Conan O’Brien, the 2025 recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, said Thursday that he was not sure that he would attend the March 23 ceremony held at the Kennedy Center due to the ongoing turmoil caused by President Donald Trump’s takeover of the arts organization earlier this year. But there was a good reason why he ultimately decided to.
“There was obviously for the last couple of months with the new administration, there’s been some controversial stuff going on with the Kennedy Center, and there was the question of should I go, should I not go? And I felt like it was important to show up,” O’Brien said on Thursday’s episode of his “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast. “First of all, we were brought in under the old regime, and the people who brought me in are no longer there, but I thought we should honor their decision.”
The 61-year-old entertainer, most recently in the spotlight for hosting the 97th Academy Awards (and being tapped to do it again next year), added that he was additionally “really lovely” to be able to interact with the employees at the Kennedy Center who are “going through it right now.”
“The young people that have been working at the Kennedy Center for years were delighted that we came. They don’t know what their future is. I got to talk to a lot of them,” O’Brien said. “I had a great deal of empathy for what’s happening there.”
Watch the full episode below:
O’Brien added that it “felt something about the situation” with Trump’s takeover of the Center “added to the evening somehow,” and his longtime head writer and collaborator Mike Sweeney, who was in attendance at the Center, agreed.
“It really made it feel like this is — and without being pompous, it just felt like this is not a normal event,” O’Brien continued. “Something, and we all need to be on our toes and kind of be funny, but also bring some optimism, maybe.”
“It’s not pompous at all. It’s a very specific moment that this event occurred in, and you had all these great comedians there. And you had this changed situation at the Kennedy Center that was so dramatic and was in the news all week,” Sweeney chimed in. “So, yes, it’s something that, while feting you at the same time, everyone in their own way acknowledged what was going on.”
O’Brien and Sweeney then reminisced on all the comedic talent who were in attendance and who presented on stage, including David Letterman, John Mulaney, Will Ferrell, Tracy Morgan, Sarah Silverman, Nikki Glaser — the list went on and on.
“I have such respect and admiration and awe for everybody who showed up, and I was, you know, there’s that part of you that feels like, ‘Oh no, people have to fly here. That’s making me uncomfortable.’ You know what I mean? It’s an imposition,” O’Brien shared. “Then everybody was so funny that that all melted away … It was a happening, and it was also really nice to talk to all of the people — I say young people, they’re all different ages, but to me now everyone’s young — who have worked so hard for so many years for the Kennedy Center and just really want to give their lives to the arts.”
Sweeney noted that O’Brien giving the Kennedy Center staffers a shoutout on stage was a moment that earned one of the biggest reactions of the night with a standing ovation.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty, and we’ve heard that a person or two that I spoke to that night have lost their jobs since, and this just happened,” O’Brien concluded. “And so you can feel sometimes shallow when you’re trying to give encouragement to people who are in that situation, but I did want it to be a positive experience.”
In February, a Trump-appointed board “unanimously” elected the president to be chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — a move that replaced billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein and also ousted the org’s longtime president Deborah Rutter after she served for 11 years. Shonda Rhimes and musician Ben Folds then resigned from their positions at the organization, and many prominent artists canceled planned Kennedy Center events, including Issa Rae and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Additionally, productions determined to not match the president’s ideologies were soon enough canceled.
The ceremony for the 26th Mark Twain Prize for American Humor honoring O’Brien will stream in full on Netflix May 4. Watch an excerpt from the honoree’s speech below:
