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challenged guests about their parents’ reactions to questionable behavior. Besides, Kanye had agreed to answer the question. Then, in July 2013, Kanye took back his apology to Taylor, telling the New York Times: “If anyone’s reading this waiting for some type of full-on, flat apology for anything, they should just stop reading right now.” When Kanye was reminded he had already expressed contrition, he implied he only did it because he had succumbed to peer pressure. Kanye’s confused and pathetic attempt to take back his apology only served to bolster Hugh Grant’s genuine mea culpa.
    In July 2013, Jay asked Eliot Spitzer: “How could you be this stupid?” The question had a ring to it, much like “What the hell were you thinking?” And it resonated with the press much like the one directed at Hugh Grant. The dishonored former New York governor came on the show to express regret for having to resign from office five years earlier after spending thousands on a high-end prostitute. He was planning to make a political comeback by seeking the office of New York City comptroller and wanted New Yorkers to understand he had been humbled by his personal mistakes. Spitzer answered Jay’s blunt inquiry this way: “People who fall prey to hubris end up falling themselves. And this is something that I think infected me. And the fall from grace is incredibly painful and is something through which you learn.”
    By sheer coincidence, Bill Hader, who did an impression of Spitzer in a 2010 comedy sketch on Saturday Night Live, was his fellow guest. Spitzer referred to the comedian as his “long-lost twin who got all the talent” and said: “I usually hit the remote when I see him.”
    While big celebrity mea culpas were a hallmark of the Leno years, they were very rare. On any given day, actors pitching their films and TV shows were our stock-in-trade. Naturally, our goal was to bring in the biggest stars, but sometimes the process could get complicated. In general, movie stars mattered more than TV stars. However, only about ten movie stars could be counted on to improve the ratings. Even they didn’t always come with a guarantee. As the number of talk shows increased, big stars made the rounds to promote their films, decreasing their value to us. Naturally, we tried to book them before any other show, but that wasn’t always possible.
    Like monologue jokes, the best guest bookings were topical: actors in current, popular films and televisions shows and people with “buzz” created by critics. We learned not to get too far ahead of the curve. Frequently, viewers’ awareness of the latest films and “hottest” actors lagged behind the critics by several weeks. So we often passed on rising but still relatively unknown stars, who would have done nothing for our ratings. Instead, we allowed, and even encouraged, them to do other, “smaller” shows first. Sometimes we took a risk on a young, relatively unknown but promising actor to establish a relationship with them before Letterman did, even though such a booking usually resulted in lower ratings. The idea was to reach out to younger viewers in the coveted eighteen to forty-nine demographic. We considered this the cost of doing business, an investment in the future, though it didn’t always pay off. Young stars often suffered from a strange case of memory loss when it came to remembering who gave them their big break. But sometimes we were pleasantly surprised.
    Shia LaBeouf was a sixteen-year-old comedic actor appearing in a Disney Channel sitcom called Even Stevens when my teenage daughter, Melissa, brought him to my attention. A year later he was starring in his first feature film, Disney’s Holes, which I watched with Melissa. By then, she was insisting Shia would be a major star some day. I agreed with her and invited Shia on the show. He was as funny as any comedian and he did, indeed, become a Hollywood celebrity after appearing in such films as Indiana