Joan Rivers Back on ‘Tonight Show’ After Decades

Joan Rivers returned to “The Tonight Show” as a guest for the first time in 28 years on Thursday evening, long after Johnny Carson declared her persona non grata at the show. And the 80-year-old comedian seemed sufficiently at home with the show’s new host, Jimmy Fallon, to slip quickly into the racier side of her comedy, explaining, for example, that she had brought a round pillow to sit on because she had just gotten a new genital piercing. (She returned to related subjects several times.)

During Carson’s tenure, Ms. Rivers was a frequent guest on the show, and she seems to bear him no ill will: she told Mr. Fallon that Carson discovered her in a Greenwich Village club when little was happening for her and told her that she would be big. He had her on the show frequently, and for a time she was his preferred guest host.

That favored status ended when she started hosting her own competing late-night talk show on Fox in 1986. The show was short-lived, but Carson refused to have her back. Jay Leno, Carson’s successor told The Daily News in 2009 – four years after Carson’s death – that he wanted to end the ban. “We didn’t feel it was right to invite her while Johnny was alive,” he said, but added, “I’d be glad to have her back.” But it never happened, until Thursday. (Ms. Rivers made a brief appearance in February as part of Mr. Fallon’s first night hosting the show.)

Not surprisingly, Ms. Rivers made several jokes about her age, not all of them sexual. “On my bucket list,” she told Mr. Fallon, “No. 1 is, ‘wake up.’”