latifah, and that one was a clearer failure. One critic for the Hollywood Reporter wrote, "This thoroughly repetitive, ill conceived and poorly executed effort — with an emphasis on the word 'effort' — defeats these two talented people more often than not."

As the 2000s went along and Fallon failed to get a clear-cut hit movie on his résumé, it started to seem like leaving "SNL" was a mistake. Maybe he should've stayed on for another year or two, fans argued. Maybe his time in the spotlight was over. But thanks to his strong relationship with "SNL" showrunner Lorne Michaels, his career wasn't finished yet. 

In the first episode of "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," sidekick Steve Higgins introduced Fallon by saying, "You loved him on 'SNL.' You hated him in the movies. Now, you're ambivalent." It was a fun way to address the elephant in the room, which was that Fallon was not that popular a choice for the new host of "Late Night." A lot of the execs at NBC were reportedly against hiring him, and the popular perception of Fallon was that he was no longer the hot young SNL star but the failed movie actor. But Variety reported that Lorne Michaels felt strongly that Fallon would be a good fit for the job, and Michaels tends to get what he wants. 

Fallon quickly proved a success, moving on to "The Tonight Show" in 2014 and staying there ever since. Fallon's still got his fair share of haters — mainly, people think his laugh is fake — but he's garnered a lot of appreciation for his wholesome, aggressively apolitical approach to the job. If you want an in-depth tackle on the news from your late night host, you'd go to Seth Meyers (Fallon's "Late Night" replacement) or "The Daily Show." If you want someone to really rip into Trump like their life depends on it, you'd go to Jimmy Kimmel. But if you just want to have mindless fun with lots of singing and silly games with celebrities, Fallon's the choice for you.

One of Fallon's biggest challenges, as he revealed in a recent interview, was making peace with how there's no way to please everyone. This was a problem he was stuck with both on and off "SNL." As he explained:

"You think that it's just going to be, 'oh this is cool, everyone will be great,' but then not everyone's rooting for you. Some people want you to fail. People's jobs are to take me down, you know, and to put bad press out and stuff. ... You go 'Oh, people are just going to be mean,' And you got to again just toughen up and get through it and just keep your head down and keep being funny and just keep doing things ... It's noise and it doesn't affect you. You can only believe in yourself and know that you have to keep going."

Considering his overall success throughout all these years, he must be doing something right, and people still get excited when he comes back to host "SNL."