Day 45- Last day in NY

Jimmy Fallon experience

Today we tried to get tickets to the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon (Daily talk show in the US), we spoke to the tour guides on the NBC studio tour and they told us about how you can line up for stand by tickets out the front of the studios and see if you get in. So we woke up at 6am and ventured out, arriving in the line at Rockefeller centre just after 7am with tickets being given out at 9am. We were happy to find that we were number 9 and 10 in line. They can never guarantee how many seats they will have come available but depending on the celebrities on that night they sometimes have people lining up around 4am. The guests were Selena Gomez, Charlie Hunam and Stormzy- we were worried that Selena would attract a big crowd but it didn’t grow that large. We brought snacks with us for the wait and made friends with our fellow line buddies (numbers 5,6,7,8 and 11) for the 2 hour wait- none were from NY, all travellers. There was 2 Canadian teachers in front of us and a Scottish guy that was trying to convince us to the power of positive thinking and that Jimmy Fallon would be lucky to meet us not the other way around.
An NBC page arrived right on the dot of 9am and took all our details in order and gave us the 9 and 10 tickets. This only holds your place and you need to go back at 3:30pm to see whether you will get in or not depending on how many confirmed audience members don’t show up.

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Brekky and Macys

We stopped by a cafe for breakfast, it was nice to sit down after lining up and we then headed to Macy’s where Nathan got a coffee and Kirsten had a shop. The best part of Macy’s was that we unintentionally arrived right on their opening time of 10am and discovered that the staff all line up and dance and clap and welcome everyone in like a parade. Video below.

https://vimeo.com/user105822180/review/385395012/d14e3c5b26

Madison Square Garden and Empire State

We walked around Madison Square Garden and had a look- cool to see it but you can’t see much from the outside. The Empire State Building is beautiful, we decided not to go up but admired it from the outside.

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The High line

Headed over to The High Line- an old railway turned into a walkway with lots of art and gardens, it was really beautiful and quite a peaceful walk. We walked through Soho and Greenwich village to get to Tribeca. All beautiful areas that are a bit quieter and really nice. If we were going to live in NYC (and had heaps of $$) we would live around there. We headed to Tribeca to catch up with our high school friend Olivia Nunn who is working and living in NYC. She took us to a great cafe where Liv and I got take away soups and Nathan got New York pizza (accidentally ordered 2 slices not realising how big American pizza is) and we sat on her work rooftop to eat. It was great to see her and catch up.

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Celebrity spotting

We have been keeping our eyes out for celebrities and found our first one while walking out of Harry Potter the other night, he was coming out the stage door from a different show. It was Jerry O’Connell, I think I mainly recognised him from Stand by Me (an excellent movie). You be the judge of whether it’s impressive or not, the phrase ‘D grade’ was thrown around by Nathan.
Before catching up with Liv we checked our Taylor Swifts NYC house which was 2 streets away- no luck spotting Taylor, and not the most looking impressive apartments (from the outside at least.)
But a celebrity count was about to get a lot higher, and much more legitimate..

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Jimmy Fallon

We nervously arrived back to Jimmy Fallon at 3:30pm to see whether we had gotten into the audience and they line you back up in the order of the line in the morning. By this time there was probably about 60+ people waiting. We got counted multiple times and were getting more nervous but it was seeming like our chances were good- our Scottish friend continued to preach to us on the power of positive thinking. Then someone from the audience team came down and said everyone above the number 45 wouldn’t get in but under 45 could stay and depending on the number of seats available and if you got tapped on the shoulder you would be in and go straight through airport style security and in. We got tapped! About 35-40 standbys got in- it is super unpredictable but it sounds like being a Monday and after everyone was back at work after the holidays helped. We were super excited and quickly got ushered through security to a waiting room while they filed us all in in order of our numbers- we got very good at lining up in order. We kept getting told we had gotten lucky with our taping, that it was going for an extra half hour for a special surprise.
After taking our seats and playing a video with some highlights from the show they had a warm up guy come out and get everyone excited encouraging us to clap and laugh hard. Then it was time for the show to start and Jimmy came out, everyone was super pumped and excited. Selena and Charlie came out to play games and do interviews which was great. They film it live to tape so they try not to re do much, it was surprising to us how much they interact with the crowd. Also, for Jimmy’s opening monologue and scripted parts they had a guy with cardboard flipping the lines over rather than a teleprompter- what a stressful job!

In the pauses for ad breaks Jimmy came and interacted with the crowd letting people ask questions, he was quite funny off the cuff and we were impressed with how much he spoke to the crowd. The show has a nice vibe with the audience of course super pumped but the crew also seemed to be really enjoying themselves and laughing along.
We were on the right side of the audience because anytime Jimmy came into the crowd during the show or breaks it was near us. Spot us in the top left of this clip:

Then the surprise guests came out- Hugh Grant and Matthew McConaughey! Promoting their movie The Gentlemen. It was so exciting. Hugh particularly was really funny (getting a little grey on top) and was great to see two big celebrities. They are going to be on Friday’s show but were only available on Monday so they pre recorded it. Was such a fun (and free) afternoon activity.

We stopped by the beloved Trader Joe’s on the way home and got some spinach lasagne for dinner and breakfast and lunch food for a day of travel to Vancouver tomorrow (you don’t get free food on cheap flights 🙂 ).