Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Conan O'Brien & Jeff Ross Look Back

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

Conan O’Brien and longtime executive producer Jeff Ross join writers Mike Sweeney and Jessie Gaskell to discuss Conan and Jeff's first meeting, the start of Late Night, Tom Hanks’ message to Conan, and the fate of Conan’s Ford Taurus.

Hey, Conan O'Brien here, and got a little bit of a surprise for you today. There are two of my longtime writers, are Mike Sweeney and Jesse Gaskell, and they have a podcast they've been doing for a while that's really beautifully done called Inside Conan, an important Hollywood podcast, and they talk to all kinds of people behind the scenes that have played a role on my show going way back to 1993, and recently they invited my longtime producer who's been with me since the beginning, Jeff Ross and myself on the podcast, and they got us to tell the story of how I pretty much went from being an unknown writer at The Simpsons to hosting this late night talk show, and it was a fascinating

session, and I thought, I didn't expect this whole tale to unravel this way, but it did. So I thought you might like it, and so it's going to play for you right now, if you'd like to hear it. If not, you know, delete, is that even possible, gorely? Yeah, it is. Okay, great. Don't delete it. Trust me, I've deleted you many times.

But I was very happy with this and proud of the way it came out, and so we thought that we'd make it available to you right now. Hope you like it. And now, it's time for Inside Conan, an important Hollywood podcast. I'm Conan O'Brien, and I'm here with Jeff Ross, longtime executive producer, came in what, 2007, I think he came in. No, that's a joke. He started on the show before you did.

Jeff was there before I was there, and we have agreed to be on Inside Conan. Thank you. And this has been a year-long negotiation. It's been a lot of back and forth with the lawyers, publicists, M&Ms that you asked for. I wanted to make sure that you had spoken to every prop master who ever worked on the show. Before you got to me.

Yeah. Every custodian. We both of you. That's true. Separately, but never together, and now we're here to compare your stories. Terrific. We don't think you've ever been in the same room for an interview before. It's a terrific idea.

I think we have. Jeff is not, I think it's a Friday and you're like, you'd rather, you want to start your weekend. This is just another sandbagging by Mike Sweeney. I wish I had an agenda. I wish I had that. First of all, Jeff, you just got back from Cabo. You've been away for a week.

What? Yes. You're acting like, I've got to get back. Exactly. He's already like, what am I doing here? I've got to get out of here. Yeah. He has his own tequila now.

It's a subsidiary of Cabo Wabo. It's called Jeffy Weffy's Cabo Wabo. It's actually called Conzi Wonsi. Conzi Wonsi. Conzi Wonsi. We're not promoting that on this podcast. Well, you just did. That's not coming out.

That's how we pay the bills. Only CBC products. But yeah, so we're here and we're open to this examination. This is the Warren Commission on Conan O'Brien's career. I'm getting the impression you two never talk to each other. How could one bullet do that much damage? We just passed the statute of limitations, so now you can't be prosecuted for anything in those early years.

We'll talk to you. Well, maybe we can start at the very beginning. What were your first impressions of each other? Well, we should tell the story that- How you met. Yeah. Yeah. Because, and then I'll set it up and then Jeff, you can take it away.

Basically to take people way back when, in the way back machine, David Letterman announced is he's, because he didn't get the Tonight Show, he's pissed and he's angry. He feels like that he was in line for that. Jay got it. Forget his last name. And so Letterman's upset and then he does the thing that NBC doesn't see coming. He says, I'm out of here. And they never thought he would do that, I think.

And so suddenly there's an opening. They need a host for 12.30. And at the time, people don't understand now, now, I mean, there's no such thing as a time slot anymore, really, but there's just an infinite number of jobs now and shows. Back then, when there was a space available, it was like a once in a decade event, especially in late night. It was a big deal. It was a huge deal.

And everyone was like, who's going to replace Dave? And what they, the affiliates were getting nervous. So NBC had an idea, which is to stall and to keep the affiliates calm. They'll just tell them, Lauren Michaels is going to figure it out. The producer's starting out live and he always makes the right choice. So Lauren will do it. And so Lauren agreed to that, I think, with the understanding that he would produce it. And that bought NBC some time with the affiliates.

They're like, whoa, good, good. Well, Lauren is figuring it out. It's being handled. It's being handled. And so then- And that's great shorthand. Oh, it was a very good idea and NBC has only had good ideas. This was an incredible team, a brain trust.

And then they, so Lauren's handling it. And then Lauren's first move before he picks anybody is he knows a young lad named Jeff Ross. And he dials the phone, Jeff, fresh back from Cabo even back then, trashed on Tequila. This is going to be an hour of me getting abused. No, no, no, not at all. And by the way, this is a six hour episode. It's more like a rectal exam.

It won't be that pleasant. Yeah. Yeah. Those who get medication from Mexico. I love a rectal exam if I get to run a pro for fall. So phone rings and Jeff, you take it from there. I'm leave Lauren. Lauren says to me, I guess it was in the news or we all knew he was going to produce the

show and pick the host. And he says to me, would you produce it? And I said, well- How did you know Lauren? Oh, I'm sorry. Well, that's true. That's a good thing I'm here. Yeah.

So I had spent a year in Canada producing the kids in the hall and then I was doing some other shows for Lauren and a lot of HBO specials. And I was around and Lauren knew me and I guess he just hired somebody to do something on this thing. So he called me and he was like, so, you know, I'm doing this thing. I got the, I got to find the, I got to produce the show to replace Letterman. I go, I heard. And he says, you want to produce it?

And it's sort of to what kind of was saying, it's such a surreal thing, you know, let alone you know, obviously you want to be the host. Somebody says, you want to produce the show that's going to replace Letterman, which was the biggest thing at the time. And there's no idea who the host is. So I wound up in this sort of like crazy whirlwind of nutty ideas and going to auditions. I think at the same time he was talking to you. He talked to you first because I knew I had heard your name.

We hadn't met yet. We hadn't met yet. And Lauren, I had left SNL two years earlier. Maybe two and a half years earlier and gone to the Simpsons. And so I was in Los Angeles and I had moved on. Lauren very sweetly had really wanted me to stay at SNL and he was saying, you can work from home. It was really nice.

Wow. He was ahead of his time. He really was. He said, there's going to be a terrible virus. You never have to come in, right? You know. There's a, there's a virus in Wuhan. There's.

You're seeing. Where's he going? You know. And I said, no, I really have to go. I was going through a lot at the time. It'll all be in my memoir. I was going through a lot of stuff in my personal life and I was, I think very unhappy and I just decided I've got to leave the East Coast.

So I got this great chance to work on the Simpsons. So I'm there and I really feel like I've put New York in my rearview mirror and I've put, even though I had an amazing experience at SNL, I thought that's all behind me now. And then it's now two years later and the phone rings and it's Lauren. And he said that he's setting up the new late night should replace Letterman. And I'll remember very clearly me saying, well, good luck because there's no replacing Letterman. And I was quite.

I feel sorry for whoever gets that job. No, no, I really did. Just show a test pattern. And I think Jeff probably felt the same way we both felt like, I mean, he had been, you know, Dave had, you know, recreated the talk show and created this whole new sensibility and it felt like, you know, he had discovered this whole new continent and how do you follow that? And he had carved out 1235 is this.

Yes. I actually thought it wasn't really going to happen. You thought what? I just thought it wasn't going to happen. What do you mean? In other words, either Lauren wasn't going to produce it or, you know, something was going to happen and I wasn't going to produce it. Right.

So it just seemed not real at the time. Did you hesitate to say yes to producing this show? No, I said yes. You just jumped right in. Yes. Okay. But I didn't believe it. Okay.

And so Lauren at first is talking to me about being the kind of head writer, you know. So Jeff will be the producer who makes it all happen and then I'll be the head writer sort of producer. And I remembered initially being like, well, I'll talk to you about it. I had a, first of all, I had a contract at The Simpsons. Right. That technically wasn't breakable, which sounds crazy. Fox is hard.

They don't. That's later on in the story. Yeah. I had signed like a four year deal to be at The Simpsons and I think I was doing a good job and they liked having me there. So this is not a place, not The Simpsons to be specific here. Fox is not a place where you can just say, you know what, I'm out of here. And so there was that.

And I also kept saying, I don't think anyone can replace Letterman. I mean, I was saying that and thinking that and actually still believe it. I see no evidence of it. No, I'm not kidding. I still think that's the case, but so Jeff and I are, I think we maybe, we didn't talk yet, but then at some point I, we hadn't met yet, Jeff's just a name and then I bow out. I say, you know what, I remembered having an anxiety attack, a really strong anxiety attack and thinking, I just can't do this.

And I called Lauren, actually went and met Lauren who had an office at the time at the Paramount lot. And I just said, I can't do it. And he was, I think a little rattled because he, I think was telling people, I've got this lined up. I've got Jeff. I've got Conan. I think he's trying to put pieces together.

He's trying to put the pieces together. He has an anxiety attack just on being the head writer of the show. Yeah. And you don't know who the host is. And I don't know who the host is. Right. I just bow out. And so I'm out of the process and I remembered feeling a huge sense of relief, huge relief.

Then a couple of weeks go by and Lauren, I think had a showcase and I think Jeff went to the showcase. Well, I was on the East coast doing another show and I had to go come to LA to do a different show and Lauren calls me to his office, the same office at Paramount. He says, well, can you go to this showcase tonight at the improv? And we've talked about this before. Yeah. There's like five comics, all male I'd rave.

And they all knew that they were auditioning for Lauren. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The Lord was there. And so were the guys who were at the network. Don Allmire was there, Warren Littlefield was there, John Angolia was there. He was like the business affairs guy. And afterwards, what was the restaurant?

Those guys are always good laugh. Remember the mustache cafe? The mustache cafe. The mustache cafe. The mustache cafe. The mustache cafe. Yes. I remember the mustache cafe.

And afterwards, they're all going, Lauren goes, come with us and I'm thinking this is, it's crazy. Yeah. And we go over there and I'm sitting there and he goes, well, and everybody's arguing about who they thought was good and who was not good. And Allmire goes, everybody, meet my office tomorrow. And Lauren turns to me and goes, can you come to this meeting at Allmire's office? And I go, sure.

And so I go to this office and this is when the connection started. With Conan. Allmire's kind of beating up on everybody because that's kind of the way he was. Yeah. You all know him, but he, you know him because he was running NBC when the OJ trial was happening. And Don was very good friends with OJ and would get very upset when Norm MacDonald would do jokes that basically said, for reasons, because I don't see the evidence, but basically say that, I mean, on the day of the verdict, Norm MacDonald said, well, it's official.

Murder is now legal in the state of California. So that really didn't endear him to, this is just to tell you who Don Allmire was, but Don Allmire was kind of like, imagine Babe Ruth at around 45 years old, like a big over the top. Yeah. And I have a lot of affection for Don. I want to make that clear. I really do.

And I think he had a lot of really good qualities and he was very loyal to me in the long run. So there's a lot of things about Don that I have very good feelings about, but he was, he could sometimes. He's intimidating. Yes. And be kind of, he had a sports mentality because he had come from the world of sports. So it was a lot of like kicking guys in the ass and get out there. Come on.

You got to figure it out. Get your head in the game, you fuckers. And it was that kind of attitude. So he was sort of putting everybody on the spot to come up with, and Ludwin was there and Ludwin. Yeah. And so finally, Lauren says, well, I think Conan could do it. And he turns to me and says, don't you think?

Oh, wow. And that was the first time he'd brought it up. He had never met me. So I smartly go, yeah, I think so. That's how you survive in show business. Exactly. And I'll never forget this. And then, and then Omara goes, well, can we test them?

And then Lauren turns to me and goes, can we test them? And I go, sure. So what happens is I'm working at the Simpsons like a normal everyday Joe. And I come home with my lunch pail and my hard hat and I put it down and I see that there's a machine, the machine, this is like when you had a machine with a blanking light. Let's explain what an answering machine is. So I play it and it's not, Lauren doesn't leave messages to this day, but it's one of his 35 people saying, Conan, could you give Lauren a call?

So I call him and he said, look, I know you don't want to do it, but would you be the head writer? But would you be interested in going to an audition? Now I had a panic attack at that, just the idea that I would audition because I was a writer. Things have changed a lot since then. This is before, I mean, now Seth Meyers, John Mulaney, there's just this long tradition, Tina Fey, people are writers and then they get elevated and they figure it out.

This hadn't really happened before. And there really was, behind the scenes, I had been kind of a performing writer for a bunch of years doing improv. Groundlings and improvisation and constantly, it's where I met Lisa Kudrow, I started doing improv in 85. And so I was very interested in that, but I was not a standup comic, which is really was considered, you have to be, it's like to drive a car, you need a license. Yes.

What do you mean you're not a standup comic? That was the mindset back then. Yeah. And I remember it at SNL, Jim Downey was always putting me in things because I was the guy who was in the room, entertaining the room. The room of writers. Yeah. In a room full of writers, and to this day, my favorite place to be is in a room full

of writers trying to make everybody laugh and doing a dance for them or spinning out some wild thread. And so I think Lauren had seen me doing that. He had seen me cracking up Jim Downey and he had seen me play little utility roles and sketches here and there. And so the notion was maybe, so he talks to me, I'm very nervous. I call Robert Smigel, Robert Smigel's initial response was, you know, I wouldn't do it if I were you.

Oh, wow. Now, listen, I'm going to... That was for your own sake, I'm assuming. Yeah. No, but listen, he, to be honest, he was echoing everything in my head. Yeah. Yeah. Which is what everyone would say.

Yeah. He said, I wouldn't do it if I were you. And I said, and what's the reason? And he said, because that is a hard way to get into show business. Like, you're a complete unknown, the knives will be out. He said all the things that ended up to a large degree playing out. And he was telling me all that and I was nodding. I remember this was an apartment on Cochran.

No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. No, not Cochran. That was my earlier apartment. I moved around more than like Ted Bundy. Bundy drive. Yeah.

Bundy once said to me before he was executed, you moved around. You moved around a lot. And I'm like, you know what? That's my business. But I was on Weatherly, which is kind of near the Four Seasons Hotel. So I remember being in this, I had this little like, I was a guy that didn't know how to furnish an apartment. I just wrote and ate out at Chinese food places at night and worked on my Simpson scripts,

you know, completely undeveloped male human. And I was in this little breakfast nook and I remember very clearly the table I was sitting at talking on this shitty little phone and Robert saying, I don't think I would do it. And I was like, kind of agreeing in the background, I heard Michelle, his wife say, who's fantastic and Michelle, I just heard her in the background go, well, yeah, I couldn't quite hear her. And I said, what did she say? And I heard Robert talk to her. And then he came back to the phone.

He went, well, Michelle says, what do you have to lose? And then I heard in the background, Michelle was like, he should do it. What does he have to lose? He's funny. He had this little like tremor of maybe, yeah, what do I have to lose? And then Robert went, well, that's a really good point. So I thought, well, what's the worst that could happen if I audition? I'm not going to get it, but I'm interested in this getting out in front of people.

So that's when the next thing I know, I'm told by Lauren, okay, we're going to test you. You're to go meet Jeff Ross at the Four Seasons Hotel, which in in Beverly Hills, which was like a five minute walk from my apartment. So I walk over, I get to the lobby first because Jeff's upstairs, beauty regimen, putting the cucumbers on his eyes. That's true. He needed a spa hotel.

Yeah. Guilty as charged. And I'm downstairs and there's a lobby, they've changed the lobby of the Four Seasons now, but there used to be this kind of business desk that was made of lusite, was like a clear plastic desk. And I was sitting at that clear plastic desk, just waiting. And then Jeff comes off the elevator, we've never met. And he walks around the corner and I go, Jeff goes Conan, and I go Jeff, and I go, yeah.

And then I gesture to the desk and go, what do you think? True. I thought you went like this. Yeah. I kind of hit the desk and went, what do you think? And Jeff was like, I don't know. And I was like, yeah, I know. So then we talked about it.

We thought it was not crazy, it was honestly. So the chemistry was off the charts. Yeah. Right away. You know what I love? My first interaction with Jeff was disinterest and no faith in me and nothing's changed. He would have been looking at his cell phone if he'd had one. There was no cell phone.

No, Jeff used to carry a rotary phone, Jeff had a rotary phone and he's jacking it for it. It's a long cord. And he was always getting tangled at things. I'm going to check my messages. Can you unroll me? It's just another example of how surreal the whole thing was. You couldn't really believe in your heart it was going to happen.

Like you were probably both laughing at this. Yes. It was like, let's get a green lunch out of this. And I have to say, I was laughing at that point because. I took what Michelle, Robert's wife said to his heart, which is, oh, what the fuck? Just try this. It's not going to happen anyway. Right.

So. And it's a good experience. Not doing it. This story, I mean, we could do nine hours on this story and I'm trying to move it along. But long story short, Jeff starts to, with NBC's help, starts to put together kind of like an audition. And the only space they have to use is the Tonight Show. It's always been good luck for me.

So the idea is when Jay's done with his show, he's going to leave and the crowd's going to leave. They're going to bring in another audience and I will come out and do a monologue and then interview two celebrities and I won't know who they are till I get to Burbank. So Jeff was putting it together and trying to find the celebrities and I had nothing to wear. So at the time, I call my best friend, Lisa Kudrow, and I say, Lisa, you've got to help me.

And she says, don't worry, I can help you. So she took me to. Makeover montage. Well, it's hilarious. This is the worst makeover montage, but I had no one. You went to Sears. Two thirds of the way through the movie. That's when they happened.

We went to Best Buy. We went to the big and tall show. We went to Fred Siegel down near Santa Monica. And so I have a, this is, I have a 1994 tourist for the extinction, very proud of, that we still have, by the way. Jeff, you know what I can't believe? It is still on our budget. Oh my God.

What is this for? I don't want it. That's, no, but I mean, it's paid off by now, isn't it? No, no, no. Cut the car. You got to store it somewhere. Oh, storing it. Yeah.

We bought a 50 year, I got on the 50 year plan. It's not a house, Jeff. It's $12 a month. You don't have a mortgage. It could be, you could make it an Airbnb, so you could be earning money with that car. So I pick up Lisa, we drive over to Fred Siegel, and we go to, we're walking around now. I now know things just from being in show business. I kind of know like, I should probably, they should put some makeup on me, but I also know

kind of when you're my coloring, what are good colors to wear, like blues are really good. Yeah. And they also, what colors really help if you are very, very pale redhead. The one thing I've learned that you're not supposed to do is wear very, very pale, like white. I should not wear that. So Lisa and I together, we committed this crime together, like Leopold and Lowe, individually

we had not have killed, but together we did. We picked out a white linen jacket, a white linen jacket, and like a white shirt. I think. And I throw it in the back of my Ford Taurus, which by the way, I later found out has radiator fluid in the back, green radiator fluid, which got on some part of the jacket that I hid. But I love that that Ford Taurus was the car you drove to do this. So then Jeff sets this thing up and we're kind of talking back and forth. Then I drive, it's set up for this time.

I drive to Burbank and when I get there, you guys had worked it out. You had found Mimi Rogers and Jason Alexander as guests. And Jason Alexander, of course, doing Seinfeld at the time and Mimi Rogers doing movies and she had been a model, modeled and, you know, and so. Married Tom Cruise. Yeah. They, brief marriage to Tom Cruise, I believe. Yeah.

Worth mentioning. Yeah. And then my first time getting interview notes, so I got research. You, Jeff had arranged, had asked NBC and they said, yeah, we, we can use the Tonight Show research. So I was given research that they had on file for the last time Jason Alexander had been on the Tonight Show and the last time Mimi Rogers had been on the Tonight Show. So I go in this office and I'm just looking and I'm scribbling out my monologue, which

I had been thinking about. How far did you write that? Yeah. I had no writers. Oh my God. Oh my God. How far in advance of the taping was this? Hold on.

What? What is that? Oh my gosh. The Vikings are landing. They didn't meet his phone. Oh my God. It was like a horn. Yeah.

It was a, it was a Norse horn. It is. By the way, I want to use that to get that ringtone. I'm in the North Park. I'm in the North Park. And if you see the movie, I interrupt a tribal ritual with my phone. So please check out the North Park. Please keep that in.

So, I like, I like, these are the best moments. Mike Sweeney's phone just went off and his ringtone is a Norse horn. He's been doing this for 25 years. How far? How much time before the taping? There wasn't that much time. You weren't. Well, this is maybe, the Tonight Show was still going on when I got there.

I was still taping it, which might be, maybe they taped it, I don't know, five to six or something. Right. Right. And so this would have been after that. I think our taping was going to start at seven, something like that. Okay. I'm going over the notes.

I had come up with an idea for a monologue. Wow. It wasn't topical. Wow. Yeah. Which would sort of foretell the kind of comedy I liked. But it was all about the absurdity of me. And I remember the monologue was kind of, I think you actually can see it now, but I

think I was very taken with, I need to get this job quickly because the Irish don't age well. It's a theme I've been working on. Oh, I was going to say, holy cow. And I was like, my face is acceptable for television now. But as Ted Kennedy is proof of, my face is going to expand. So I had this whole, and then what I remember most is then it's time to do it. It's really surreal.

Jeff's over at the podium. When we go, there's no band or anything. And I come out and I was immediately surprisingly comfortable. I was just very, I like, I had always liked being on stage. And this felt, I was very comfortable doing the monologue. And then I slid over and the minute I got behind the desk, I was just kind of happy. And so Mimi Rogers came out first and the Jason Alexander was second. I don't know if you remember this, but in between the two, it was like a commercial

break, like a fake commercial break. Like a script packet. I guess it was the research or something. And if you remember this, I wrote on the, and I just scribbled on the back, you're killing. Yeah. And I slid in front of him. And what he did was he.

And he looked. Yeah. It's called producing people. Yeah. You're not. You were. You were. No, we shredded everything immediately.

Right, right, right, right. Jeff wanted to shred it. We were like the Germans as the Russians came. We were just shredding and burning everything. But yes, I remember that very clearly. And what I remember is the monologue went well and I just felt comfortable doing it. It was very me. Yeah.

I wasn't trying to like tell jokes about Clinton or tell, I was just. And you're doing great ice-breaking for that audience to like, you knew that they didn't know who you were. Well, also to let them overcome the shock of this is a very pale man wearing a white linen jacket with radiator stains on the back. But then I cross over and I talked to Mimi Rogers. That went well. And what I remember was there was a moment, which if you look at late night moments since

or whatever you'd think, well, this isn't that, it was fine. But what happened was you got to see kind of for a second, I think a conony. I was my very myself. So Mimi Rogers is talking and I'm interviewing her. My posture is terrible. My hair is all droopy. I'm wearing this awful jacket and I'm listening to her and then she said, yeah, you know, I'd model and she said, and a lot of people say modeling is easy, but it's a tough job.

And I was being polite and agreeing, going, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I can see, I can see. And then I just stopped myself and I go, wait a minute, no, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. A tough job is like turning a big crank and I mind turning a big crank. That's a tough job, turning a big crank. And people laughed and it was very spontaneous. And the Jason Alexander went, well, but that was a moment of me just interrupting and then almost acting out a cartoon. And inserting my personality into the situation.

And then it ended. And I went with, I think Lisa and I went to, man, I wish I couldn't. Back to Fred Siegel. Yeah. Back to Fred Siegel. To Susan. To Susan. And we put the jacket back on the shelf.

I don't know how that stain got there. And I said, yeah. I can't. It came like that. I can't wear this. There were cell phones then because I remember driving away. They were huge. They were huge.

A car phone, yeah. And I was in the car and Lauren calls me. And I said, that would well. And I went, yeah. Because he was watching in New York. And he goes, but it's going to be shambling. Yeah. All right.

So right away. Now this is. Which I kind of knew. Yeah. That they were talking. So I had done this thing. And this thing, I have to say the audition made me really want to do it because I thought I was like a duck that had never been put in water.

And something I was like, oh, that felt right. And I'm not used to feeling good about anything. And it'll only go well. Yeah. Exactly. It'll only go that well. So you had a total flip where you're like, now I want this. Well, I was excited, but I couldn't even let myself think that yet.

So I was excited, but I couldn't get myself to that point yet. But I remember we went out to Kate Mantellini. Remember Kate Mantellini, that restaurant that's on Wilshire? I went there with Lisa and everyone was really excited. And then I was 29 at the time. And my 30th birthday was about a week and a half away. Remember that? Yeah.

So then when my 30th, I would go back to the Simpsons and it was just, we'll get back to work. And then I had a conversation a couple of days later, Lauren called me and I was in my car. So you're right, there were giant car phones, but you know, I was in my car and Lauren called me. He loves to break bad news on over a phone and he told me, you were great. Yeah.

And he said, I'll never forget, he said, Bob Wright loved your interview and he loved the whole crank thing. When you did the crank thing, he loved that. And I remember thinking, who the fuck is Bob Wright? I don't know who Bob Wright is. I didn't know who Bob Wright was. And I said, well, and he said, Bob Wright loves it and Suzanne really loves it. And I said, well, who are they?

And Lauren was like, what are you talking about? He's the president of- He ran the network. He ran the network of NBC. And he and his wife, they expressed them this videotape out in Connecticut and they watched it and they're like, we like this weird Irish kid with the funny name. And that crank thing, man, that really cracked us up. They're still talking.

Yeah. But then he called me later on and said, you know, the same thing that he had told Jeff, he said, look, it's not going to be you. You're not going to get 12.30. But you did yourself a lot of good and they're probably going to give you like 1.30. And I remember thinking, well, that would be great because there's no pressure. Right. If I got 1.30, there's no pressure.

And wait a minute, that's cool. And I'll never forget- Then you started wanting that. Yeah. Yeah. I still want 1.30. I'll take that now. No, I won't give it to you.

I got the phone when I was with Lisa and Lisa was like, well, that's, you know, so you're not going to get 12.30. And I said, I don't know if, I don't think the show is going to happen. And she said, well, Lauren just told you what's going to happen. And I said, I don't know why, but I just said, it doesn't make sense to me. Gary is a peer of Dave's and he's killing it with his own show, Larry Sanders. Yeah. And he's getting all of this critical acclaim and awards for making fun of the form who wants

to go in every day and try and do it. Yeah. And I said, I just, it's not going to be Shanling. I don't think Shanling is going to do it. I think it doesn't make any sense to me. He's too cautious. He's too smart. He's not going to, no, he's not going to want to go in every day and figure this out.

And sure enough, that's what ended up happening. Yeah. I think I told the story, but I was out for lunch at something. I had an Office of Broadway video in New York and I come back and I had all these messages when they used to be like paper messages that you would, you know, yeah. And they were all people that had something to do with, it was just obvious. And I was like, holy shit. He got it.

Oh, wow. And how long? It was just a couple of weeks. What was it? Well, I remember one of the last things I remember from the old life, the black and white portion of Wizard of Oz before I opened the cabin door. What I remember really well is I had a birthday party when I turned 30 and I had it at my apartment on Weatherly.

The apartment on the second floor was sort of a duplex, old 1920s place and all my friends at the Simpsons and my writer friends came over and everyone brought gag gifts like someone brought me. Arsenios had written a book like his bike, you know, and people knew that you were in this process. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone knew that I was in this process and everyone was talking about it, but it was

kind of funny. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, well, here's your how to book by Arsenio and everybody's and Jeff was there and we had this nice birthday party, which was April 18th, 1993, and then it was a- I was like, see ya. It was like see ya. I'm going back to New York.

Yeah. Jeff's going back to New York and I'm get on with my life and it's in the back of my mind that something might happen, but I don't know what and I want to say it's maybe, I could look up the exact date, but it may have been a week later. I'm in a record at the Simpsons, it was in the basement in the building on the Foxlot, and the way you do a record is there's a table read first. So the whole cast is there and we go through the script and then it's done and everyone applauds and then what happens is we quickly talk about what changes may need to be made

before they start doing the record and the writers are all going to work that out, make these changes as they're recording to tighten it up just a little more. And I remember we had just finished and we're starting to talk about it when there's a phone call and someone in the room said, Conan, the phone's for you. And I picked it up and I put the phone to my ear and it's Gavin Polone, who's still my manager. I've been with him forever. He said, you got 12.30.

And I don't know why, but I went and I said this not in a celebratory way, I said it in a defeated way. He said, you got 12.30 and I went, I know because I just had this, I just knew for some fucking reason. It wasn't over. Especially once you didn't want it. I hung up the phone and I start to quietly walk out of the room. I didn't say anything to anybody.

Leave the room. I walk up the stairs. I walk outside and I was told by Gavin, I said, I know. And then he said, Donald Merr is calling you in like five minutes in your office. And I hung up and I start walking and then I start going into a slight. It's very cinematic, but I start walking fast. Then I start running and I run to my office and then he's saying, okay, here's the plan. You got it, kid.

I think it's all crazy, but you got it. Now, here's the idea. He said, you're going on the Tonight Show tonight because I'm sick of us getting scooped. What? They've scooped us the whole time. Then we're going to show that we're going to flip the script on the media. He had this very like combative, sporty kind of, so he said, Jay's going to just say we got the new host for the, for the late night show.

Here he is. And you're going to walk out there. And you're just going to, and he said, kick out the balls, you know, and really show him who's who. And I'm just the kid that just came out of a record and I'm like, oh, he's like, shut up. Get in your car and get over to NBC right now before the press finds out. So the next thing I know I'm driving over to and I'm in a total panic.

And then sure enough, Jay calls me out and remembered Robert and I think this is good. Robert was like, don't take any big swings. Right. You know, because the worst thing that I could do in the show in the background is going, I was kidding. Yeah. Yeah. She was like, you do.

You have a lot to lose. No. The Simpsons is a good gig. Yeah. So what Robert said. I just basically went out there and went, you know, yeah, it's a real, you know, and Jay was like, well, you know, good luck to you and then whatever. And played it straight.

I just played it straight. Like I, and I remembered people were like, well, if that's the new host of late night. And I was like, you know, he didn't come out and kill and I think, oh my, I really wanted me to go out there and say, all right, buddy, now listen to this, you know, and do the crank thing again. Yeah. Well, Jeff, so you that I was not there. I was in New York.

Back in New York. I was in New York. And did you have to start producing? I did. I watched. Did you guys talk before you went on? I don't think we probably. I don't think so.

Okay. I'm not sure we did it. I don't remember. All right. So then what happened next with you two? We were out how to make a show and Conan came back to New York, got a place. I had to. Well, the crazy thing is I had to go.

They wanted to introduce me to the press in the rainbow room. Yeah. Yeah. That was the first big hurdle was I had to immediately come East. It was not clear cause then NBC started to get into it with Fox and Fox was like, excuse me. He's under contract. I can't believe.

Yeah. And we were like, well, this one in a billion year accident just happened where one of your writers is going to get to. And it wasn't again, I want to be clear. It was not the Simpsons. The Simpsons were great about it, but there was an executive at Fox who was saying, no, I don't know. So NBC and I, I think had, I think I had to pay money and NBC had to pay money to get

me out of my Simpsons contract. That's crazy because at the time these shows were making so much money and they were nickel and diming every little thing. You could think of it. That's how they made it. They weren't happy for you. Yeah. But it was, you had a line at the press conference.

Yes. What was it? The press conference had very much the feel of, you know, we all met, it was going to be in the rainbow room, which is the top of Rockforce Center and everyone from the press core was going to be there and I was going to go out and meet the press and we all met at Lauren's apartment and the NBC people were there and then we walked through the park. It is now early May and we're walking through the park and I'm seeing Rockforce Center get closer and closer and closer and I know that I have to go to the top of this tower and

then meet the nastiest press in the history of media. Also cinematic, this is cinematic as well. Yeah. We're walking there and then as we are getting to 30 Rock, trying to keep it light and trying to stay loose, a reporter comes up to me and he says, I forget if he said it was from the Post or Newsweek, but he said, hey Conan, my job is, I was at Letterman's, Letterman had had a press conference for his new CBS show at Radio City like the week before and of course being, you know, he killed, destroyed.

Right. He said, I was at Letterman's press conference last week and I know how many laughs he got on my job was to count how many laughs you get and see how you stack up and he told me that as we were going through the, on the north side, right in between Radio City and Rockforce Center, we were going in right there and he was like, my job's to count how many laughs, you know, so it was literally like good luck Spartacus in the ring. So I go up there, Lauren talks briefly and then they, and there's a shot, I mean, at Vanity Fair covered it at the time and there's a great, the iconic photographer.

Anyway, it took a shot of me, a reverse shot, I'm in the front and it's the entire press core and explosion of photographs and I'm, as I said, I'm a week and a half earlier, I was in the room at the Simpsons. It's still not real. No, but I remember that the thing that saved my ass was I get up to the microphone and stuttering John from the Howard Stern show was there and he's wearing a terrible, he's wearing a fake mustache and fake glasses and like a wig and so he goes like Conan, Conan, he said, who did you have to sleep with to get this job?

And I just said, no one I wasn't sleeping with before. Next question. And everybody laughed. And then I was like, hey, hey, that's stuttering John, John, take off the wig because he kept, his job was to fuck with me. And I was loving it and I was, anytime he'd say something, I'd be like, I would have fun with it. And then I was like, John, come on, take off the, and it ended up.

Wasn't there, somebody said to you, something about being a relative unknown. No, no, you're a, yeah, he said, sir, aren't you a relative unknown? And I, no, I, he said, Conan, aren't you a relative unknown? I said, sir, I am a complete unknown. And then people were like, oh, he's foolishly, the press conference went really well. And the take was, well, he's funny. And it could work. And all you wanted.

He got three laughs. He got three laughs. I'm dying to hear the, the count. I want to take up that article. But you did a thing that you've done every time since, I think, where you have an event is like, if you can find one person to play off of and you've always been graded. I always try and find who's going to be my foil and then use them as the through line. And stuttering John was there and he was my foil.

And to make things even crazier, that events over. And the first thing I hear is Bob Wright of, we love the crank. Bob Wright's having a 50th birthday party in Connecticut and they want you to go up and be the, one of the, one of the people who's, no, one of the people who speaks and it's in three days. And I said, okay. So I come up with an idea for what I could do and I worked on it with Robert. I get in a town car with Lorne because he's coming too.

And we drive out to this nice part of Connecticut and we walk into this very fancy country club where there's a big party and I recognize all these famous people, you know, there's all these people from the today's show and all these people from all the different NBC shows are there to salute Bob Wright on his 50th. And my job is to get up and speak and I get there and who's standing Ramrod straight in the corner, but Johnny Carson. And I am the opener for Johnny Carson and my previous experience is I did some, I did some pretty good improv at the groundlings and thought of one good quip with Mimi Rogers.

And so he's standing there and he's wearing sunglasses inside, remember? And he just looked, it's Johnny Carson. It's the biggest thing. And suddenly I'm being introduced to him and I said, well, I called him Mr. Carson and he went, please call me Johnny. And I went, oh, Johnny. And he was very, he seemed kind of quiet and reserved. So I didn't say that much to him.

And then I got up and I think the idea that I went with was giving a toast about someone I clearly don't know. So it was like, what can I tell you about, you know, Bob Wright and it was all the jokes were things like he's, I think, five, nine. He is the, and it's clear I've just looked up on Wikipedia, which actually didn't exist. Had that experience and then he like applauded and gave like a little like good for you kind of. That was okay.

It was fine. It was no crank. Yeah. It was no crank. And he said, follow that Carson. Yeah. I should have totally, I should have totally been like, and now fucking Johnny Carson to the Chinese.

But then he got up and of course, blew the lid off the place. But that was how rapidly insane things were happening, you know, it was like rainbow room, meet the New York press and be confronted by stuttering John off to open for Johnny Carson. And it was just this cavalcade of craziness. And then it was go meet all the affiliates, I had to go like around the United States and meet affiliates. That seems at least like a cool down period compared to what you just described. The one point I would make that I'm still blown away by is that this process of bullshittery

that had to happen of press and affiliates and birthday parties and by the time that's over, it's late May, early June, and our start date was September 13th. No band, no writers. It's myself and Jeff. Just the Jeffers. No set. They've completely taken out the Letterman set. And so there's just a six A is just an empty concrete rectangle.

And that's the part that never makes sense to me is how quickly, you know, today, when I hear about someone doing a show, it's like, well, you'll see it in six months, you'll see it in a year and I've got to figure the idea that they found the person with the least experience in the history of the medium and said, you can really get started on June 1st. Right. After the press tour. Yeah. I wasn't exactly experienced at doing a late night talk show.

I'd done a lot of different types of shows and kids in the hall, but that's a totally different pre-tape. There is nothing, well, there were only two or three shows of that kind of time. So, you know, I had no experience. So you were both learning. Yeah. It was crazy. So who did you turn to for advice?

I didn't really. Forever. Yeah. Well, you know. He's probably pretty busy. No. A little bit of Lauren. There was a lot of, we had a lot of Saturday Night Live people helping us and getting different

variations of helping and not helping. I don't know if they were trying to kill us or what, but that's a whole other episode. That's it. You realize this is nine podcasts. Yes. We had this. We had this. Haven't even gotten to 1993.

I knew a lot of those people because I'd worked with them before and we sort of managed our way through that and the process of getting a band was insane, the process of getting a cell built was insane. There is a story, a crazy story behind everything and moments of true despair to the point of there were I think maybe seven different times just in that summer where I fantasized, no joke about getting hurt. I didn't want to die like, but I remembered very clearly thinking if I was hit by a car, I was very clear to me that it can't be my fault, but if something were to happen to

me and I'd been badly injured, I'd be off the hook. That might be a good way. I would also want an induced coma. Yes. I just wanted to check over. It was generous. It was Robert Morton at the time who was producing the Leatherman show. He was generous.

He was a friend of mine. You were already friends. That's great. He was generous about it. Was there an early moment you two remember being thrown into this where there was things you bonded over in particular? We've never bonded. Eight minutes ago, I really started to think, this Jeff Ross guy, there's something to him.

My whole thing was just try to make it as easy as possible for Conan. Just try to keep him away from all the bullshit. At that time, it was kind of impossible because there were a lot of opposing forces and people who were less than helpful when they were made like they were being helpful. It was just a lot of crazy. It's like passive-aggressive. A lot of craziness. I think this is where I really have to, I think I've tried to say this a lot in my career

and on my last TBS show, but it can't be said enough. The two big things that had to happen were initiated and made possible by Lorne. First of all, there's this weird opening in the universe. I always make fun of Marvel movies because I hate a portal that opens in the sky. I always think it's a portal opened and lazy writing came in. But this weird portal opened in the sky where there was a second where this big TV job was kind of in play. And Lorne, for whatever reason, and I still maintain, he may have fucked up, said Conan

O'Brien. Now, that's huge because Lorne was the only person in show business who had that power, one of the only people. And he's also clearly saw something and said, I think he could do it, probably regretted it almost immediately. And I've actually told this when I went back to SNL a couple of months ago, I said, I'm sure you regretted that immediately, and he was like, no, but I can tell, but in fairness to Lorne, he did that.

And then the second thing he did was he said, Jeff Ross. And my dad, over the years, who likes to ask a question more than once, the same question, but over the years go like, now, how did Jeff get into the equation? And I would always say, well, Lorne was the one who brought Jeff in and he would go like, Jeff is very key, and I go, yes, Jeff's the key, you know, and then, you know, I'd count a year and a half. Now, tell me, how did Jeff, that's important because Jeff is very, he seems to compliment your energy.

Yes, that's right dad. We've talked about this several times. Yeah, sure. It's Lisa Kudrow still buying your clothes. Whatever happened to Lisa Kudrow? Well a year later, she could say, I'm not done with my question. Anyway, but Lorne, by just moving his pinky, he says, well, it's Conan O'Brien and Jeff Ross.

And I do think those are two massive key moves and then the third move that needed to happen at the beginning was Robert Smigel. And I pushed for that and of course, I only knew Robert because of SNL, where I worked with him for all these years and I knew that he had the sensibility, like we used to talk about this. We used to talk about comedy and I knew that Robert kind of had to be there and Lorne, you know, I think was reluctant to lose Robert from SNL and that was a whole story, but when you think about it, the three main players that needed to happen for everything else

to happen really come through more and SNL and they happen fairly quickly and then the rest is, I always think it's one of those movies, like you start with Robin Hood and he's walking through the forest and then, you know, he starts fighting with someone on a stream and it's, it's Fryer Tuck, you're with me and then you pick up people as you go. I think of it as Jeff and I pretty much start the journey out together and Robert's there almost immediately, then it's the three of us and then it's this whole odyssey of married men.

You know, literally, Jeff Garland saying, hey, check out this guy, Andy Richter, and we do and I have lunch with him and meet him at a deli, as I've said many times and he came in and I immediately, I mean a lot of it's instinctual, but immediately I was like, this guy needs to be part of this adventure because he's fantastic. You were like Lorne all of a sudden, you were just like, ah, this guy. The stuff that's fascinating to me is how do you, those initial elements are the fascinating part and then everything else is a good story and you guys have done a great job of mining these incredible stories because we put together, because it happens so quickly and so strangely,

we put together a group of people that didn't know anything about TV and really didn't have experience and then we ended up, you know, we inherited our crew from Letterman's old show and Dave did a very different kind of show and suddenly we're telling 62 year old cameramen who've never had to move, we've got a funny idea where Conan races down Sixth Avenue and you follow him and they were like, how about you go fuck yourself? I'll be on a break. Yeah, and once you hit September 13th, when we premiered 93, the next two years is us. Two and a half.

Two and a half. No, no, no, year and a half, two. No, I think it was over two. Over two years of we're in terrible, terrible danger of being canceled in a second. We were canceled at one point, but also justified fear because yeah, there was, we were. I mean, you've said it, you was weak to weak for a while, then it was almost day to day. All we did was, there was a way I felt as I had like visors on, I was like one of those horses.

Right. You know what I mean? You're still very horse-like. You're still very horse-like. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. We gave Jeff a sugar cube after every anecdote. I could use one now.

I could use one now if this goes much longer. Oh my God. Jeff, we haven't even gotten to your side about all this. But you know what I'm saying? We're going to go back and retell the whole story through her voice. No, but you realize that this is- You just have to put your head down and not pay attention to a lot of things. Yeah.

Just go forward. I mean, I think it's just, I still to this day cannot believe that somehow we got away with it. I don't. 100%. And you know, one thing I wanted to say, one of the surreal moments just popped into my head and one of them was we move in and we take over these offices. They were offices that had been like an insurance company or something, but they ended up being

our late night offices for all those 16 years and we move in and there's nobody yet. I mean, literally there's myself and Jeff. We had offices on the opposite corners and there was no bills there. Jeff took me- You're literally 100 feet apart. We had two corners. At least 100 feet apart, but Jeff had the offices that looked at the sign for Radio City on the north side and I had the south side.

I was down like where the writers are and Jeff was upwards. All the adults who make the show really work are up on that side and I was with the idiots. But at the time there's no one's there yet. People are in the press of hiring people. So you could look it up, but Dave winds up his last late night show, probably sometime in June, I'm guessing, and where am I? I'm on the ninth floor in my office and I'm watching the feed and I'm watching Dave record his last show.

Just three floors below you. Three floors below me and he's recording in the studio that I'm going to take over, but we haven't even gotten started yet and I'm sitting there watching it. So Dave does this amazing show, last show, and then Bruce Springsteen comes out and does glory days. Right. And I'm in my office watching this and then it ends and Dave does his final words and he says, I'm moving on.

This has been a really, and he says, the last thing he says is, and, Conan O'Brien, I don't know much about the man, but I believe he shot somebody once, you know, which it would always get old. Sure. And then he said, I hope someday he has me on his show. That'd be nice. Anyway, good night. That ends and I'm like, for the first time, as long as Dave was on the air, I felt this

isn't real. It's down the road. When I left, suddenly it's like, you're up, kid. Oh, wait. Right. D'Amaggio just left the batter's box. He just hit a home run. Yeah.

You're up. I hope you're warm. Oh, here I am. Also, we went back. This spot feels heavy. We went down there after the show. I was going to get to that, yeah. And what was surreal to me, first of all, they're all there.

Who's they? Joe just... Don't do it down there. They were all diverse down there. No, no, but it's like, Letterman's just done his last show, so there's a whole thing. This is in the hall. We're in like a flannel shirt and having a bottle of, literally, he had like a beer bottle because someone had put beer out.

It's a prop. And yeah, it was just filled with liqueur. We had liqueur water in it. Give me my liqueur. Come on. It's like beer. So Dave was in this little tiny dressing room, and someone said, you should go in there. Suddenly, I'm in a tiny, tiny room with David Letterman, just done his last show, and he

wishes me well, and I said, that was really amazing, and, well, I should go and start making the show that will replace your iconic show, I suppose. And I walk outside, and Tom Hanks was a guest on the last show. And Tom Hanks is there with his wife, Rita. And Tom looks at me, and I knew him from being a writer on SNL. And he used to call Robert, Bob Odenkirk, and Greg Daniels, the Boiler Room boys. He'd be like, hey, fellas, we're the Boiler Room, fellas, get over here, fellas. And so he was like, he looked at me, and he stared right through me and put his hands

on my shoulders, and he said, what's just happened to you doesn't happen. It never happens. And I don't know exactly how to take that, and I don't think he meant anything. But he was pretty much saying, this is kind of unprecedented in show business history. Okay, I'm going to go now. Don't fuck this up. I also remember being in that hallway, and immediately they were ripping the set out. Oh my God.

And I was just watching them rip the set out. And shitting on the floor. Pretty much. And just going, and our set experience had a little to be desired, you know, with that first set. And we're going through all that, and I'm watching the set being ripped out, and I'm just like, oh my God. Wow.

Oh, that's real. That's got to figure it out. So it was empty by probably the next two days later. Yeah. There's a thing. I think that night. There's a thing you hear about a lot back before people, there were rules and laws about childcare that if you wanted to teach a child to swim, you would just take the child and

throw him into the deep end of the pool. This was, this was like, I'm taking the child into a C-47 plane and throwing them out into the R-2 quarters. And the worst thing about it all was like, I think if it had been done to me, my psychological response would have been, you know, if I was told by the government, your name's been selected randomly and you have to replace Letterman and this is your job to save America, I would have had a very different attitude about it. But in my own fucked up Catholic way, I think I was very much, you asked for this asshole.

And so I- You got what you wanted. I had, yeah, you got what you wanted, fucker. Now let's see, you know, you put yourself in this position, you said, yes, because someone just had to host a talk show. And the voice in my head is far more punitive than anything anyone can ever say to me. And so I just beat the shit out of myself all the time. And I now think that the crazy thing about when I, when I look at the audition or the

times I've seen it since, I was more relaxed in the audition than I was on television because- Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I'm being asked to try out, but I'll do my part, then I'm not to lose. And then the minute it's, I took it very seriously. And it just took me a while for the volume, it was literally the volume and the amount of work we were doing and the volume of shows. And it's getting Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours, the hard way in front of everybody. In front of it.

That's the crazy part of it to me. You could probably see, watch a, some program could probably take one image, three images a show from every show the first two years and speed them up and you would literally see somebody, you know, my skeletal structure would change from this year. I wanted it to work. I was, I was not going to not work. Right. I was thinking it was, this is going to work because it has to work because being a joke

trivia question is not an option. Right. Yeah. But that to me, just learning to do that on the job, because you, you mentioned like Tina Fey and, you know, Seth, like, yes, they were writer background, but then they had all this performance experience kind of under the radar. Second city. Yeah.

Almost everyone on television started, you know, Letterman was a weatherman and even that. Yeah. It's just that little practice. Yeah. Me in front of a camera. Right. To be fair, I used to, I used to go to department stores a lot that were selling televisions

and they used to have a video camera and I would do the thing where I, I swear to God, I, I, I had spent a lot of time. I had not been impressed. Yeah. I had really gotten my chops, but it was. Flour five. Yeah. It is a very improbable story and what's crazy to me is that's the beginning.

Yeah. I mean, we've told you one-twentieth of the good stuff because there's so much insanity that happened and we're saving that for the book, but that's just the beginning. Yeah. And you could believe, like, and then finally the ship righted itself and went off to have a pleasant career. We haven't gotten to the Tonight Show, like, that is in every way as insane and unprecedented and crazy and counterintuitive as the beginning.

Yes. And that happens 16 years later. Yeah. What I was going to say was, isn't that crazy? What's fascinating is we told this part of the story and then I was about to say, well, and then we went up those elevators in the coolest building that you could do television in in the world for the next 16 years. Yeah.

It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. The volume of stuff and the, of the variety of things that we tried. Yeah. And I see it now and I have no connection to it. So, I mean, we used to do a piece where we would do a whole like soap opera in front of the audience and with famous people.

John Lithgow did it once. John Lithgow did it and Martin Sheen did it. And we would have people in the audience wear a green like sock. A green screen. Green screen over their head so that we could drop them in and put their heads on the bodies of actors who were there so that the audience would have a lot, an audience member who just showed up. Yeah.

Paula's looking at me horrified. He didn't have no recollection. Yeah. Paula Davis is here. She was one of the first hires. Stay in your seat. That's one of the only hires. It was called Paula Davis, one of the first people we hired to be our booker and she's

sitting here and Paula, you don't even remember this. You booked it. You booked. You booked. She didn't know you hosted. Yeah. I'm Conan, by the way. She's like, where's Corden?

I'm like, okay, we'll get to that. His American accent is impressive. There are maybe 75 to 100 sketches or more that someone could tell me we did and I would say that don't do that. How would that even work? And stay in your seat theater, it was called so that. It was putting out a newspaper every day and there was no, you could never not move the clock back.

And then in the middle of that, somebody says, let's do the show in the start. Circle line. Right. Okay. Yeah. Let's get a circle line. Right. Circle line boat.

Yeah. The boats that go around in Manhattan. Yeah. But I mean, that's, I have to say, Robert gets a lot of credit for, Robert has large eyes. Like there's that old saying, my grandma used to say, if you didn't finish your food, she'd say, well, your eyes were bigger than your stomach. Right. Yeah.

And Robert has creatively huge eyes like I, let's rent a Zeppelin, let's fill it with cheddar cheese, let's get Paula to book. And he makes it happen. Yeah. And let's get Paula. He wills it. He wills it through an insane, you know, and things get crazy and hairy and there are fist fights and there's shouting.

And maybe, maybe people get killed during the sketch, who knows. But the whole thing was, there was this, when we were really taking heat early on, in through at 93 and people are, at the time there were reviews that said things like it'd be really nice if, you know, Conan died, you know, and it'd be great if Andy died with him. You know, it just, just people were just very upset by it. And that was actually in print, I think once, but, Your hometown paper. Yeah.

Yeah. Your father wrote it. Exactly. I was going to say. Yeah. Written by Dr. Thomas O'Brien. If he died, it couldn't be as well, you see, he never adequately explained Jeff Ross to me.

Yeah. He must be punished. But there was a time when, I think, even Lauren was saying, couldn't you just interview people and couldn't it be, like, because our comedy was very aggressive and aggressively strange and I think still looks that way. And they thought, well, this Conan guy, he cleans up nice and he's affable. Why can't he just be affable and chat with people and that way there's, there's less sticky edges, instead, you know, Conan's yodeling and he's wearing a bikini and Andy's dressed

as a monkey and there's a punk rock element to it, like, like it or go fuck yourself. But one of the great things about that, when you wound up your show in TBS last year, where all these successful, like Seth Rogan and all these other big names, who, this wouldn't even occur to you at the time, you were just trying to do a show every night, they all ate the feast of all this comedy you were making. Yeah, we're like, finally someone's making comedy for me, I think, is how people felt. That must have been very satisfying. It was, but I have to say, I don't know how you felt, Jeff, but I mean, and so many people,

I'm very, I think the thing that gratifies me the most is that, you know, haters and Malanis and all these people who are so crazy talented and good at what they do and brilliant and they say nice things about and what our show meant to them back in the day and my immediate response is, couldn't you have said anything? Because nothing was old enough to write? Yeah, like, couldn't you have written us up? Why weren't you in Nielsen House? Dear Mr. O'Brien.

Well, in fairness to that, there were a couple of situations where somebody's kids, they were hearing, like executives, I can't remember who it was, who was it? There was a guy who, and again, this is probably for another installment, but there was a guy who was sort of hired to kick us in the ass and, you know, let's, let's get this thing moving again. I mean, we got to figure this out and it was like an episode of a sitcom where character comes in and Jill Sargent moves in with the family and boy does he turn things upside down.

But I remember him telling us, you got to pull this together, you got to, then he went off to visit his, I believe it was his son who went to Boston College. So he went and went to visit his son and he was hanging out in the dorm when he's like, guys, you know, tell me, what is everybody watching these days? What are the kids loving? And he said the dorm room was like, Conan. And he was saying, no, no, seriously, seriously, seriously, you know, do you guys like Jag? That's just on its way out.

Do you guys like Carolina City, right? And they were like, no, no, it's, it's, it's, we watched Conan. It's so great and weird. And to his credit, he did repeat that. He told me, he didn't have to tell me, but he told me, well, he's got to take credit for it. And that was probably the kind of thing that saved us. Yes.

Yes. I mean, the first thing that saved us was nobody was paying attention and we could just do whatever we wanted. Right. And then it became. After the initial rush. I think what helped save us is that we were in New York and had we been in Los Angeles where they could come in, you know, if, if we had been in Los Angeles, they could have

been there every day and they would have seen me putting on an octopus costume and us putting a green felt sock over a machine's head and they would have said, stop, we just saw that on the field. Yeah. Stop. Have Dick Cavett on an interview him and be pleasant to you motherfucker. And instead, and also I think there was a, we were a car accident. People stayed away from us for a while because no one wanted to own it and we have to give

a shout out to someone who was a real stalwart, Rick Ludwin, who is no longer with us. Rick Ludwin was the NBC executive in charge of late night and he was horrified by a lot that we were doing early on, but he was there and he was watching audiences laugh at us. He was the first executive to get it. Yes. Yeah. And he had the only one with the balls to go into a room and go, it's good. Yeah.

He said something. I don't get it. Except for me, but. He said something's happening here. You know, there's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. You can edit that out or actually put music to it. We'll loop it.

There's a man. I think anyone's going to associate that with the actual song. I've got to beware. It's time to stop. Don't make that show. Everybody says my favorite stew, gizmo. Anyway. This is why I really.

You get topical. You know what? If I had said. If we all hadn't come along. If I had sung that diddy at my rehearsal, you wouldn't know me now. I'd be at the guy at Ikea. I know. There was a divine force helping you through.

Helping me not make stupid songs up. But yeah, Rick Ludwin said there's something happening there and he just doubled down and went to bat for us and what remained a good friend of us all through, you know, everything. And even through the tonight show craziness was like, no, disagreed with people audibly and. Got a fire. Well, yeah. We have to wrap this up.

We do have to wrap this up so everyone can just look up the tonight show and the serious deal. People can read about that online. Well, this was. This could be a new spinoff series. This could run 20 seasons. This is amazing. It's tough.

And I know I run off at the mouth, but it's very, I'm very, I don't talk about this stuff a lot. And so when it comes up in this forum, you realize it's like PTSD. You start talking and it's, it's hard to stop. No, no, it just felt very visceral. Like you were there and you were remembering the Lucite table and it was nice seeing all those details. It's also easy to talk to you guys about it because you know what it is.

Right. Yeah. But also the process of talking about it, it's almost like to reaffirm that it really happened. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's why I will say I'm grateful to you guys for doing this podcast because as much as I have trouble listening to our podcast, well, it's just the lack of chemistry.

Let's get a robot and a bar of soap and have you know, no, no, no, I hope I'm the soap. You are definitely the soap. I'd love being a robot, but wait, wait, where's my oil? You know the joint. No, I have trouble, I have, I have trouble going back, I have trouble going back there sometimes. You know what I mean? I have trouble going back and, but the fact that you guys are talking to Robert and Bill

Tull and you are, you are, I mean, when I heard that you guys had done a deep dive on the old timey baseball remote and found Nell. Yes. Yeah. She hasn't forgotten. And, and found her. And, and that is a magical moment in my life. Yeah.

I mean, I don't have a name dropy, but we just, Paul and I went and saw Jack White do his show recently and he was telling me afterwards, we both realized we're going to be in the Seattle area on the same time. And he said, oh, I'm, I'm playing a baseball game then with a bunch of friends and I'm going to be in there because he's on tour. And he said, you should stop by. You could play with us. And he said, and you could do it as an old timey guy.

And then he's like quoting from it. And I realized that he probably saw that when he was like eight, you know, why didn't he write a letter? Exactly. It's what got him into comedy. I'm really grateful that you guys are doing this because, you know, you can love us. You can hate us. But whatever happened during this crazy 28, 29 year span was authentic, kooky and involved

a lot of brilliant, weird, difficult, lovable people, you know, in this movable feast that just seems to, I mean, now it's continuing in audio form and, and I think we'll morph into other things. But I just love that you guys are, are getting these stories down because none of us should have ever been allowed to be in Rockford Center or Warner Brothers or any of these places. It's insane. And I love that you're getting, you're, you're, you're getting this sort of oral history of a terrible mistake.

Right. Right. Well, people love talking about it too. I mean, it's easy to get and same. Once the juices start flowing, everyone's, it's fond memories and you've meant a lot to so many people. Yeah. There's a lot of stories adjacent to your story.

Yeah. You might not want to know about it. Yeah. I don't want to know. Speaking of Bill Tall and Props. I don't want to know what prison Bill was in. That's who comes to mind. Bill was, Bill was being, Bill Tall was being led to the execution chamber when he heard

on the radio. They made me build the chamber. Yeah. The final appeal. He heard, he heard on the radio that Conan was the new host of late night music. That sounds good. And he wriggled free and got out of a window. Well, thank you.

Yeah. Thank you both. Stop by anytime. Anytime. Yes. Thank you very much. This is great guys. Thank you.

That was mostly Conan and some Jeff Ross. Yeah. And a little bit of us. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're sprinkled. We were there.

It's such an amazing story. It is. I know. I really don't get tired of it. I mean that. And there's new details always emerging as well. You know, it's amazing to be hearing all of that. I think I've heard some of those stories separately, like little parts of it.

And to hear it compressed like that where he just went from one test to the next test to the next. Yeah. Oh. So stressful. Oh my. It's. Just imagining.

It's just unbelievable. It's like a nightmare. And there was no let up, it was just like, it was literally like going down a water slide that just never stopped. And it's just like. With knives. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. No water. It is an amazing show of this story. So I'm. It is. I know. I can't wait for the Made for TV movie about it. Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. On Hallmark. Sure. You know what? This really, this season has been so fun for me. I've loved hearing and talking to all the people that have been a part of the show. It was great. Touched so many people in so many different ways and just everyone has such fond memories.

There's so many people, there just isn't enough time to, there's so many more people we could. I know. That I'd love to talk to and catch up with. But of the people we had on were fantastic. The writers. And then. So many.

Oh my God. When he applied for his own job and got it as an, under an alias. Right. Cause he was leaving the show. He reapplied to replace himself and got the job. Oh. I know. And then hired someone to play him as the quote new writer is just, I'm so glad that story

got to be told. It's an epic story. Yeah. And then all these other parts of it came out and then we dug up Nell who is also kind of. Nell. I know. The one that we got a lot of time from.

From the old timey baseball remote, right. She's still doing her thing. She's still, yelling out. Yeah. She really is an enigma. Yeah. She was exact, seemed exactly the same. Yeah.

We talked to a former head of state, the former president Finland. That's right. Agreed to speak to us. We didn't trick her into it. She was on our 100th episode along with Robert Smigel who we discussed earlier. That's right. I think people really loved it when we talked to Bill Tall and John Rau, the prop masters. Oh, there's so many animal corpse stories.

I know, but they also just talked about, straight up about the bedlam of getting the show together from their point of view every day back in 30 Rock. And I just love that, you know, you think of 30 Rock as a state building and they were just running some crazy schemes out of that proper room. They were cutting wires and moving pipes around,

dissolving animals and acid. Right. All under extreme deadlines. Yes, for a good cause. Oh, and you know what show I'm watching? And I think it's because of, we got to interview her. I'm watching, I love that for you. And I think that show's really funny.

Oh, Vanessa Bayer's show? Vanessa Bayer, who we interviewed. Yes, who was a former Conan intern. Yeah, right. And she'd been a guest on the show, et cetera, et cetera. And I remember the time she was talking about the show she was working on. And I was like, yeah, I'm sure everyone's working on a show.

And it's, it's on the show time. It's, it's really, I really well done show. Oh, that's great. I love her. Very funny if you haven't watched it. There's such a lot of talent that came through the Conan halls. Yeah.

From intern to employee to guest. It's been a really fun season. Yeah, it's been fun. I've, I've loved seeing you every week and getting to chat. I know, that's my favorite part. That's my favorite part. Has been talking to you. That's been my favorite part too.

I, I'm not even. Sadly, the season is over. It's been so much fun. It's been a blast. And I, you know, we'll, we'll keep in touch. We'll keep you hacking. Yeah. We'll keep you posted on anything that's coming up and.

See where Conan heads next, you know, in addition to the podcast, what else he's got up his sleeve. Yeah, that's right. I'm ready to dig into his trash. Maybe get some clues. And if you like the show, you can support us by rating inside Conan an important Hollywood podcast and iTunes

and leave us a review. Yeah. Thanks for doing that. Yes. In advance. Exactly. Well, it's been a really fun season. And, you know, we couldn't have done it without our listeners.

Because why, Sweeney? We love you. It's true. Thanks for letting me say it this time. Inside Conan, an important Hollywood podcast is hosted by Mike Sweeney and me, Jesse Gaskell. Produced by Sean Doherty. Our production coordinator is Lisa Berm.

Executive produced by Joanna Solotaroff, Adam Sacks, and Jeff Ross at Team Coco. Engineered and mixed by Will Bekton. Our talent bookers are Gina Batista and Paula Davis. Thanks to Jimmy Vavino for our theme music and interstitials. You can rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. And of course, please subscribe until a friend to listen to Inside Conan on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher,

Google Podcasts, or whatever platform you like best. It's the Conan show. Put on your hat. It's the Conan show. Try on some spats. You're going to have a laugh. Give birth to a calf. It's Conan.

This has been a Team Coco production.