Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Seth Meyers

Episode Date: March 29, 2021

Comedian and television host Seth Meyers feels anxious and excited about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Seth sits down with Conan to talk about coming on to SNL as a cast member first and a writer second, parsing praise from the enigmatic Lorne Michaels, and lessons learned at the Late Night desk. Later, Conan takes it up a notch in his quest for the perfect pen. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone].For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com.

Hi, my name is Seth Meyers, and I feel anxious and excited about being Conan O'Brien's friend. Hey there, welcome to another episode of Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. I put a slight pause. Did you hear that? Yeah. I said welcome to, and it was the slightest pause to create a little bit of drama. Did you forget what the name of your podcast is? I did. I forgot what we were doing. But I'm now passing it off as this calculated micro pause because I'm a true master of the form.

That's how I'm going to pass off. The fact that I don't know where I am or what I'm doing. How are you guys? How are you doing, Sona? I'm cool. Do you need more? I don't know. No, that's fine. No, that's great. What a great instinct of mine to, on the basketball court, always go to the hot hand. The person who's ready to go, and I pass it off to Sona.

I just drew the rock, and you went, I'm cool. I'm good. Matt, how about you? I'm okay. Wow, incredible. Well, thank you both for injecting this podcast today with energy. Energy I can bounce off of. Really, I just got nothing. Nothing from you, Sona. Nope.

But I will say, there are mitigating circumstances. Sona, you are carrying two living human beings within you. Yes. You've got to be exhausted. All I want to do is nap and eat. You're stopping me from that right now, and I just... Every second people are listening to you on the podcast is time that your unborn children are being denied sustenance and sleep and rest and nourishment.

Yeah, you owe them an apology. Do you have any idea what the names will be yet? Mark and Marco. Mark and Marco. I know, but we can't go with that. That was Shaq's idea, and I don't know if people listen from one to the next. I hope you do, in which case, Matt's thing will make sense, but that's what Shaq's idea was. You're not doing it right.

You don't say, oh, you guys probably didn't listen to it. You have to be like, oh, yeah, that's what Shaq said. And then you will lead to a previous episode, and then it'll make people want to go listen to it. I can't believe I have to tell you this. You're right. I shouldn't do that. I'm too self-hating. So it's more like...

And people should hear that's my natural reaction is no one has hurt... I always assume no one's heard any other one of these, but I shouldn't do that. I should just assume that everyone's listened to all of them multiple times. Well, I don't know about that. Because it's pretty much a religion. So as you know, Shaq... Is there somewhere in the middle we could find for those two things? Nope.

As you know, Shaq suggested Mark and Marco. By the way, I'll tell you guys, I was in... Well, I forget even where I was. I was in Mission Hills. Yes, I was in Mission Hills, and a guy came running up to me with a mask, and he was very excited. And he said, Conan, Conan, I just want you to know, because he's clearly a fan of the podcast. I want to say he was like 30, 35 years old. He said, I just want you to know, I don't care what Shaq and Charles Barkley said.

You could have been in the NBA. So he took it seriously. He was like, wounded for me. And he said, oh, and say hi to Matt and say hi to Sonan. I went, I will. And he went, but you could have. You could have. Don't let them put you down.

He was looking at you while he said this. Yeah, I know. I know. And I said, I'm so sorry about your glaucoma. Absolutely insane. He thought I really could have made it in the NBA. I only say that to NBA stars to get the ball rolling so that they can shit on me and we can have some fun.

But we have a great show. My guest today, of course, was a cast member on Saturday Night Live for 13 seasons where he served as head writer and host of Weekend Update. Now, here's where things really get interesting. Now he hosts Late Night with Seth Meyers on NBC. So he and I, our careers overlap in about 35 different ways. And so I'm delighted to talk to this gentleman. I think this could be fascinating and therapeutic.

Very excited to speak with Seth Meyers. Seth, welcome. We're about to have our longest conversation. I mean, we've met each other a lot. We've met a bunch of times. But I will tell you the fascinating thing about this podcast, if that's even what they're called. That's what they're called, right?

They're podcasts. Yes, exactly. This radio show, this format is that you are not alone. This is the longest conversations I've had with just about anybody in the business. This podcast is my excuse to talk to people that I like and I admire and I don't ever really sit down and talk to them. Thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it.

I'm really genuinely looking forward to it. Well, we don't have... It's about it. That's all we have. Yeah. Because we don't have much overlap in far as what kind of jobs we've had. God, no. Or buildings we've worked in.

Yeah, I know. You and I have an insane amount of overlap and you're probably one of the few people I can talk to in the world who has experienced many of the things I've experienced. So, let's get into it. Because you've murdered, right? You've committed murder. I've murdered. You've been a part of... You know how it happens when you're new at SNL, where you do a murder

for someone else in hopes that it will help get, you know, that they'll laugh at your sketch? Yeah, it's called crisscross. It's usually another writer who's not getting sketches on and they always convince you, if you murder someone, I'll laugh at your sketch. Yeah. And when you think about it, this crime makes no sense at all. No, never. Barely.

Because there's no way to... You can't stand up and complain when they don't laugh at your sketch. That's what happened to me. That's what happened to me is Jack Candy said, if you can kill this guy who has the apartment above me that I really want, murder him, I won't be linked to the crime and then I'll laugh at your sketch. I murdered this person who will go unnamed, a Canadian guy, who was living here in Manhattan. And he got to move into the apartment and then never laughed at my sketches.

And many of my sketches were cut. Well, also though, in his defense, if he laughed at your sketches, that could be used as evidence later if they were not good sketches. That's what he said. He was the only standalone... You know what? This is so... This is crazy.

That's what he said. He said, I can't laugh at your sketches now. The police are snooping around. And I've already wasted your time because my riffs are known as real time wasters and nothing is gained except you are one of the most liked people and respected people in this crazy world of late night. And I didn't realize, I always assumed you were a writer who, like me, Lauren said here, stand behind this canon because everyone else is dead.

And then somehow years later, I was like a performer. You... Am I correct that you were hired at Sarnat Live to be a performer? Yeah, I was hired as a cast member first. I did not know that. A lot of people don't, which I think speaks to how unmemorable a performer I was. It was not the right fit. I mean, it was very lucky that it happened that way, obviously, but it was not a time

where I felt as though I had my feet under me, particularly well at the show. I started with people like Chris Catan and Will Ferrell and Tracy Morgan, and I thought, well, they're very good and I'm not, but they have experience. And once I have experience, then I'll be them. And then the next generation right under me came in, and that was Hader and Sudeikis and Forte and Fred and Samberg. And all of a sudden it dawned on me, oh, I can't do this. I'm not.

I prefer writing for them more than I would like writing for myself. And that's when I realized, oh, yeah, I have to find a job here where I can just be myself. Right. Did you talk to Lauren about, people don't usually go to Lauren who are performers and say I want to be a writer. I want to stay up all night and I want to be mocked by the, and made fun of by the cast members and put out my most brilliant ideas but disappear in the background afterwards and not be recognized immediately and allowed into the turnout live after party.

At least I had some status because I had been a cast member for a bit. And of course, as people might not know, when you're a cast member, you're doing as much writing. Certain cast members do as much writing as a lot of the writers. And so I was. That was not, I think that became more so, but that was not, I'm not even doing it. In my day, many cast members, they were around for a bit and then they went out to dinner and then they went home and slept and I really envied them.

I definitely slept there every Tuesday night for my entire tenure at the show. So I was not dining or whining on my way through my time there. But I, so I didn't go to Lauren as much as Lauren came to me because I was a fairly prolific writer as a cast member and I didn't. And because again, I would write sort of big group scenes or I would write monologues. I would write the kind of things that I don't think cast members normally wrote, you know, cast members, if they wrote would write sort of a big character piece for themselves, which obviously I didn't have those skills.

And so Lauren came to me after when Tina was leaving and asked me if I wanted to step in not as a writer, but as a writing supervisor and then eventually head writer when she left. So it was a very weird jump because I went right from not being a credited writer on the show to sort of that job. One of the best experiences I had, the experience that most changed my life, I'm going to say second most to the late night show. But being a writer at Serenaut Live and having to cut your teeth in that environment, there were so few slots and so few chances to get a piece on that you could really feel the

competition. And I think even Lauren would admit he encourages that. I think in that way, I found it very Darwinian when I was at Serenaut Live. Well, I do. I mean, I think it became, there was a time where it was more supportive, but the one thing that never changes is the amount of real estate in each given show. Yes, right. And the thing I feel really bad for about the current group is it's, I think big casts

make it so much harder in that at the after party, you know, when they ever have after party skin, the bigger the cast, the more people who didn't get something on. And we had a really nice era from like 06 to maybe 2011 that was a smaller group. And that made it for a nicer time. And again, there were times where people were upset, but I think that those small groups, and I feel like you maybe worked for there when there was a small group. Yes, I was. When I first got there, it was, you know, Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, John Lovitz, Jan

Hooks, Nora Dunn, Victoria Jackson, but it was a tight unit. I think another thing that's changed, I don't know what your opinion is, but, and I don't want to hear your opinion. I just want to say my opinion. And if you say your opinion, I'm going to have it taken out. So it looks like... Sure, sure, sure. We're going to actually...

So maybe just confirm yours. Should I just like back you up? Well, we actually have a tape of a person who roughly sounds like you going, uh-huh, uh-huh. And we're just going to play that. And then... Got you. Right on, right on. And then...

Right on. Yeah, right on, right on. That's my catchphrase. Yeah, yeah. That's why you never made it as a cast member. All your characters just said, right on, right on. And you kept bringing... And they sort of...

But always, yeah, they would like echo more popular recurring characters. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Here's a much more famous character. Hey, I worked this out with this really famous cast member. Bill Hader's going to come on and just do this killer character, and then I go, uh-huh, right on, right on. By the way, that's basically what I did with Stefan.

I was basically the right on guy to Stefan, and it really hurts my feelings that your bit is my reality. You think that was just a bit? I thought about this a lot, Seth, and that was a way to expose you for the sham that you really are, which will happen nine more times. That was just the first one. Right on. Can you count the...

Right on. One of the things that has changed at SNL and is the stunt casting, that didn't exist in my time. I mean, I think the closest we had was when Tina came to play Sarah Palin, but I think when that happened, most people had forgotten that she had left because she was such a recent alum that it just made sense, and also nobody at the show thought, oh, I think I'm a better match for Sarah Palin than Tina. Right.

Well, when Sarah Palin hit the scene, many of us said, oh, look, they're all talking about this woman who looks like Tina Fey. Right. Literally, she looked, they resembled each other so much, and then, and Tina is coming home to do it. She's come back to the fold to do it. I think in this new era where you can say, yeah, we got really good. Really good impression, Seth, you worked hard and it's really good.

Anthony Hopkins, we're thinking. We're going to get Anthony Hopkins. I think we'll look at Hopkins and then we'll look at you, and we'll see how the wigs look. The other thing to speak to is Tina, so I did, in a very unmemorable political year on the show, I played John Kerry and Will Forte played George W. Bush, and neither of us are known for that, nor when anyone sees those two real-life people do they think of us. With that said, it was so valuable for my time at the show to live through that and get those

sketches and get that time, and again, I guess that's the trade-off, right? It wasn't in the moment, I went, Lauren probably looks back and goes, wow, I could have had two A-list celebrities and that might have pepped up that 2004 election year, but it was also built equity in the show in that Will and I got, I think, a little bit more sure of ourselves from doing it. How many years has it been now that you've been doing the late-night show? We just hit seven. We just hit seven in February, which is crazy.

Good for you. I think one of the few people I can talk to about this, I mean, specifically that late-night show, which is obviously such an important memory for me and my being there and you doing it and you look at the cool little history of that show. I will tell you this, there's nothing in the world that's better than doing a show out of Rockefeller Center that I never, ever took for granted walking into that high church of comedy. Yeah, and I remember when I would run into Letterman writers who worked in both places

at NBC and moved over to CBS, they would always say, don't ever underestimate how great it is to work in 30 Rock. I've worked here because I basically took three weeks off between my last SNL and my first late night and so I've been, I think August will be 20 years uninterrupted working in this building. Between SNL and the late-night show, it's just about 20. It's as magical as you think it would be walking out of there at Christmas time. I'm just bringing up Christmas because it's a Christian holiday and I like to alienate

anyone listening who's not, not Christian. Right, and you are pretty upset when non-Christians celebrate it. You know what? I'm gonna tell you something. Listen, no, don't laugh, Sona. Sorry. I just think it's ours. It's all we've got.

We don't have a lot in Christianity. Wait a minute. Hold on, I'm thinking about all the stuff we've stolen from other people. Yeah. It's a few things. Oh, shit. I just remembered Rome and the Vatican. Damn it.

Okay, all right. I've probably been wrong on that one, but... I will say I wouldn't mind two floors, so I, because I'm on eight, I'm right down the hall from SNL and sometimes it's a little too close to my previous life. Oh, I didn't realize. Only on Thursdays, like, you know, again, because SNL operates on 17 for Monday through Wednesday, I don't see them at all, and then on Thursdays when I have a show and they are starting their week, you very much feel like the smaller show.

It's the PT boat getting a little too close to the battleship. The water gets chopped. Yeah. Just the wake. Yeah, just the wake. Just the wake alone will kill you. I feel like you had people. Am I wrong that David Bowie was a gigantic, famous person who was on your show in fairly

short order? Like, how many years were you doing the show until, like, a person like David Bowie was coming to do it? I premiered September of 1993. There's quite a while there where I'm talking to anybody who will talk to me, anybody. And I don't want to start naming names because that's mean, but literally like 60s TV stars that no one's thinking about anymore. I'd be like, you remember him falling out of the tower on F-Troop?

He blew quite a bugle. He played Dobbs. You know, here he is, and you're like, what are you talking about? He was the chimp in McNulty and the Chimp. And so there was a while where it was like that. And then as the ship started to write, I think because there were so few talk shows and I'm in New York, and we started to get good press and a good reputation, that's when suddenly I'd come in and be like, yeah, well, Elton John's on tonight, and I'd be like, what?

I'm starstruck in retrospect, meaning I think about it now and I go, I can't believe he spoke to me. No, he came on six times. Did people forget? Like, obviously you never forgot, and I think people who pay attention to comedy always remember that you were on the chopping block early, right? That's part of the legend. Did guests like that, was that part of it that you were also this really cool comeback

story or by the time they came on, they were just a fan of the show and it was this is the cool late show? I don't think most of them cared about the comeback story. But you just assume like things on TV are supposed to be on TV? Yes, the fact that you're there and there are NBC cameras pointing at you and your suit fits by logical extension, this person should be there. You don't walk into an ice cream shop and yell at the person who's putting a scoop of, you know, mint ripple on your cone.

What are you doing serving ice cream? You just assume they're wearing the outfit. Right. All right, you've got to prove it, but prove it to an ice cream store. Okay, you've got the white paper hat, but I don't buy it. I don't buy that you really have, you will pay for what you've done. I just like to throw that in occasionally. Every now and then I'm going to just throw in like a weird accusation there.

Send the goosebumps down the arm. Yeah, they're called microaggressions. I like to, I just like to filter. Yeah, I don't feel like I get enough of that. I do think, I have to say, I do think to me, one of the things that I'm most curious about and I have, I don't know your story, which is your linkage to being funny as a kid. When did you realize, hold on a second, like an origin story, I have this power. I have this thing I can do and I'm really in love with the sensation of using this secret

power that I have. Can you take me through that? Yeah, I think it springs from the fact that my dad's very funny to this day. Wonderful storyteller and he's in finance, so it wasn't, this wasn't his background, but I would see him publicly and certainly at home hold court in a way that I found alluring. My mom, God lover, has laughed at everything my dad has ever said. She's a very beautiful woman and I think my brother and I both thought, oh, this is how you go far well above your weight class with the opposite sex as you make them laugh.

And then in school, I was definitely the kind of kid who would whisper a joke in the back of the class as far as instead of make a joke in the front of the class, it took me a while to build up the confidence to try to do that, but I remember I would go home and tell my dad things I had said but give them to another kid, say this kid's and then this kid said that and he would often think it had been funny, but I wasn't ready to even take credit at home. That's fascinating. You couldn't admit to your dad that you had said the funny thing, it had to be you needed

a proxy. Yeah. Does that speak to writer, to you Conan, to what I just explained, sound like a writer's origin story. Yes, yes. You know, it really does. I mean, first of all, when you said I whispered jokes to my friends, I can't emphasize that enough and if I had to write seven things that I'd love to get across on this podcast,

one of them would be funny people, very funny people are often shy and it takes them a long time to find their footing because that is not known in the world of youth often. The loud brash person who jumps up on the desk and at the prankster, like I was terrified of pranks. I'm still terrified of pranks. I don't, I don't like pranks. I don't, people are always saying, George Clooney, he's such a funny guy, you know, once when he was rooming with this other actor, you know, he filled his toilet bowl with blood,

so he thought that he had colon cancer or something. I think I'm making this up, but my point is, well, that's what Clooney is known for is the old blood in the bowl trick. Yeah. His favorite thing is, no, his favorite thing is to show up after the colonoscopy and go, ha, I'm the reason you thought you had colon cancer. It's very hard to say, ha, ha, I'm the reason you thought you had colon cancer, but. But Clooney, if anyone can pull it off, it's Clooney.

Well, and the thing is, because it's Clooney, even the person who did the explorative surgery is laughing, you know, even everyone's laughing. The guy who had three inches of bowel resected is laughing because it's Clooney. And Clooney, I know you're a big fan of the podcast, but you know you do it and it's, you can get away with it, but a lot of people can't. If I do that, I get sued by the American Medical Association. But I think you can, I think you will agree with me Seth, that some of your favorite funny people and really funny people like yourself, you can't see them in the classroom often.

There's a quietness that I relate to. I also relate to my father's a funny, very funny man, and I used to notice he would make a room full of people laugh really hard and it got my attention. I think something inside me resonated, like just exactly what you're saying that, oh, what is this? And I think if I had seen my father shoot a three-pointer, I wouldn't have felt the same way because there's nothing in me that can shoot a three-pointer, you know, I mean I can shoot a three-pointer, but it won't go in.

So I don't think that's called shooting a three-pointer. You can famously get that far away from a basket and chuck a ball. I am known. With no accuracy. I was known in the athletic world and scouts used to check me out. I could get outside the paint and I could whip a ball up in the air and it would sail sort of towards the basket and then land over and sort of rattle around in the stands. So that's why scouts checked me out.

I never hit a three-pointer, which was noteworthy. Right, because it's very hard to not ever hit the one. I'm the only person I know that I've launched in my life. I spent years launching three-point shots just in an empty gymnasium with a camcorder and I think I think I've launched well over 35,000 attempts. None of them even, many of them don't hit the back. I've seen the supercut of just the ones that hit the camcorder. Yes.

Is that you hit that more? Put that out. There was a time when I hit the camcorder 15 times in a row and Steph Curry has tried to do that and he can't do it. I saw the one where you hit the camcorder which then went through. Yes. I've done that plenty of times. I would hit the camcorder and it would, the camcorder would ricochet off the flying ball

and do spiral up into the air and all net just right through. Beautifully shot too, because again, I know you just hit record and let it do its thing. No, two cameras, Steph. It looks like a... Two cameras. I always use two cameras in case the camcorder ever got knocked in. Well, that's great. Do you find, for example, the Lorne Michaels of it all, Lorne's got Serenade Live.

He was the whole reason I got the late night show and I'm forever indebted to him for that, obviously. I mean, he gave me my career. But it is interesting when you're in the peculiar situation of he's producing Serenade Live but he's also producing the late night show and it was always clear to me, and I obviously could never blame him for a second for this, but it's so funny because many of us, I don't know if you're one, but we kind of turn Lorne into a dad. We have our own dads and you seem to love yours.

He's a father figure 100%. He's a father figure and then you realize that he's got this child called Serenade Live and then he's got this other child called the late night show. Now, of course, he has the Tonight Show and I think Wheel of Fortune and all these other shows, but back in my day it was he did Serenade Live and he did Late Night and that was other than the occasional movie, that was it. But there in Rockefeller Center, those are the two things and it was so clear to me that Serenade Live is his real son and it's not clear that I'm his real son.

I haven't had a DNA test and I'm sort of this, his other son is this amazing athlete and I'm kind of a stoner, I don't know, it just, I guess I think of it to feel good about it that I, SNL says farm and I worked there a really long time until he said to me, you should go start your own farm because it is, you're taking the skills that you learned there and ultimately, and I'm sure he felt the same way about you or else he never would have given you the job, like he has more confidence in you and your ability to make decisions than he does maybe for a lot of the people he spends a lot of attention on at SNL on any given week.

And it also should be noted, you know, I do this show with Mike Shoemaker who you know really well and he was, you know, worked so closely with Lauren for all those years at SNL. I think, Lauren looks at us and, or at least the way we sort of justify the fact that we, you know, he's never here, like we literally, we see him, you know, he'll take us out to dinner and tell us we're doing a good job but it's not like he ever comes down and says, you know, I feel like the lights are a little hot or, you know, who's doing props now? I feel like the props lack of realism.

So I remember when I was head writer and doing update that he called me in because he was upset with the way the shows had gone, maybe for just three or four episodes. It wasn't like a season dip or anything. And I remember saying, well, I think with update, and he snapped at me, updates the last thing I'm worried about. And I realized that was the praise I was going to get for update and I just, I like, I was in a Tennessee Williams play, I was like, the last thing, Mr. Michaels, I was so flattered. And I was like, oh, that's what you get from, and then, but you have to like take it and

realize he meant it. Like he, he wasn't worried about update, he thought update was in a good place. And then we got on to all the things that I could be doing better with the rest of the show. But I think that, yeah, he's not. And the other thing is you think because he's Lauren Michaels, he's going to be really good at telling you exactly what he needs and exactly how to do it. And trust me, kid, I've been in this business for so long and you got to do XYZ.

But he really isn't that. I think also one of the reasons this show thrives is he kind of, like you say, lets everybody find their own way and it either works or it doesn't. But he doesn't have time to individually one-on-one give people guidance. You, I don't know, have you been reading the, the Mike Nichols book because it's really great. No, I actually, someone just gave it to me. Everybody says when you went out to dinner with him or you did a play with him as a director,

he would just tell stories about himself and famous people. But you, the more time you spent with him, you realized, oh, I think those stories were supposed to, like within that story was a piece of advice that he wanted me to take with me. Right. But there was a bit of, and I feel like Lauren's like that a lot, that you realize halfway through a story he's telling you about some play he did at Toronto University that it's about you.

What you're saying is that Confucius would tell a story about a grasshopper and a frog trying to cross a stream and there'd be great magisterial beauty in it and knowledge that you could relate to yourself. Lauren does that, but it's a story about Mick Jagger and Paul Simon trying to cross a stream and Jennifer Lawrence is on the other side. And, but it's the same, if you think about the story, it really is the same message that Confucius was giving. And it's in Prague during the Velvet Revolution.

And we flew there with, with Christod and, yeah. Lauren once said, when Lauren gives a note, do you know Andrew Steele? I don't know if you know Andrew Steele. No, I do not. He's a writer there for a long time. No, no. Andrew Steele said that when Lauren gives a note to someone who then gives the note to the writer, it's like a tiger told a pyramid and now the pyramid has to tell you.

Like that. It's not even that it's in a different language. It's like different beings with different. It's hopeless. Yeah. It's like a celebratory when you got the job. Absolutely not. Yeah.

Absolutely not. So how did you find out? How did he tell you? He didn't tell me. The network called my agent. My agent called me. And I swear to God, I think, I don't think Lauren was celebrating me getting that job because I think a lot of people were coming up to him and saying, wow, you chose a complete

unknown with really no on camera experience to replace David Letterman. You got to see a move, Lauren. And I think he was rightly scared. He might say now, oh, of course, I always knew Conan had it. And to his credit, he saw a lot of things in me. And then sure enough, we debuted and people were nice initially and by initially, I mean for like the first week or so. And then Lauren has a technique that he uses, which is, it's very interesting, but he likes

to, I don't know if he's ever done this with you, but he'll tell you a bad thing. He hasn't said about you, but then tell you afterwards, immediately after he tells you the bad news, and it's stuff that you wouldn't have heard otherwise. But he then tries to reassure you that it's going to be okay, even though he's the one that told you. So he used to call me late at night and go, I think what the Michigan Herald Dispatch wrote is despicable. And I would say, what?

Like literally he got me out of bed and I go, what? Well, I just, you know, you're not a mindless cretin. You're not an asexual, you know, you're not an asexual monkey on, on amphetamines, babbling nonsense. You know, I mean, you know, like, why would someone even write that? Why would they go to the trouble? And I would say, oh my God, he'd go, look, no one's going to remember it tomorrow. So you've got to just put it out of your mind and I think it was, to be fair to Lauren,

he had put himself on the line for me and so he didn't like reading that. And I think he needed to make sure that I knew that that was out there. And so I don't, I don't know, I don't think he was wrong. I don't, I sound like a masochist maybe, but. Okay. I should tell you, I feel like my writers, when they started on the show, they all wanted to write for your show in 1997. Right.

The style and it was, and I don't blame them and it's a style I liked as well. But the one thing that I would always try to point out is like, this can't be, the one thing, this can still be funny, but it can't be new. Like I just want you guys to appreciate that like it's not a new thing. Right. However, you know, 20 years later, it, the only frustrating thing is you, you think you know what you're going to be best at or what people are going to like most. Right.

And that was a really frustrating, just because how right Lauren was. I remember when I started the show, he said, it'll take a year and a half. And in my head, just out of ego, I remember thinking, I bet it takes six months. And I, to the day, I think it took a year and a half before I walked into work and thought, I think I know what I want to try to do most nights. I think doing this kind of show, it's, it's, it's a unique problem. And the only way to crack it is to actually do it. Two things have to happen.

You have to learn the job, but there's, that's 50%. The other 50% is people have to learn you. And I remember thinking, I know me. My friends who think I'm really funny have known me for a while and that's what I have to do. Only I have to do it with the United States of America. I have to, I have to like be around long enough for people to go, you know what, he's got a funny voice and a weird rhythm and his hair is odd.

But if I can stick around long enough and they pick up on what it is I'm putting out there. So it's a two ways, it's, it's, there's two things in this equation that need to happen. And you're only, you can only do 50% and the rest of it is people getting to know Seth Meyers in this role. I still can't believe and looking back, it never even occurred to me, but I threw away the advantage I had from being a weekend update anchor, which is I so firmly believed that in order to do this new job, I had to start with a standing monologue.

I had to prove to everybody I could do something else. And it turns out people don't want to learn your next move. And so that was basically the big shift we made was a year and a half into it. I started the show sitting at the desk and I think everybody had liked me at update and maybe felt a little weird about me as a late night host saw that and was like, oh right, this is what he does. And I, we like this more and we're more comfortable watching it. I was going to say, I thought your only issue was your legs are withered.

You have, uh, atrophied, well only ones withered. If they were both withered, you could fix it with pants, but when ones so clearly being dragged. It's just a horribly withered, correct me if I'm wrong, it's the left leg, uh, and it's the left leg. It looks like a stream. Yeah. And so you'd hop out with this, what looked like a, a, a denim noodle hanging off of you.

And then a lot of times when you were doing the monologue, you were teetering. And I was always like, well, just let him sit. And you were defiantly saying, I can do it. I can stand. Remember? You remember, but if a joke went really well and the audience clapped, that was enough to knock me over. I do.

So I had to never, I could never do so well in a monologue that the reaction was hot enough. No, you had to modulate. It would knock me over. So I had to bring it down. And again, that's not how you want to be doing comedy, like aiming for a B minus. No. Um, well, listen, you got through that, as, as Lawrence said, year and a half. And that's the other thing too is now especially, I think there was such a rigorous, this is

what a talk show is, you know, when 93, when I was coming in, it was, this is the house. You're at the national broadcasting company. There was a lot of that. There was a lot of you. This is how a show is done. The microphone is eight inches from your breastbone at the desk. You know, there was a lot of rigorous orthodoxy about what has to happen. I think the last vestiges of it were alive when we started.

Very much of like monologue, piece of comedy, commercial, comedy, commercial, guest. Like if you mess that up at all, like the people would come in with paperwork and show you why you were wrong. Well, I got the graphs. Right. Also, is there anything worse than having a guest you adore and know that they're in their dressing room watching them over when you're doing. No, I'm always hoping, I'm always hoping they're not seeing it.

I'm always hoping that the segment producers talking to them, because if it's someone I really hold in high esteem, the idea that they're watching is horrific. I think the odds that they're watching now because of Zoom is higher than ever, which is also devastating to me, knowing that they're watching the first act of the show usually because they're waiting. Oh, see, I don't do it that way. We do it. We tape them separately.

They are hermetically sealed from the comedy. I know it's a weird question to ask because I obviously love a live audience, but where are you on missing an audience? Because I got to be honest, it's been sort of thrilling to do a show without an audience. I'm going to say, I don't miss an audience on the show as much. Sounds crazy, but I would still need to go out and make appearances somewhere because I love screwing around with an audience and talking to them and trying to make something happen spontaneously in the moment and getting those laughs.

I get a lot of energy from it. You and I talk in front of an audience, we're going to be thinking all about making it funny. We're not going to get to most of the things I really want to talk about, and it's not going to have this feel, which I find much more compelling now at this stage in my life than, okay, I just did four minutes with Seth and he did his bit about Mr. Poopy Pants, which is sort of your humor, I suppose, and Mr. Wee Wee and the Talking Toilet. I wouldn't do them both on the same time as on the show. I would split them up.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you'd always go Poopy and then into Wee Wee, or Wee Wee into Poopy, whatever, but we do... They're beat-for-beat the same character. Yeah, different. But we'd get through your scatological, famous Seth scatological Myers routines. Oh, or we could not and the audience would boo me out of the theater. Yeah.

No, no, no. I mean, when the Alligator works, it works. Your crass... I just... I'm sorry. I just... I can't believe how blue you work on the late-night show and how it's always... Can I ask a question about back when there was an audience?

When... I love that you more or less said, can we go back to being real again instead of pretending that I'm Mr. Poopy Pants? I want to stop what you're doing. Can we go back to anything but this? Let's go back to when I said yes to doing this. You know, when in normal times, do you go out and say hi to your audience before the show starts?

I used to all the time. I used to go out and perform. I used to go out there and perform my ass off for them before the show. For how long? Years and years. But how long would you... When you would go out, like how much time would you spend with them before the show started?

Too much time. It was so fucking needy and wrong and they loved it. And then I'd start my show and if you look at some of those shows in the 90s, I'm out of breath in the monologue because of something I did for a studio audience, literally wading through the audience singing songs to them. All this energy, I'd be out of breath and sweating in the monologue because I had just done something that only 200 people saw. What about you?

What do you do? I go out and say hello and I do basically five soft jokes exactly the same way every night to sort of set an internal baseline for me as to how good an audience they are. Because that way, I don't like finding out on the first monologue joke how good they are. Right. Because then I spin out. Right.

So I like to just say, okay, they're this and also, you know, it took me a while to figure this out but they're very good. The sound guys on these shows are very good. When you're watching from home, they all seem to go about the same. Yes. The biggest problem is that the biggest mistake a novice makes is a lot of savers. So you go out there and you tell a joke. Now at home, it does fine, it does okay.

Right. But if you go, whoa, okay, lot of nothing. Didn't like that one, huh? Suddenly everyone at home is thinking, you're educating people that it's not working. I hosted the Emmys in 2014, fucking did it at the Emmys. I had it ready to go. I was like the first joke that does bad, I'll say. These jokes are like nominees.

They can't all be winners. Right. And it was, I shouldn't have done it as soon as I did it because I was proud of it. I thought, oh, I'm so smart to have this pre-written saver and I could just feel people do exactly what we said, judge themselves and what, oh, you know, we thought that was a commensurate laugh for the material in the previous joke. They're not even thinking about it. They're all, you're performing in front of a room that's only thinking about themselves,

you know? Yeah. I guess it is a night that is fully for their egos and the last thing they want anybody to say is like, there's another, hi, I would like you to know I also have an ego. Right. Yes. I know you're worried about winning the big award tonight, but my feelings count too. But you and I have learned the exact same lessons.

I wish if I could have written down all the lessons that I learned and handed them to you in a book, I don't think it would have made any difference because you just got to figure it out for yourself. You get to learn them. Yeah. And you unfortunately get to learn them yourself. I don't want to keep you, I've kept you over an hour. I have one last thing I want to talk about.

I will, I rewatched something today because I was thinking about it. So I, after college, I worked for this improv theater in Amsterdam called Boom Chicago. And when I was there, I moved there in 1997, you went to Amsterdam and filmed a piece with Ozzy Osbourne. And I was thinking about it today because I remember at our theater, at this English speaking American Improv Theater in Amsterdam, we all said, oh my God, Conan's here. Do you think he'll come and see a show? And it made me laugh so hard today, now 20 years later, to think if I was in a foreign

country as a talk show, the last thing I would do is to go, like, we're in Amsterdam for the night. What should we do? Yeah. Well, there's some guys doing Chicago style improv. Have you ever seen that Conan? And then we're going to get some McDonald's. No.

I was at the Red Light District the whole time. I was high. I have, I will say, a thing that you are the best in the world at that I find so anxiety inducing is going out on the street and shooting remotes. I just, I fall apart. Do you not have? I have, I will tell you that, thank you, but I will tell you that it's, I am always filled with anxiety.

I think it was my first or second year going out for St. Patrick's Day and just standing outside of 30 Rock by the parade and just dawning on me. Other people have done this. This is not, nothing about this is new. And I don't like being around drunk people. Oh. I don't like. Yeah.

And that would be the... This at all. Yeah. Being around drunk people whose inhibitions are gone, as any club comic will tell you, is the worst way to work. And so where you want to be is some place where they're not expecting you. And that's why I love to show up, you know, when I went with Steven Yeun to a Korean spa. They're not, no one there is expecting that.

They don't want it. They don't expect it. So you can find the quiet weirdness, you know. But yeah, I, again, I, they sent me out to the Thanksgiving Day Parade my first year of late night. And they sent, they sent me places like go to this big place where a lot of people have no inhibitions and it's really loud and your comedic wit will be drowned out. And there's nothing original to be said about it.

Yeah. Of course. Of course you didn't want to do that. You're around people, but they're not an audience. No. So you can't help but think you're bombing, even though the goal wasn't to make them laugh. It's to take, find something that later, like in two weeks when it's edited, will make a different group of people laugh.

And so I just immediately, the amount of flop sweat I have in those situations is, yeah, I had to get out of that. I had to get out of that game quick. Yeah. But like I say, everyone has to find their own way. You have done a brilliant job and I think it's a regret of mine that I don't know you better because as you said at the beginning, this is, you know, there's an assumption that I know all the late night house and I've met all the late night house and I know some a

little better than others, but I think it'd be surprising how much I don't know them. I live, you know, I live in a different coast and also it's like any Castle too. Right. Like an almost impenetrable castle. Yes. I have a, I actually have built an ivory tower and I live up at top of it and I'm contemptuous of other people.

But it reflects so much sunlight. It's a real. People get burned for miles around. No, but I, I, I, this podcast, this interview is a chance to, for me to tell you, you know, how much just a compare notes and just talk to you and, and sort of do a little bit of a deep dive on what are you feeling? How have you experienced all of this? You know, the Lorne, the late night, sound out live to late night.

I mean, you and I overlap in so many ways. And then also just to tell you that I really admire how you've handled yourself and the job you've done. You really have done a, just a lovely job and I do have a sentimental streak in me for that old late night show and it's really meaningful to me that someone classy and smart is hosting that show. You know, it's, it makes me feel good. I'll sleep better tonight.

Well, it means a ton coming from you and it very, it feels very full circle. The first talk show I ever did was you when I'm sure someone dropped out and you guys just called up to 17. We actually, I remember we did not invite you. You, you came during rehearsal and we felt so bad. We just kept rolling. It definitely didn't air. You talked to me.

Oh God, no. Because it was too short. No. It was only like two minutes. Well, you said a lot of really, you said a lot of really controversial stuff. You had the very. Right off the bat. I jumped right into it.

You had a lot of theories. Let's just say that, you know, very strong. You had a weird religion you had built. And I want to, this was, this was 2001 and everything I was saying was also not okay then. This isn't a case, I'm not saying it was a different time. Oh no, no, no. These were all bad things. No, no, no.

This is not one of those. Let's look at the tape and now in retrospect, in 2001, the stuff you saying was hate filled. It was completely off the rails. The crowd was furious. And I don't know why there was a crowded rehearsal. I'm just defying my own bad improv now. I lost everybody. I lost everybody right away.

Well, thank you. It is really, you know, again, everybody who was part of a legacy of keeping this show alive, I owe great debt to, but particularly how much I watched yours. Yours was the one I watched the most. And so this is, this is great to do. Well, I'm forward-ditting. I'm telling Letterman that. And that's a powerful guy who can, he can fuck you up.

You're going to be beaten tomorrow. Hey, listen, and let's, what I'd like to do is, I'd like to follow this up with, at a time when we are allowed to dine together. Please. I'd like to come in, in New York, it would be really fun to download. So I will reach out when I'm in New York. Don't call me. I would love that.

Don't call me if you're in LA. No, no, of course. Because, you know, I'll be with, I'll be with Clooney buying. You have your, you have your LA friends. Buying fake blood. Yeah. Hey, listen. Thank you so much.

This has been a joy. A real joy. Conan, a few weeks ago, you gave Sona absolute hell for getting you the wrong tipped pen in her role as assistant. Is that right? Well, first of all, I disagree that I gave her absolute hell. I really don't think I did. Sona, what do you think?

I think you gave me hell. Absolute hell? Absolute hell. Was it warranted? No. It's all relative. I disagree. It was recount that I asked Sona to get me this very particular pen, and yes, I am particular.

I am, after all, a writer. I am a, I think I could say I'm an artist of a sort. This is my, this is my craft. And so this is the tool that is essential to my craft. And so, yes, I'm a little particular about it. So I asked Sona, can you get me a precise grip rolling ball, a pilot pen? They have a rubber grip. You're fantastic.

Can you please make sure it's bold? And Sona said on it, and then suddenly I get this shipment of pens, this bag of pens are handed to me and they're fine, fine point, fine point. And I hate a fine point pen. It's just this little scratchy pen that barely gives you any ink. It's like, I'll give you this much ink. Can I have a little more ink? Maybe tomorrow.

Yes, enough for now. No, but I really just want to doodle and it's enough ink for now. It's fine for now, fine. And I just begged for a bull point pen and these are not expensive pens. These are- At least you didn't wait like a year and a half until you told me that they were the wrong kind. I waited 14 months, not a year and a half. Okay, let's not rehash this now.

At least you brought it, at least you brought it up and then you dropped it immediately after. You didn't dwell on it for hours on text. I just thought of a really good idea for the show. I'm just going to take out my, oh good, it's my pilot pen. I'm going to write this idea down. It's so great for the show and wait, it's only writing down the first part of the idea. It's not writing down the whole idea.

There's a pen here, listen. Hold it, I'm not done yet. Pen, pen, please. No. No. That's all the ink for now. I'm a miser with my ink. Ah, my precious ink.

Oh my God. It's only a little bit for now. What do you think I'm bold? Then bold pen comes in. You want ink? I've got so much ink. I'm vomiting it. Yeah, it's just this pen that shoots out ink everywhere and it's just fantastic.

It's just like Jackson Pollock, trust me, used a bold, precise grip pilot. Just once splat at the canvas and he had a $800 million painting, Bingo Bango Bongo. So that's what I like. It's like the difference is between Scrooge is the fine point pen and then where's the bold point pen? It's Zorba the Greek, live life, oppa, oppa, everybody dance, ink for everyone. Ink, because ink is life and life is short. Anyway, as your diligent and forward thinking producer, I'm wondering, you've spent so much

time talking about these goddamn pens. What's the state? Are we getting anyone? Can we capitalize off these? Are they not sponsoring us? Have we heard anything? Sona, have they sent any of these pens? No.

They haven't sent any pens? No. So a lot of times when you mention something on the podcast or the show, they send it and you did a whole thing about how much you love these pens and I have heard nothing from them. Right. It's weird because I briefly mentioned that I was telling a story and I said, and a guy drove up in a Porsche 911, Porsche sent me six 911s in different colors and they said,

tell us which one you want. And I was like, oh, that's just as crazy, but wow, I sort of like this pearl white one. And I said, so I'll just send the others back to you and they went, ah, just keep them all. Did you give them away to other people or did you? You know, I could have. Yeah. I probably should have.

Yeah. I probably should have. I had the others destroyed and I hired a man with a hammer to destroy them rather than see them bring joy to anybody else. Oh my God. No, I tied them all together to make one really wide Porsche that's 911 times six. And I drive it around because I want to go. My new title is Captain Duchenberg and I just drive it around and I wore a yachting cap

and I'm the guy that drives six 911s strapped together with twine. I drive the middle one, but sometimes I hop into one of the other ones to make a quick course correction. But anyway, anyway, back to the pens, yeah, if you think about it, if you think about how much time I spent talking about the pilot precise grip rolling ball with rubber grip that's bold and black. All right. God, wouldn't it be so great if they sent you just a case of them and they were all fine

print? Oh my God. If that happened. Oh my God. I'm just going to give you a tip. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not even, don't even joke about that. Fine tip. No, no, no, no.

What's smaller than find a pair line? Yes. They have one that actually takes ink away from the paper. They have a, it's three grades beyond fine that if you if you hold it up to anything, like you could hold this up to the original Declaration of Independence and it would suck out all the ink immediately. My God. Nano tip.

It's very, it's like, yeah, it's the black hole of pens, literally. and it was predicted. It was predicted by some of the great physicists. No. God, I've given them so much airtime. We are not getting paid. And you know what? I'm fine.

We live in, why should I get free pilot, precise grip, rolling ball, pens? Can I say, this has angered me so much that if they send it, I'm just gonna trash all of them. Well. I'm gonna put all of them in the trash. That's terrible. You'll never see those pens.

How many times Sona has a company sent me something and you didn't even tell me about it, you just took it. How many times? And be honest. Excuse me. Be honest. I always don't even say that. No, now you're making me feel like I steal things.

No, I tell you, this came for you. I knew you wouldn't want it, so I took it. That's how I frame it. And it's already at home and in use when you tell me half the time. Yes. Yes. That's true.

No, to be fair, you don't, you tell me, but sometimes you're like, oh yeah, they sent you this really cool thing. I knew you wouldn't want it. So I took it home, I plugged it in, and now it's washing clothes at my house. Yes. And I'm like, oh, that sounds like a nice,

oh, it's fantastic. It's really amazing. It's from Sweden. No, but if Pilot sends you pens just to spite you, I'm just gonna throw them all away. No, don't throw them away. And I'm gonna film myself throwing them away and then I'm gonna send you the video of me

tossing all the pens into the trash. I feel that's ecologically unsound. I don't think, and that's wasteful. I don't think you should do that. I think what you should do is you should get out a knife and you should pare down the tips so they're super fine. That would be the way to get me. Yes.

That way nothing's wasted and you've gone out of your way to make them super fine. Pilot, the ball is in your court. Literally the ball as in rolling ball, the precise grip rolling ball, or as they say in Espanola, bola rodante. Use promo code, fine tip.

Here, why are the instructions on the back? In Spanish. Escritura suave, tinta liquida, resistelle al agua y no se descola. Disponsibile in tinta negra, azul, roja, verde y morada. Tambien disponible in punta extra fina. No!

In the end it says also available in extra fine point. Oh, that's what it says. Pilot, you know what to do. Ah! Conan O'Brien needs a friend with Sonamov Sessian and Conan O'Brien as himself. Produced by me, Matt Gorley, executive produced by Adam Sacks,

Joanna Solotarov and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and Colin Anderson and Chris Bannon at Earwolf. Theme song by the White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. The show is engineered by Will Bekton. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts

and you might find your review featured on a future episode. Got a question for Conan? Call the Team Coco hotline at 323-451-2821 and leave a message. It too could be featured on a future episode. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher

or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.