Last week, we reported that Jimmy Fallon fell and injured his hand while celebrating with college students and the staff of the Harvard Lampoon at a party in his honor.
On its own, the injury wouldn’t have made many headlines, and might have been nothing more than a funny story during Fallon’s Monday night monologue.
Unfortunately, as regular viewers of The Tonight Show know, the sight of Fallon in bandages is not uncommon these days, as the beloved late night host has suffered three injuries in the past four months.
Over the summer, Fallon injured his hand during another freak accident. Shortly thereafter, he chipped his tooth, reportedly while opening a tube of ointment to treat the cuts on the finger that was nearly severed when he fell.
Naturally, all of these momentary lapses in balance have led to rumors that Fallon is hitting the bottle hard, and there have been rumors that NBC execs are planning an intervention for Fallon.
Now, their hand might be forced by a piece in yesterday’s New York Post that boldly declares that Fallon’s “partying is getting out of hand” and cites a number of incidents in which the 41-year-old comic made a spectacle of himself while drunk in public.
“It’s gone from being a whisper to a chatter,” says one industry insider when asked about the rumors of Fallon’s heavy boozing.
“He’s a mess” confirms a Manhattan bartender who claims Fallon’s been a regular customer of hers for several years. “Everything you’ve heard [about his behavior] is true.”
Even Fallon’s professional colleagues aren’t shy about discussing the host’s well-known love of the sauce.
“Everyone in New York has a Jimmy Fallon story,” says Fallon’s friend and warm-up comic, Seth Herzog. “It’s always like, ‘In 2000, Jimmy threw this dude out of a bar, or poured his beer on someone, or got on a table and sang a song.’”
Fallon’s former Saturday Night Live co-star Horatio Sanz recently described their time on the iconic sketch show, saying:
“[We were] superfunctioning alcoholics, definitely…They say that kind of goes hand in hand with ‘SNL,’ some kind of substance-abuse issues, because it’s so stressful, you easily find yourself blowing off steam a lot.”
At this point, it seems there’s little doubt that Fallon’s boozing periodically gets out of hand. The only question is: Does late night’s golden boy plan to do anything about it?
