Coronavirus pandemic: Late-night talk show hosts work from home amid virus scare
Late-night shows have reportedly shut down across the US amid coronavirus scare.
The hosts, as per a Verge report, have taken to shooting their opening monologues at their homes. Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimme, Jimmy Fallon, and even Conan O’Brien have taken to self-quarantining owing to the pandemic.
“This is my daily minilogue, from beautiful downtown quarantine,” Kimmel joked in his new video. According to the report, while Fallon filmed in his basement, Colbert filmed in his backyard.
Kimmel, wearing a St. Patrick’s Day green Guinness shirt from his own office, suggested ways to celebrate from home: Dyeing hand sanitizer green and drinking.
Samantha Bee, who hosts ‘Full Frontal With Samantha Bee’ on TBS, showed off her “survival skills” in a video posted to YouTube on March 18. The video shows Bee in the wilderness, struggling to chop wood in preparation for the spread of coronavirus. “At the end of the day, it's like what Scar from ‘The Lion King’ said: We all have to be prepared. He's the hero of that movie.”
With over 240,000 infected and at least 10,000 deaths globally, the late-night TV hosts are not taking any risk. Their new vlogs, as one should consider it in the absence of them from TV studios, take things to a level that has long become a staple in daytime TV shows.
The late-night hosts are planning to vlog presumably for as long as necessary, at least until the risks of coronavirus are minimal.
Conan O'Brien’s episodes of the late-night show, which returns on March 30, will reportedly be shot on an iPhone without a studio audience and with guest interviews conducted via video chat. The ‘Conan’ production staff, according to USA Today, will be working from home.
“The quality of my work will not go down because technically that’s not possible,” said O’Brien said in a statement.