• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, June 10, 2016

Are my eyes deceiving me? I think I see David Letterman and Jay Leno!

I do see them! And they’re both reemerging next week out of the mists of TV history to return to the tube -- Letterman for a rare interview and Leno three days later for the second season of his CNBC series “Jay Leno’s Garage.”

Letterman is up first, with an interview airing Sunday night on NBC as part of the NBC News magazine series called “On Assignment.” This is a show few people ever heard of until this week, when they started to publicize this Letterman interview conducted by Tom Brokaw.

How did this interview come about? My guess is that Brokaw, 76, saw an opportunity for a scoop in a possible interview with Letterman, 69, who he has known for decades. Among other things, the two share a love for Montana, where they both own homes. So Brokaw asked his pal for an interview and received a yes.

The interview was conducted in and around Indianapolis on Memorial Day weekend. In the portions NBC released in advance of this Sunday’s airdate, the two talked about late-night TV and the current political season. On the subject of the presidential race, Letterman called Donald Trump “despicable.” 

“I understand that he’s repugnant to people,” Letterman says of Trump. “But you tell me, the men putting together the Constitution, witnessing this election, wouldn’t they have just said, ‘That’s part of the way we set it up. Good luck’? … There’s nothing illegal going on. It’s just [that] he’s despicable.”

Letterman, who retired from late-night TV after his final “Late Show” on May 20, 2015, tells Brokaw he “couldn’t care less about late-night television.”

And he complains that CBS didn’t hire a woman to replace him. “There should be more women,” says Letterman, who is still wearing the bushy beard that makes you wonder if he’s trying out for “Duck Dynasty” or applying for jobs as a department store Santa. “I don’t know why they didn’t give my show to a woman. That would have been fine,” says the bearded one.

While interviews with Letterman are rare, they’re not unheard of. And while he often portrays himself as “retired” from show business, he’s due to turn up next season on National Geographic Channel as a guest “correspondent” on the returning series called “Years of Living Dangerously.” Letterman traveled to India earlier this year to film the show.

Meanwhile, Letterman’s long-time late-night competitor, Jay Leno, 66, returns to TV next Wednesday at the wheel of various expensive cars in Season Two of “Jay Leno’s Garage.”

It has been more than two years now since Leno’s last “Tonight Show” on Feb. 6, 2014, and Jimmy Fallon’s first “Tonight Show” 11 days later on Feb. 17, 2014 (otherwise known as the day late-night died).

Leno is not retired, of course. In addition to this CNBC show built around his passion for cars, he maintains a busy schedule of stand-up comedy performances. And he’s also seen in commercials for Shell Oil.

In the second-season premiere of “Jay Leno’s Garage” next week, the theme is “supercars” -- a showcase of the fastest, sleekest, most expensive high-performance cars ever made such as Porsches, Lamborghinis and at least one McLaren described as the greatest car of the 20th century.

Among the famous faces who turn up in the show are Robert Herjavec, who is one of the “sharks” seen in the ABC series “Shark Tank” whose reruns air on CNBC; and entertainer Nick Cannon, host of “America’s Got Talent” on NBC, which is also part of the same parent company as CNBC -- NBCUniversal.

If exotic cars interest and excite you, then you’ll love “Jay Leno’s Garage,” which, to give the show its due, was a huge hit for CNBC in its first season last year. It’ll probably do just as well in its second go-round too.

Did Letterman purposely plan somehow to precede Leno on the air this week with an eye toward possibly undermining Jay’s return? Probably not. But as a result of this Letterman interview looming on Sunday, the publicity surrounding the return of “Jay Leno’s Garage” could be diluted since some TV bloggers and columnists might be tempted to combine Dave and Jay in single columns instead of separate pieces, and post side-by-side photos of the two so readers can compare what they look like now.

It will be interesting to see if anybody does that.

Season Two of “Jay Leno’s Garage” starts Wednesday (June 15) at 10 p.m. Eastern on CNBC. NBC’s David Letterman interview will be seen on “On Assignment,” airing this Sunday night (June 12) at 7 Eastern on NBC.