Conan O’Brien is confident he would never have been chosen for “Late Night” today.
While taking audience questions at the end of a live taping of his podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend,” the host was asked by someone who worked at NBC when he first took over late night if he had aspirations in front of the camera after coming up as a writer on “SNL” and “The Simpsons.” O’Brien explained that he did in certain regards but there is no way he would have been chosen today.
“Nowadays they would never have picked me. Ever, ever,” he said. “They would have said, ‘OK, the world is filled with hilarious people who have been making things on YouTube for years, and there are so many possibilities. Back then it was ‘oh no who will host the show if Dave’s [Letterman] not hosting it? We need to turn to an expert’ and they turned to Lorne Michaels.”
O’Brien continued: “Lorne looked around and low and behold I get the chance, which I was not ready for but my lesson to everybody is when your moment comes you may not be ready but you have to take it and then figure it out on the way.”
O’Brien was the host of “Late Night” from 1993-2009. His stint and knack for odd and weird bits, remotes and man-on-the-street segments and more have him considered just as much a legend of game as those who came before. He left “Late Night” for host of “The Tonight Show” when Jay Leno stepped down but that was infamously truncated when he was forced out to allow Leno to return. He went to TBS after that and has since launched his podcast.
Earlier this year, O’Brien made his first appearance back on “Late Night” since he stepped down in 2009 and recounted that when he first joined the show he wanted to rename it entirely to something that left one old-school late night man at a loss for words.
“We had a meeting with this guy named Rick Ludwin, who was a saint and a wonderful man, but old school jacket and tie. He went in and talked to Johnny Carson every night about the show, and then he’d come and talk to me about my show. This is how it’s done. He was the guy in late night who was the old school, and he’d tell us where to put the mic and how to sit. It was just a different environment back then. And we went in and we said, just, let’s hear us out. Rick, it’s not ‘Late Night’ anymore. It’s ‘Nighty Night.’ And he started scratching the back of his head, really buttoned down guy, but I saw four blood vessels burst.”
Watch the entire live “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” episode above.
