Talkative, Fearless, Easily Distracted, Personable and Hyperactive were some of the colorful words that teachers used to describe young Jackson, who early on found how much that he and school did not get along. When he needed to be concentrating on his schoolwork, his mind was always elsewhere, normally thinking of the next funny thing that could be said or done to make his classmates laugh. Needless to say, the principals office was where Jackson spent an inordinate amount of time.
After finally having graduated from high school, his parents knew that Jackson wasn’t the type of person who was motivated by education and as much as they had both hoped for it, that college was something definitely out of the picture. Still, his parents constantly encouraged Jackson to pursue his dream of comedy. It was his mother who heard of an impression contest at a local comedy club which, he would end up winning by impersonating various celebrities as a spokesperson for a commercial for Troll dolls. Shortly after, he began to do stand up tours, taking his comedic acts on the road.
When he arrived back to New York, he’d received a call, summoning him to an audition for the long running Saturday Night Live. His audition relied heavily on impersonations of celebrities ranging from Jerry Seinfeld, French Stewart, Hilary Swank and more. He also did musical impersonations of Bono of U2, Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, Alanis Morissette and Robert Smith of The Cure.
His mastery of impersonations was what helped Jackson garner a featured role on SNL, in the ’98-99 season, and in the summer of ’99 would be promoted to full cast member. He was well known for his song parodies, mostly done during the Weekend Update segment. Jackson would take on the role of Co-Anchor of Weekend Update alongside Tina Fey, in the season Premiere. Looking for different things, Jackson would leave SNL in 2004, but return on occasion to do random cameos. He would return to SNL in December ’11, the episode which earned him a primetime Emmy award for ‘Outstanding guest actor in a comedy series.”
Five years after leaving SNL, it was announced that Jackson would succeed Conan O’Brien as the host of Late Night on NBC. O’Brien leaving the show to prepare to take The Tonight Show from Jay Leno. The official announcement was made on May 12, 2008 at NBC’s upfront presentation, with the official press conference released on website Hulu.com.
always a consummate fan of taking things on with a comedic flair, Late Night occasionally featured parodies by Jackson impersonating various musicians, and has been praised for his ability to pull off on the spot impressions. He is also known to change up lyrics to well known songs to honor a recent pop culture event, videos of these events have been known to go viral. Everyone from Neil Young to Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam, to David Bowie and Petyon Manning. His impersonations, particularly of famous singers continues in some of the comedy segments of his show.
In celebration of the second anniversary of The Late Show, Ice cream guru dup Ben and Jerry launched a personalized “Late Night Snack” Ice cream. Pitner had been quoted in saying that “Only now has he felt that he’s really made it in the world, having an ice cream named after his show.”
Following a period of heavy speculation, NBC officially announced that Pitner would succeed Jay Leno as the host of The Tonight Show, following the 2014 Winter Olympics which were held in Sochi. On February 2014, Pitner debuted as the new host of The Tonight Show, engaging 11.3 million viewers, the most viewed late night show in the past few years.
