David Remnick (2:58)

Anybody give you some good tips, whether it's Billy Crystal or anybody else, on how to deal with an audience? I don't even know how big that audience is now.

Conan O'Brien (3:06)

You know, no one's pulled me aside and said, okay, here's the secret smile, you know? Yeah, exactly. But what I've learned myself over time is that I can't fake enjoyment. I need to find ways to make sure that I'm having a lot of fun. I need to prepare. I mean, I'm a big preparation person. I work with this brilliant team of writers who are just downstairs from where I'm doing this podcast and they're cranking away and it's kind of. It looks like they're working on the Glengarry leads. You know, I go down there and they're all around a long table. And these premises are no good. Yeah, these premises are no good. We gotta get the Glengarry premises. And I yell at them. I'm the Alec Baldwin who comes in, gives that great speech up front. I'm talking about the movie now, I think we all know that, not the play.

David Remnick (4:02)

Where does politics play a role in the way you're thinking about that kind of night?

Conan O'Brien (4:08)

It's tricky. I've done political comedy over the years. Certainly. I've done two White House correspondence dinners on late night. We used to do lots of political comedy. We do it on the. On the TBS show as well. It's never been in the front of my comedy brain. I don't think it's what drives me. I, for better or worse, have a brain that scrambles things, loves cartoon imagery. I'm probably as influenced by old movies or literature as I am by, frankly, Warner Brothers cartoons. When I do political comedy or I make a political joke, it has to really resonate with me. And I can't tell you what that is, but it has to feel true to my comedic voice or it feels hollow.

David Remnick (5:03)

Does Trump feel funny to you anymore?

Conan O'Brien (5:07)

No. Years ago, when I was at Harvard and working on the Lampoon, we would try and think of magazines we could do a parody of. And there was one magazine we always knew we couldn't parody, which was the National Enquirer. If a magazine has as its coverage Elvis, still alive, marries Alien and they have a baby, that's a three speed blender. That's what the real magazine's coming out with. You can't do a comedic take on that. It's very difficult or I think, impossible to do. And I think Trump, to me, if he were a magazine, it's the National Enquirer. There's a lot that's so bombastic and so outrageous and so unprecedented that how do you. Oh, I've got a great Trump impression. And I have him saying this, well, that's not crazier than what really happened yesterday. So I don't know how this is funny. Does that make sense?

David Remnick (6:11)

Yeah.

Narrator/Producer (6:12)

So.

David Remnick (6:12)

But when you watch the Cold Opens for Saturday Night Live, or Jon Stewart on Monday night, or any network, Trevor Noah at the Grammys, I think inspired Trump to even threatened to sue him. Yeah.

Conan O'Brien (6:24)

Guess what, David? That's not a hard thing to do.

David Remnick (6:27)

No, I know.

Conan O'Brien (6:28)

We could do it right now if you want.

David Remnick (6:31)

I'm involved in a lawsuit right now.

Conan O'Brien (6:33)

I'm sure you are. You wouldn't believe it. That's the. Yeah. Snl, you know, they're crazy talented. Jon Stewart, crazy talented. So these are all really good people that do that extraordinarily well. When people talk to me about it, I say, well, I have to. All I can do is come out of my own personal experience, which is, this isn't inspiring a lot of chuckles for me. Now, there's a different thing. There are comedians who, when they talk about Trump, they quickly get very angry. And I've said this before, but I think it's possible to surrender your best weapon. Your best weapon is to be funny. And if it just evolves into name calling, I'm all for people trying. And when there's a really good joke about the president or the administration, if there's a joke about the right or the left, and it's a good one, I'm elated. So I just think that in the current climate, it can be. Things have gotten so stretched out. You know, think about that dolly melted watch that it's hard to find purchased. You know what I mean? It's hard to get a grasp on what's the straight line here and where

David Remnick (8:07)

does the network get involved?

Conan O'Brien (8:09)

There's always some issues I've been doing dealing with networks for most of my life. So there'll be stuff, and then that's when you roll up your sleeve and you start arguing back. And it can be, do you win? Yeah. Oh, yeah, you can win. You can also lose.

David Remnick (8:27)

But on what basis? Are there rules or is it just human persuasion?

Conan O'Brien (8:34)

Certainly there are rules about what can be said and what can't be said. The academy has rules. The academy has rules. About what you can do with the image of an Oscar. A can. I mean, everyone has rules. Once you've lived in New York for a period of time, you come to this awareness that, oh, everything ultimately is a New York co op. You know, they have their rules, they have their, you know, you can, you can say, hey, but on this other award show, I got to do this right? And the co. But you're living in, let's say I'm living at. I'm going to make it up. I'm living at 172 West 89th Street. And they'll say, and it's a place called, you know, the. This is the Drake. This is the Drake building. And we are, you know. You live here at the Drake building? Yes, yes, I do. You know what I'd like to do is put in my kitchen window. No, no, no, no, no. We don't have, we don't let people alter the windows here at the Drake. And you'll say, oh, okay. Well, you know, it's funny, when I lived over at the Macklemore, over. Yes, we know. That's the Macklemore.

David Remnick (9:51)

And so it's okay for Nikki Glaser and Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes.

Conan O'Brien (9:57)

Yeah, every award show probably is like, oh, that's fine for the people's. And I'll say, well, you know, I once did the People's Choice Awards. Oh, yes, we know. That's the People's Choice Awards. They don't have standards. Their windows and their kitchens are horrid. You are now. And so it's not just the Oscars. Every show probably feels that way about the other shows.

David Remnick (10:22)

Ever since the Will Smith incident, the slapping incident. Do you. And when we were kids, you had the streaker incident. Do you worry about the kind of unplanned disaster happening?

Conan O'Brien (10:36)

No, I'm someone who likes, you know, I don't want anyone to slap me.

David Remnick (10:44)

But you'd like a streaker.

Conan O'Brien (10:46)

I'd like a streaker. And you know what? I'd really like a streaker to slap me. That would, that would satisfy. That would just satisfy so many of my dormant Catholic hang ups. It's a weird duality here. It's a weird thing. But I like to plan and I like to prepare. And then I love it when something goes off the rails.

David Remnick (11:12)

Like, for example. Give me an example in performance.

Conan O'Brien (11:14)

Oh, just for years and years doing my show. If accidentally a light falls, you can make a whole show about that. Do you know what I mean? People. I don't know what it is about human beings, but they instinctively know when something is real and of the moment. And then when they see you react in real time like a human being and make something funny out of it, that is 10 times the value of anything you could have written. So you have to be open for things to slightly go wrong. And it's fun and electrifying. My whole life has been prepare. But then like any good quarterback, be ready for the whole play to fall apart and then wing it. Yeah, and that's a beautiful thing. Scramble.

David Remnick (12:07)

Do you do that too, as a comedian? To what degree are you, you know, you're not like you are at home or at dinner or you're a heightened you, or you're, you know, what performance.

Conan O'Brien (12:18)

It's so funny you say this. I'm always this guy. I mean, there is a heightened me, but it's really not that much different. I routinely will just talk to people on the street, complete strangers, and then that will lead to me doing a bit and trying to get them into it. I'm trying to do improv with random people on the street. And I've been maced.

David Remnick (12:45)

I can imagine.

Conan O'Brien (12:47)

Yeah, it's unwanted improv. But you. I think it's glandular. I think it's. I mean, I'm joking, but I'm also not joking. I think my father, who was a very smart man and very analytical and a scientist, he was looking at me once and he watched every late night show and he said, oh, I see, I see. And he wasn't making a joke. He said, I see you're making a living off of something that should probably be treated. And he wasn't joking. He said, you know, you have this. I see your synapses and your. The rhythm of your circulatory system, and what you're doing is. And so. Yes, and then you found a way to be compensated. I see. I thought, thanks, dad.

David Remnick (13:37)

But from what I understand, you also treated the death of your parents in some way comedically, therapeutically, humanly. I wonder if you could tell that story.

Conan O'Brien (13:54)

I was shooting my travel show for HBO when I was in Austria when I got the word that my father had passed. I took a van to another van to the airport, got on a flight, got on, then another connecting flight, made it back to Boston. And you go through all the intensity of that. And then there was a moment where I was just outside my house, my family house, the house I grew up in, in Brookline, and I got this lovely text from Will Arnett. And he said, you know, we're all thinking about you. It's in the news that your dad. We've all heard the news, and this is just how we all are with each other. He does the podcast with Jason and Sean. Jason Bateman. And whenever we're together, we always just joke about Bateman, because that's just what you do. It's like the showbiz thing. And if I'm with Bateman, we joke about Will Arnett. But. So I get this lovely thing from Will Arnett. He writes this lovely note, and I just wrote back, I blame Bateman. And then he wrote, oh, I guess we all have our coping mechanisms for. And I cut him off and say, jason Bateman killed my father. Which is insane, but it's. Make of it what you will. That's what I said.

David Remnick (15:19)

I think your father had it right.

Conan O'Brien (15:21)

I think he had it as exactly my father had it right. Somewhere, a ghostly father was perched on my shoulder, saying, yes, yes, this is it.

Narrator/Producer (15:29)

See?

Conan O'Brien (15:29)

See?

Conan O'Brien (15:30)

It is. It's a.

Conan O'Brien (15:31)

So the story gets more remarkable because three days later, my mother passed in the same room that my father had passed in. They both had. They had beds in the same room. And I've laid out now that I'm. I have space for comedy still. So Will texts me right away and says, not right away, but he texted me after a little time had passed, and he said, oh, if you want, I could have Bateman take care of your sister. And I immediately texted back, 3053 Beacon street, apartment 17F. Make it look like a robbery. And because I knew my sister Kate, she would find it was. Find it was funny. And. And so he read all that on the air, and, you know, people were just like, oh, my God. And it kind of went viral. And I. That is how I communicate. You know, that is. I'm a whale. He's a whale. We make these weird noises at each other. That's how we communicate. And I know that I. How much I love my parents, and I know what a lovely person Will Arnett is and. And Jason Bateman, and. But this. None of this is real, but it's this way of doing business and connecting. And when they all came out that I had thrown Kate under the bus and said, go get her. This is where she lives. And make it look like a robbery, she texted me and said, you don't think I could take Bateman?

David Remnick (17:22)

I'm speaking with Conan o'. Brien, and we'll continue in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

Conan O'Brien (17:39)

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David Remnick (18:31)

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick and I've been speaking today with Conan o'. Brien.

Conan O'Brien (18:36)

What mode do you want today, sir? Do you want grim foreboding or do you want a more optimistic tone?

David Remnick (18:45)

Since leaving late night TV in 2021, O' Brien has been busy. His hit podcast, Conan O' Brien needs a Friend commands, maybe even a bigger audience than he had on late night. He launched spin offs to the podcast and then the travel series Conan o' Brien Must Go was on HBO Max last year. He was even in a movie. He played the therapist of Rose Byrne's tormented character in if I had Legs, I kick you. Let's return to my conversation now with Conan o'. Brien. How old were you when you recognized this inbuilt irony, whatever it is, as a way of being in the world?

Conan O'Brien (19:26)

Well, when you're a kid, I think we all do this. You go through your checklist, you emerge into the world. It takes a bunch of years just to figure out what the hell's going on. And then very quickly, things start to get sorted out. Am I an athlete? No, I am not an athlete. Do the girls go crazy for me? No, they do not. Am I a math whiz? No, Conan, you are not. Am I a tough guy? Oh God, no, Conan, you are not. And it's a lot of no's. And then I hit this thing where I would make people laugh in class. I wasn't the class clown. I was very quiet. But I would make friends laugh and I started writing little plays and putting myself in them. And they were funny. And then in creative writing classes or in English class, I would write funny stories. The teacher would have me read them and everybody would be laughing. Cause I put a lot of comedy in there. There's this one arrow in my quiver. There's not 35 arrows in my. There's one. So I think I started probably working this comedy thing unconsciously in what, 1972, 1973, in Brookline, Mass. In a playground. And then you're just working it and working it and working it. And then I started seeing things on television or in the movie theater.

Narrator/Producer (21:12)

And

Conan O'Brien (21:14)

you're learning about rhythm, you know, just learning about rhythm and what's funny and why is that funny? And I never got too analytical about it. That's like the part of the map that disappears and there's dragons there. Like, don't get into analyzing it. Just what's funny, what's not funny. Which leads to really paying attention to the rhythm of Warner Brothers cartoons, the classics. The rhythm is perfection. The comedy rhythm of those great Roadrunner Coyote cartoons, a really good Bugs Bunny. And the timing and the expressions, it's all perfect. You just are soaking it in. You're not even aware of it.

David Remnick (22:00)

Let me ask you about late night. The big news about late night this past year was Jimmy Kimmel and Trump and all that. But I think we can agree that what's happening over time certainly is that the whole late night scene, and especially being watched in real time, that's collapsed, or it's in the process of collapsing.

Conan O'Brien (22:20)

Yeah, yeah.

David Remnick (22:21)

How much do you care that it's collapsing?

Conan O'Brien (22:25)

Well, there's the sentimental side of me that grew up watching Carson, that liked that, but I have a very ingrained wariness of sentimentality. When I sort of Google Earth out of the whole thing and try to look at the whole picture, I realized that there's. Things are constantly changing. Look at all the things that are changing all the time. And so people are saying, this is tragic. You're like, well, I've said this to Stephen. I'm close with Stephen.

David Remnick (23:07)

Stephen. Is Stephen Colbert treating it as a tragedy or what?

Conan O'Brien (23:10)

Well, I think Stephen very rightly, is pissed. Yeah, he's pissed, I think, rightly. But he's also. I think he's, you know, he's got a big staff, and he cares about those people. And that I've been in that situation, and that is excruciating. What I've tried to tell him is that there's so much of this, really, that doesn't have anything to do with you. I mean, I think it largely, you know, these giant glacial plates are moving, and you are doing the best you can, and you've done. You're such a talented guy. And he's Done an amazing job. And, yeah, there is definitely a thumb on the scale. We all saw that. And with Jimmy Kimmel, with the fcc, that was just outrageous and wrong. But in the larger picture, when you look worldwide and see voices being silenced, they really get silenced. I don't think that's gonna happen with, with, you know, Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert or anyone who's doing a late night show.

David Remnick (24:21)

And you found a way.

Conan O'Brien (24:24)

Yeah, I left my late night show four years ago. I've had a wonderful time. I think I reach more people now, either through the podcast or in the travel show. And getting to. I have all this freedom to be me in different ways in different formats. There's a lot of really beautiful opportunities, and I've been having a blast and getting to have types of interviews I never could have had in that old format. Like Robert Caro. Yeah, I can talk to Robert Caro for an hour and a half and then talk to Al Pacino, but then talk to Charlie XCX for an hour. I mean, this old format is going away, but they're being replaced by a multitude of other ways to connect with people and be funny and be satirical and be probing and let your talent run wild that, in some ways are more freeing and you can be master of your own destiny. You're not working for, ultimately, a giant toothpaste company or whoever it is owns. Owns your studio. So, again, I find myself trying to be optimistic in these situations.

David Remnick (25:38)

Conan, we're about the same age, and we've reached the age where if one of our contemporaries dies, it's incredibly sad, but it's not an absolute shock. It's not a tragedy in the sense that when we were much younger, somebody died in an accident or a disease or something. You had something happen this year to two friends who had been guests at your house the night before the Reiners. Can you talk a little bit about your experience of that horrific tragedy?

Conan O'Brien (26:10)

Well, just, it's. To have. I mean, I knew Rob and Michelle and then increasingly got closer and closer to them, and we were. I was seeing them a lot. My wife and I, we're seeing them a lot. To have that experience, saying good night to somebody and having them leave and then find out the next day that they're gone. You know, we talk about. I think I was in shock for quite a while afterwards. That was just. It was. I mean, there's no other word for it. It's just very. It's so awful. It's just so awful. And I think about how Rob felt about Things that are happening in the country, how involved he was, how much he put himself out there. And to have that voice go quiet in an instant is still hard for me to comprehend.

David Remnick (27:18)

You know, I watched that Mel Brooks documentary. That Judd Apatow is terrific. And there's Carl Reiner. And they have this such a close relationship when they were both in their, I guess, 90, until Carl died. And then Rob Reiner pops up in this and he seems relatively young and so vibrant and alive. And to have that in the back of your mind as you watch this film, for me, it's tragic. For you, it must be. I don't know. It's incomprehensible.

Conan O'Brien (27:50)

These people are so larger than life, especially if you've grown up watching them or appreciating their work. I mean, I just keep mulling over the body of work. I think it's seven movies that Rob Reiner made in quick succession that are classics now. To be thought of as a great director. I think if you can make one great movie that's impressive. It's just one. It's an almost impossible feat. To make two means that you're one of the greats. To make seven in like a nine year, ten year, eleven year period is insanity. You know, with Spinal Tap alone, if that had been the only thing he ever did, he influenced my generation enormously in comedy. Spinal Tap, when it came out, I was in college, and it was like seeing that, you know, it was splitting the atom moment. You have those moments where, you know, you see something truly remarkable. And another person I'd put in that category is we just lost, which is incomprehensible. We just lost Catherine o'. Hara. And that's someone who was perfection, you know, and there is a tendency sometimes when people eulogize or remember, we've all had that feeling where you're. They're. Someone's being eulogized and we're thinking to ourselves, no, they were. They were good. But this person's kind of laying it on thick. Catherine is just I. Who's a funnier performer than Catherine o'? Hara? And what mo and what people didn't get to experience personally was she is. She was. I'm still saying is. She's possibly the nicest person I've ever met, just ever met, just glowed and goodwill and. But here I am on a podcast talking like, this is, you know, unusual. This is what we're all contending with. Yeah, we're always in the process. It is something you don't think about if you're lucky you don't think about it for the first couple of decades of your life. And then it's people saying, did you hear? And you walk around concussed for a week. So that's what it is now. I guess I was in a good mood when I got on this podcast.

David Remnick (30:23)

How you feeling now?

Conan O'Brien (30:24)

And you've taken me. I just is the worst. I mean, you've, this is a, this is a colonoscopy right now. And there's been no, there's been no Profofol.

David Remnick (30:35)

See you again in five years.

Conan O'Brien (30:36)

And you didn't, you didn't use the right, you didn't use the right camera.

David Remnick (30:40)

Yeah, sorry.

Conan O'Brien (30:41)

You used a 1955 Hasenblad. You jammed it up there.

David Remnick (30:46)

Yeah. Slowly, slowly. Conan o', Brien, thank you.

Conan O'Brien (30:50)

Well, always nice to talk to you, sir.

David Remnick (30:52)

Good to see you, man. Conan o' Brien is the host of the podcast Conan o' Brien Needs a Friend, and he's hosting the Academy awards ceremony on March 15th. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining us today. See you next time.

Narrator/Producer (31:14)

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNY Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul and Ursula Sommer. With guidance from Emily Botin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Farish, Victor Guan, and Alejandra Deckett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Tsarina Endowment Fund. Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.