Conan O’Brien might be known today as one of Hollywood’s most beloved comedians — just ask anyone who tuned in to his Oscars hosting gig. But according to the ex-late-night host and his former “Saturday Night Live” colleague, the equally beloved comedy creator and showrunner Greg Daniels, they both had a tendency to “ignorantly step on toes” early in their careers.
In one memorable instance, an “SNL” colleague even tried to get them fired.
“I was just remembering the bit where we got into our first kind of argument with the costume designer,” Daniels said on Monday’s “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast. “They went to Lorne and they said, ‘You need to fire these two or I’m leaving.’ And Lorne was like, ‘This is my costume designer. She’s terrific and got all these awards and everything.’ So he called us into his office and we were a little nervous.”
O’Brien admitted that he thought Michaels was going to pull the pink slip on behalf of the the disgruntled designer. Fortunately, Michaels found a way to appease both parties: O’Brien and Daniels got a talking-to to save face with the designer, and the two comedy writers got to keep their jobs.
“He sat down and we just had this conversation. He said, you gotta stay in here about 20 minutes so she thinks I’m yelling at you,” Daniels recalled. “It was terrific.”
“He was great,” O’Brien agreed. “He was like, ‘I have to be here for 20 minutes and you’re in here too. And just so you know, I’m yelling at you right now.’ But he wasn’t. And we didn’t get into a fight.”
Watch the interview below:
O’Brien then revealed the cause of the designer’s ire, explaining that they apparently ticked off the wrong person when they went to the costuming department to check on materials for a sketch that required elaborate looks.
“To be fair, all we did was we wrote a sketch and it had these elaborate costumes. And we went to the place where they were manufacturing them just to check on them because we thought that’s what a good writer-producer does is check on things,” O’Brien said. “And that, apparently, was us overstepping our bounds, which, OK, I didn’t know! We didn’t know that, we were brand new. So yeah, I don’t remember us — we never got into fights with people or yelled at people.”
“No, no, no, no,” Daniels agreed, quipping: “We just ignorantly step on toes.” Daniels later added that “we were pretty nice people,” but admitted to having “bad instincts for Hollywood” that over the years almost cost them a lucrative script rewrite opportunity and more.
Daniels’ latest project, “The Office” spinoff “The Paper,” premieres in full on Peacock Sept. 4. He and O’Brien worked together at “SNL” 1988-1990. Watch their full “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” interview in the video above.
