This Is the ‘Most Embarrassing’ Detail About Jimmy Fallon’s Disaster Date With Nicole Kidman

Jimmy Fallon’s romantic ineptitude, at least as it relates to Nicole Kidman, was already the stuff of legend.

Back in 2015, Kidman showed up on The Tonight Show, where the two stars shared wildly different recollections of an earlier meet-up. In Fallon’s memory, a mutual friend wanted to bring Kidman by his apartment to discuss a possible role in her Bewitched movie. Fallon, living in a bachelor hovel full of sneakers and video games, had no idea how to host a guest and ran out for cheese and crackers. 

Kidman, also single at the time, had intended something more romantic, a revelation that blew Fallon’s mind. Did he have a date with Nicole Kidman and not even realize it? Fallon didn’t exactly make a good impression in his ratty baseball cap. “You didn’t talk,” Kidman remembered. “You didn’t say anything. And then you put a video game on!”

“It was bad!” she told the audience as Fallon hid under his desk. 

Kidman, who’d driven an hour and a half for the meet-up, decided the silent Fallon had no interest in her at all.

Fallon covered his face in shame, realizing years after the fact that he had a chance to date one of the world’s biggest movie stars and blew it by playing video games. “I had no clue at all,” he insisted.

There just wasn’t any chemistry, and “maybe he’s gay,” Kidman concluded. “We just weren’t meant to be.”

“Wow, did you make a good decision,” agreed Fallon.

Fallon was mortified for the entire Kidman segment, an embarrassment one would think couldn’t get any worse. And yet, there he was this week on The Tonight Show with The Last of Us star Isabel Merced, reliving the horror yet again. 

Fallon was reminiscing about having The Last of Us creators on his show in 2012 to preview the upcoming video game. “That’s got to be one of the scariest video games I’ve ever played in my life, The Last of Us,” he told Merced.

“Was that the game you were playing when you bombed your date with Nicole Kidman?” Merced wondered.

“It’s a pleasure meeting you,” Fallon joked. “We’re out of time.”

Merced professed that the Fallon/Kidman debacle was her all-time favorite Tonight Show clip. “Sixty-three million people watched that,” groaned Fallon before revealing the “most embarrassing” part of the entire failed date. 

“So it was?” Merced persisted, desperate to know if The Last of Us was part of Fallon’s tragic evening. 

“No, we were playing Mario Kart,” Fallon admitted. “But thanks for bringing it up.”