The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon got a little more giggly this week.
Hannah Berner and Paige DeSorbo, hosts of the Giggly Squad podcast, joined Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday, July 29, and they weren’t visiting as guests. They served as interim announcers, subbing in for usual announcer Steve Higgins.
“Are we giving different energy?” Berner asked Fallon, in regards to the vibe shift in Higgins’ absence. Fallon asked if they’d been nervous to open the show.
“I loved it,” DeSorbo told Fallon. “As a former eighth-grade class president who used to do the school announcements, I loved it.”
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Paige DeSorbo and Hannah Berner are Tonight Show announcers for two nights
DeSorbo and Berner have had quite the summer. Since their April interview with Fallon, the Summer House alums released the New York Times bestseller How to Giggle, and made Time‘s list of the 100 most influential digital voices of 2025.
“It’s not not because we came on this show right before that,” Berner joked.
DeSorbo also found time this summer to make a very, very brief appearance on Love Island USA as the host of the challenge “Got Wood,” though she disappeared before the game was over. On the June 17 episode of Giggly Squad, she explained that she was wearing a suede turtleneck dress and heavy extensions in the Fiji heat, and she got so overheated that she passed out. She then explained to Fallon that her pumps were also part of the problem.
“My shoes were actually metallic, and I was microwaving my toes,” she said. “And I was like, ‘Guys, I’m going down. I’m gonna need a minute.’ I thought they’d fix it in post. They didn’t.”
Watch DeSorbo and Berner make their announcing debut above, but their guest gig isn’t over yet. They’ll continue filling in for Higgins on Wednesday, July 30.
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Where is Steve Higgins on The Tonight Show?
The Tonight Show‘s resident announcer and right-hand man is taking a well-deserved break. After all, it’s not even his only job. Higgins has been a writer and producer on Saturday Night Live since 1995, and currently serves as an executive producer. NBC just announced that the comedy show will return for its 51st season on October 4, so he’s got just over two months before he’s an extra-busy man again.
As Higgins’ friend Alec Baldwin described on the 2018 podcast episode “Here’s the Thing: The Dual Life of SNL’s Steve Higgins,” Higgins is “in charge of the writers’ room,” and “along with Lorne Michaels, Steve holds the fate of America’s young comedy talent in his hands” when it comes to casting SNL during the summer. Baldwin called Higgins a “comedic genius” who became a household name thanks to The Tonight Show. (He’s also the voice of the narrator that you hear at the beginning of cold opens like this one).
“I couldn’t do this show without Steve Higgins,” Fallon told his audience during his show’s 10th anniversary celebration in 2024. “We’ve known each other since 1998.”
Higgins is also literally helping to raise the next generation of comedy writers: His son John Higgins is one of the members of Please Don’t Destroy, along with Martin Herlihy, the son of former SNL writer and Happy Gilmore 2 co-writer Tim Herlihy.
