NBC Sports Amps Up the Star Power for Event
Parlez-vous Olympics? For the 2024 Summer Games, NBC Sports has lined up a host of celebrities to bring star power to the 17-day event.
During the opening ceremony on July 26, Kelly Clarkson, Peyton Manning, Today hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb and sports commentator Mike Tirico will be on the scene as thousands of athletes make their way down the River Seine on an unprecedented 4-mile-long flotilla made up of more than 90 boats.
Among the names who’ll provide coverage through the Games are NBA All-star Dwyane Wade (basketball), comedian Leslie Jones (who’s been named “chief super fan commentator”), long-time commentator Mary Carillo, NBC talent including Willie Geist and Steve Kornacki, and Snoop Dogg, who recently said, “I will be bringing that Snoop style to the mix.”
Alex Cooper, host and executive producer of the popular podcast Call Her Daddy, is also participating in the network’s coverage. She’ll host Watch With Alex Cooper, a series of live interactive watch parties on Peacock. The show will feature Cooper, yet-to-announced guests and friends sharing their thoughts and answering fan questions about live Olympic events including soccer, gymnastics and basketball. The aim is to add a communal viewing experience to the games.
And at the closing ceremony (live on both NBC and Peacock) The Tonight Show‘s Jimmy Fallon will make his Olympic commentator debut, co-hosting along with Tirico, sports commentator Terry Gannon and Olympians Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski. “NBC is really pulling out the stops to make this a really big event,” says Chris Miller, the showrunner of The Tonight Show.
Miller tells THR that Fallon, in addition to co-hosting the closing ceremony, will also “shoot certain bits that will air within NBC during the Olympics.” After the closing ceremony on Sunday, Aug. 11, The Tonight Show host will then fly right back to L.A. to tape his Monday episode. “We could have [aired] a repeat on that Monday,” says Miller, but they decided that having Fallon open the show saying, “I just got back hours ago from the Olympics” would be “great energy.” Adds Miller, “We’ll sleep later.”
Lipinski, for one, is already planning what she’ll pack for her Paris sojourn: “This will be my fifth trip to an Olympics as a broadcaster with my partner in crime Johnny Weir. We love to match — we now have Terry Gannon in on the matching, too! — so we definitely do a little coordinating in advance, and with a Parisian theme this year, we are really going all out!”
A version of this story first appeared in the June 5 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
