Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Conan O’Brien Must Go: Spain Roundtable Discussion

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Conan talks to Conan O’Brien Must Go writer Mike Sweeney about following Javier Bardem around Madrid and writing exit strategies for the fans. Get access to all the podcasts you love, music channels and radio shows with the SiriusXM App! Get 3 months free using this show link: https://siriusxm.com/conan.

Conan O'Brien needs a fan. Wanna talk to Conan? Visit teamcoco.com slash call Conan. Okay, let's get started. Hey, Conan O'Brien here and we are doing something a little different today. My Max travel series is back and the first episode,

this is the second season, first episode drops, that's what the kids say, on May 8th. We're taping this in 1978. And I haven't even started high school yet. Sitting in with us is a special guest. He's been with me many, many years. And he has been with me on every single travel show and his name is Mike Sweeney.

Mike. Hi Conan. Good to see you. Hi Sona, hi Matt. Hi Mike. And I will point out, you are a fan fave. They do like it when Mike Sweeney graces our presence. It's the first time hearing that.

You're a room fave too. A room fave, I like being a room fave. Yeah, I went a little crazy on fan fave. And I have to say, we started out many, many, many years ago and in my early iterations of the travel shows, you were always with me and then it just became, you were my right-hand guy on those shows and all the different iterations, Conan Without Borders.

Conan Without Borders. All we did, how many of those did we do? 13? 13 countries. And then we started doing these for Max and they were called and are called, Conan O'Brien Must Go. And we did four last year and we have the second season dropping.

It starts today. Yes. And let's just talk about Spain because Spain is the first show. Correct. This is not a police interview. You should continue. Continue.

You're being recorded. I don't recall. I don't recall. You still don't want your attorney with you. You're being recorded. I don't recall. I don't recall. You still don't want your attorney with you. Okay, go ahead. Spain. Spain. We went to Spain.

We went to Madrid and that episode drops today. We have a special guest star on that episode and I'm just gonna say it. It's Javier Bardem. Man. Yeah. You thought it was me. Yeah. It was Javier Bardem. No, I'm, it's Javier Bardem. Man. And- You thought it was me. No, it was Javier Bardem.

No, I'm disappointed it's Javier Bardem. Now, there are two other writer-producers who were unable to join us for this session. When I say unable, I didn't invite them. Right. Probably because of the 10 minutes notice before. Exactly, yeah, we just decided to do this. Oh my God, it drops today?

Oh, sweetie. Sweetie's here, let's get him in. Guys, what's up? Jose this, right? Oh my God, it drops today? Sweetie's here, let's get him in. Guys, what's up? Jose Arroyo and Jesse Gaskell, who are brilliant writers and funny and helped put this whole thing together, invaluable. They're not with us today,

but I think you can fill the bill. They were extra invaluable in Spain because, well, Jose grew up in Spain and Jesse grew up all over the world and is very fluent in Spanish as well. Yeah, very helpful and of course I too. And you have a knack for Spanish. Have a knack?

He's good at it. Yes, you can get your way through. I've heard him and I think sometimes he talks, you speak very quickly. I like to speak very quickly. No, if you need to go to a library. Excuse me, La Biblioteca. Right, or you want to go to a library. Yeah. Or, excuse me, La Biblioteca.

Right, or you want to order an apple at a restaurant. Conan is your guy. Un apple. And it's una. It depends. Like a male apple. A male, a masculine apple. That's the only kind of apple I'll bite into.

A big meaty stem. Yeah. Give me that. So big meaty stem. Yeah, give me that. So. Oh my God. Oh my gosh. We stopped. But let's talk about the Spain episode.

This is something that people are gonna be able to watch. It's- I know we'll talk about it eventually. Well, we're gonna get into it right now. Jesus, what a- What? I'm a fan fave. I can do whatever I want.

You are a DW dickus. You should not have told me I was a fan fave. That was your big mistake. I made it up to try and grease the skids. All right, I'll go back to my regular. Go ahead. Spain. Yes. Madrid.

I thought this was a wonderful trip. I had never been to Madrid before. And we went, of course, the premise of the show is people call in from around the world, they zoom in, I chat with them, you can hear those during the week, those drop on the Conan O'Brien needs a fan episodes. But we had, we noticed that we had a couple of fans in Madrid

and we decided to go and visit them and get involved in their lives. And- We have three fans in this episode. Three fans. Which is one more than usual because they were all great. I'm gonna say four,

cause I think Javier. Well, Javier is a big fan. Oh, can I say something about Javier or Javier is that we were so worried. He's a huge star. And he's always been lovely when he's come on the show, when he's come on the podcast. I adore this guy and he's universally beloved

for his talent and his incredible looks and his magnetism and his machismo. But, so I was concerned about, oh my God, you know, I fuck around during these shows. I gotta kind of keep it together. I don't wanna waste his time. And I kept saying to Javier, okay, we've done one or two things.

If you need to get going. And he was like, nonsense Conan, we must continue, onward, there's more to do. And he had this like, he had this Zorba like energy to keep doing more and man did he dive in. He's the star of the show, he's great. Unbelievable, the whole week we'd check back in with him and be like, cause he's, you know, TV, TV's great,

what a medium, but he's a movie star. Yes. So we were, he was like, What a medium? It was like handling plutonium. We were like, oh my God. And so- When we're with a TV star,

we will waste their goddamn time. Like you wouldn't believe. I don't care what tier you're on in television. It doesn't matter. I will cover you in caramel. I'll waste weeks of your time. But if you've made it in the movie biz. Films. In film.

Cinema. No, I respect that. Cinema. Cinema. And bilingual. He's the master of the Spanish cinema as well as now the English language. So we'd be like, are you sure? Also it was physically demanding the things and we were going to shoot with Javier Bardem.

Oh yeah. And he was like, he finally just was like, listen, I am yours for the day. Yeah. I will go start. And we started at 7 a.m. Yeah, 7 a.m. we met at the Prado. The Prado Museum.

Prado Museum. They would only let us in before they opened their doors. And right through till the evening. He's my hero. Our last day there. Love that guy. And I have to say, one of the highlights for me was we're in the Prado and we're taking the escalator down

onto the next shoot and his cell phone rings and he looks down and he's getting a FaceTime message from his beautiful wife. Oh no. Penelope. Penelope. And he's like, oh, hello, my love. And she's like, hello. And I'm standing next to him on an escalator.

I was like, ah, he's like, I'm with Conan. He said, I'm with Conan. And she goes like, oh, hello. And I'm like, hi. And talk about- Well, they have kids, so it wasn't a big deal. No. She's, I mean, even on a iPhone FaceTime,

she's the most beautiful woman in the world. The phone had this glow that I don't think iPhones are supposed to have, only when Penelope's. And so that made me more nervous about wasting his time. Yes. Because he could choose, well actually no, Penelope was out of the country. She was in Hong Kong.

I accused him of, I said, I thought Penelope was gonna be here. And he said, oh, she had to be out of the country. And I said, admit it, admit it. Right down the block. Admit it. She quote, had to be out of the country when you told her you'd be with Conan O'Brien for the day.

Cause I believe what happened. But no, they're- He was more than enough though. Good God. For me. Yeah. No, he was, take it easy. He was incredible. And, but also it wasn't all about Javier.

Madrid was spectacular. And I have to say, I always play in the back of my head with where could I live? It's a game I play, where could I live? And Madrid did seem like a city that I could live in. It's a cool city. Not that they would welcome me, but I thought, oh, the architecture is beautiful.

The food is fantastic. The people are very warm. I kind of know the language enough to get to the bibliotheca. And so I came away very impressed with Madrid. And we have a lot of silliness in the show. A lot of silliness, a lot of silliness, three fans. They were all great. And again, I'm sticking to my credo, which is, I know there are a lot of travel shows out there.

I do not want to educate anybody in any way. In fact... Success. I want you to know less about the country afterwards. All I care about is if you laugh. And I think, I'd like to think we did that this season. Yes, it's a really fun episode. Yeah, if you have pre-existing knowledge of Madrid,

it will be gone after you watch the show. This is like a protein that eats away at the brain. I have a question as an outsider. How much stuff, like the ratio of what you shoot, because a lot of it is found in the moment and improvised. Do you guys end up distilling down and using like, what's the ratio? Well, to be fair, and hats off to Mike Sweeney

and Jose Arroyo and Jesse Gaskell do a lot of research. And then we have meetings where they'll talk about, we can go here, we can go there, different, first of all, there's the fans and what we're gonna do with them. But there's a lot of stuff we think up beforehand that they think up beforehand and we have talks about it. So the best shows are the ones where we're always going in

with a plan and then we're keeping our eyes open for little silly folder all along the way that we're gonna find. But there's no way you could improvise this and go from location to location to location and have it work out. It would never happen in a million years. So the work that Mike and Jose and Jesse do is invaluable.

They're creating this sort of a script without an order. Cause we don't know what the order is gonna be till we get into editing. But there's, they do a lot of footwork before we go to the country. And then Jason Chalemi is- Well, Jason finds our local fixers in every country since the beginning.

Jason finds, yeah. Since the, I mean, since the very beginning, Jason started as an intern on the late night show. And here it is. I mean, this is shortly after the end of the Civil War and we hired him via telegraph and he still. And he produces everything in the field,

everything on the ground. And it's my favorite, one of my favorite things is when we zero in on potential countries. So he'll call, you know, Spain, he'll call the fixers there and he'll talk to two or three fixers, the people that arrange producers. He, he, there's a registry of television produce or he'll get recommendations. And he has this, I always like talking to him because he has this unerring sense of it and he's like, I talked to three people.

I got a really good sense. I really good feeling about. The second one. Yes. And he's always, they're always great. So when you have someone like Bardem in there, you're saying like, you don't want to waste his time, but he's so fun loving.

Do you find yourself going like, let's just mess with this off the cuff or more? Yes, he's such a funny improviser. I mean, you could tell when he was here on the podcast. So there's stuff in the park. There's tons of improvising. Improvising where I'm, you know, I came up through improv and I'm improvising

with this guy who's as good an improviser as anyone I've worked with. And we're mirror, there's a scene where we're mirroring each other, like taking little mini cues off each other to act who can be the stupidest. And he'll never work in this town again after this thing. And a quick shout out too,

because he's there for all of these is Blay. Blay, Blay comes along and does a heroic job on all of the social media stuff. Give us your take, Blay, on Madrid. Heroic is very kind. No, I know, I just said it. The minute I said it, I knew it was a mistake. Yeah, exactly.

Madrid was, what a wonderful town, and everyone was so nice. And I think that it had such a cool vibe, which was really great. Bardem was, couldn't have been more down to earth and generous. Like he was hanging out and knew all the crew members names, which would just hang out.

Which I don't, first of all, frankly, I don't know your names. You're all wearing name tags. He did my laundry. I brought it in his life. I missed the drop at the hotel. And he's like, you know, you kind of live in the town. I assume you have a washer and dryer.

Amazing guy. In the episode, you can see it, but Javier takes me to the oldest restaurant in the world. The oldest restaurant in- Boteen. Boteen, which is, and it's been in continuous- Since 1727? For the continued wall.

The oven has been stayed lit for, since it was opened. What? In like the 1700s. And Goya used to wash dishes there. Goya washed dishes there. Hemingway had his own corner that he used to go and hang out there, which is- But the idea that the oven has been on since 17-

Even during COVID, they went in specifically to keep it going. Really? And that kept COVID going. COVID had just about died out worldwide. 1725. Seven, I was off by two years ago. Dang.

And the food is very good. They're famous for their suckling pig, which, and so there's an actual room where they're mass cooking suckling pig, which, and so there's an actual room where they're the mass cooking suckling pigs and they're all up on these little plates all around this room where they get re, they kind of heat them up again right before they go out. So that room was amazing.

One of the things that drives these episodes of the fans and we are blessed that this goes for people I meet on the street all the time, but our fan base, they're routinely very nice people who are also funny and smart and natural improvisers. That seems to be our fan base, which is a lucky thing because all the fans in Spain are very funny and they've got good ideas

and they're great at yes and the rules of improv. And that goes for these travel shows. They're just, they're really fueled by, I'm interested in people and I like to talk to funny people and we have this constant stream of funny fans. Yeah, they're all very charming. Yeah.

Well, you know, a lot of the legwork's done when you talk to your fans here in the podcast. So we all get a really good, I mean, you know, like in Spain, Bruno, the airplane pilot. Do you remember him? Yeah, I remember Bruno. See, see, see? Bruno, the airplane pilot. Do you remember him? Oh yeah, I remember Bruno. See, see, see? Well, so then it's kind of like, uh, duh, let's go visit Bruno.

Wasn't he like really dashing or something? Yeah, he was such a handsome pilot. Yes. Well, guess what? I'm his co-pilot. No, actually he's my co-pilot. He's your co-pilot. I outrank him because-

You're in the captain's seat. I, we made up a uniform that has one more stripe than him. Literally just put an extra stripe on mine so I could order him around. And I'm flying, I'm in the cockpit with him and it's, he's terrific, he's great. He was unflappable. Yeah.

He, he was good advertisement for him as a pilot. He was very large and in charge. He can handle me in the cockpit. You know he can handle any low pressure system that suddenly arises. I have to say one thing which is I think as a fan, my favorite thing about Conan O'Brien Must Go is it really feels like you've tied together

the whole spectrum of your career from like doing things at late night that are just absurd and silly and ridiculous and really fun all the way through the podcast meeting fans and actually having some really great conversations that are very funny but also very meaningful. It's cool, especially I love seeing the first time you surprise them and they're always like, and they then always kind of come in for a big hug. So it's just, it's really cool.

It really feels like you're, you're kind of tying all these things together. Did you say you're a fan? Yeah. You said as a fan. Okay. I am a fan. There's a photo by the way, I don't know if I ever told you. You're trying to get on the show.

No, yes, I would love to, but there's a photo of me in my dorm room two years before I started interning for you of, and you are on the TV. Oh, you're kidding. Which is really cool. I haven't seen that. Yeah, yeah, it's really, I've kept it from you, but yeah you are on the TV. Oh, you're kidding. Which is really cool. I haven't seen that. Yeah, yeah, it's really, I've kept it from you, but yeah, it's really cool.

The fun thing is that we go to these, we'll be in another country, and I think this season, and it's, I'm not giving anything away because I think it's in the official trailer that's out there, but in the Austria show, a woman comes up to me on the street and she's talking about how she's a fan of the podcast and a fan of the different clips.

And then she's from Kazakhstan. And then I start chatting with her and then she says, well, anyway, I have to go. Yeah. And it's a really funny moment. This is after she's been polite for a while. She's been polite for a while. And it's just, but it's so- Excited.

What I love- Initial excitement. Oh my God. Initial excitement and me wanting to talk and talk and talk and her saying, I've got to go and I just turned to camera and go, when your fan in Kazakhstan wraps things up, you know, it's time to end things. And I like when those moments come out

because they're very, you know, my wife is always with me when people will stop me to chat with me and I'll chat with them and then I'm giving them career advice and then she can tell they need to go. Like, okay, all right, Conan, thank you. Well, where are we going now? And it goes back to what you're saying too.

Just talking about that moment on the street, but also with Javier Bardem. Yes, we'll do all this research and like, okay, you're going to go to Boutin and have a meal with him. But then you really take it from there and improvise within each segment. So much of it is improvised. There's, it's a mix. I would say it's a mix of, it's like any kind of,

I mean, I know this is using a sports analogy is for me ridiculous, but I do think the closest thing it's akin to is you have a play in mind in football, you execute it and sometimes it falls apart and you have to do something else in a moment. And sometimes that ends up being fantastic. Sometimes it doesn't.

Luckily, we have an edit room and we have great editors. But I also think, I've said it many before, but just from having a late night talk show where you worked in six-minute segments, I think, and shot tons and tons of remotes out on the street, you bring all that when every one of these situations, you go into it going, all right, I'm having dinner with Javier Bardem in this restaurant. This will probably be a five, six minute piece and your brain,

you just know you're also directing it as you go. We're all looking for a dismount. Yeah. But you are as well. And we always try to think about what's the out. This always reminds me of the time, one of the very earliest things that we did was when we went to Finland.

And we decided to go way up north, up towards the Arctic Circle. So Sweeney and I are up in the Arctic Circle, and we found this guy that just basically, there was a reindeer herd nearby and I think he was- The Sammy and the indigenous Sammies. Yeah, the Sammy's live up there,

it's the indigenous peoples. And I remembered you stood me next to this guy who I don't think spoke English and you said, okay, and action. And I remembered I looked around and there wasn't a tree for maybe 600 yards. And there was a, whoo, and there's ice on the ground.

And I'm staying next to this Sammy, this indigenous tribes person who's- Herds reindeer. Yeah, herds reindeer for a living. And, and I turned to Sweeney and I said, you've put me in the perfect comedy vacuum. Tundra's funny. Yeah, we're in a tundra.

There is, you know, so yes, there are times where you're with, there are times where you're with Javier Bardem and you're, it's just, if you move a muscle, he's gonna do something really funny and he's gonna add an enrich and it's just fantastic. And then there are other times where I've been placed literally on an ice flow. And-

It's like punching yourself out of a, we put you in a bag with wild dogs and cats and threw you in a river. Yeah. Action! Action! And go! I'll never forget that. I can still feel, I can feel the comedic solitude to this day.

Anyway, this is gonna be out May 8th. That's when the first episode drops and there'll be three of them and we're happy with it. And that's about as, I swear to God, that's- That's our highest praise. Ringing endorsement from the host. I can't go any, that for me is a ringing endorsement.

Can I say, I watched it and as somebody who was not really involved in making it. And not a fan of Conan. And not a fan of yours at all. And you know, we have these staff screenings. Everybody was just laughing. It's a really, really funny show. It's great. And I love it. And I did learn something about Spain.

Paid employees loved it. Also, it's one of my favorite jokes ever, which is outside of the Museum of Ham, which is good to watch. It is my favorite joke. So please watch, everybody, for that joke. I can't wait. Now you got me mad.

All right. That's all we got. Mike Sweeney, thank you for dropping in. Fan favorite, my pleasure. Conan O'Brien must go and check it out. Uh-uh. Conan O'Brien needs a fan. With Conan O'Brien, Son fan with Conan O'Brien, Sonam Avsesian and Matt Gourley produced by me,

Matt Gourley, executive produced by Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross and Nick Leal. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy. Supervising producer, Aaron Blayard, associate talent producer, Jennifer Samples, associate producers, Sean Doherty and Lisa Berm Engineering by Eduardo Perez

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