In a rare occurrence, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon dedicated its full hour April 15 to a single subject: music icon Cher.
“You are a legend, you are an inspiration, and I am honored to be standing next to you,” said Fallon, kicking off his opening monologue alongside her. “As you should be,” said Cher with her typical dry humor. She recreated her famous Moonstruck slap before Fallon continued with his usual monologue and the news of the day—but after that moment it was “The Cher Show.” So naturally, the cast of Broadway’s The Cher Show was on hand to sing some of her biggest hits alongside her.
Jarrod Spector, who plays Sonny Bono in The Cher Show, started singing “I Got You Babe” alongside co-star Micaela Diamond, who plays Babe, the youngest of the life stages of Cher in the Broadway bio-musical. But soon, Diamond was replaced by the actual Cher. For a moment, we all thought she turned back time as we watched Sonny and Cher back together again.
Speaking of turning back time, the three actors who play Cher on Broadway at three different stage of her life—Diamond as Babe, Teal Wicks as Lady, and Stephanie J. Block as Star—took the stage to sing “If I Could Turn Back Time.” They too were joined by Cher herself.
Cher joined Fallon in his segment “Lip Sync Karaoke,” where the two lip-synced to the Cher hit “Believe.”
“This is my least favorite thing—karaoke,” Cher said.
“We sent a crew to a karaoke bar in NYC at around 1 in the morning and asked people there to sing ’Believe,’ and now we're going to lip sync their vocals,” Fallon explained.
Amidst all the performances, Cher also spoke to Fallon about her career, her latest tour Here We Go Again with the songs of ABBA. “It was a fluke. I love ‘Fernando’ and ‘Super Trooper’ and got along with the boys [Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson], and we recorded the album in seven days,” she said. Fallon also did his Cher impression and Cher talked about never having seen a great Cher impersonator.
Cher also spoke about her extreme shyness and how difficult it was to share the details of her life for The Cher Show, but why she ultimately bared her soul. “If people think they know you and you know they don't, you’ve got to put in those unattractive parts and the parts that hit too close to home or something that no one ever figured or no one ever knew was going on behind the scenes, and there are good things, too,” she said.
Then Block, Wicks, and Diamond joined Cher on the couch: