We haven’t been able to get our Conan fix for a few months since Jimmy Fallon took over Late Night. But Conan moving to The Tonight Show doesn’t happen overnight so he’s been working hard behind the scenes to make a smooth transition from Jay. At least you’ll get a few zingers in this interview until he gets back on the air.
Crave Online: Are you having flashbacks to when you took over for Letterman when people criticized the change from Leno to you?
Conan O’Brien: I think there's been speculation. If you look at the history, there's been speculation and probably some sense of uneasiness every time there's been a change in a Tonight Show host. I mean, this is a pretty important late-night franchise and probably, if you look back at the history of the show changing from Steve Allen to Paar or Paar to Carson, who had a very different style than Paar or then Carson to Jay, a lot has been written. What does this mean? Do I like this? People inherently don't love change. I don't love change. I think a lot of people in this room, you get something the way that you like it. You get used to it after a while. Jay's been hosting that show very well, doing a fantastic job for 16, 17 years now. And then, someone announces we're going to change the furniture around a little bit, and it creates a lot of unease. So I don't take that personally. I think that that's very natural. This is a big change.
Crave Online: How much of your Late Night humor can you do at 11:30?
Conan O’Brien: I think it's a case-by-case basis. I’ve done a bunch of things over the years, and I think a lot people, probably when I first got the Emmys, said, "Well, gee, how is this going to go? That's in primetime, and this guy does very strange stuff and some of it's dirty, and he's got a masturbating bear. And is Triumph going to be there?” Then, I would go and I would do the Emmys, and I subconsciously almost made decisions about what was appropriate. It was still my sense of humor. Riding the horse with Garry Shandling or doing the bit with Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston or singing Aqualung to Oprah or depriving Bob Newhart of air to keep the show on time the last time I did the Emmys. Those were all things that are very much me. It's my sensibility. It's the kind of comedy I like to do. Critics seemed to really enjoy it. The primetime audience, I got a good response from people up of all ages and I think people who never saw Conan O'Brien before - yes, I'm talking of myself now in the third person - people who had never seen me before would see those shows and say, "That guy's funny." I want to make sure that I don't overthink it. Television's changing drastically, and I want to make sure that my show isn't too buttoned up, and that I don't have this feeling of, well, it's The Tonight Show now, and so I'm going to completely change everything about myself. I think I will make changes day-in and day-out, tiny little ones or adjustments that I feel are appropriate, but I think the show just has to be funny. I think if I'm relaxed and funny and I'm in an environment and our writers are hitting on all cylinders, I think it's going to be a good show and a worthy "Tonight Show."
Crave Online: With all the talk shows on the air now, how will you make your Tonight Show stand out?
Conan O’Brien: I'll shriek a lot. I think these shows are generally an extension of the personality. So I think there are a number of things that I do on my show that are unique to Late Night with Conan O'Brien. I think that will continue to happen on The Tonight Show. I'm a Darwin guy. I think that when conditions get tougher, it's an opportunity to get better. If there are more of these shows it puts pressure on you to come up with newer and funnier ideas, and I think we need to do that.
Crave Online: With Jay on at 10 and more talk shows than ever, will it be harder to book guests?
Conan O’Brien: If you look at it, you look at television in the '60s, when someone would appear on a show, it was literally your only chance to see them. I always use the example of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The reason that so many people tuned in that night is a huge number of them wanted to see what they looked like. Well, now it's 2009, and my example is that today the Beatles would have been on The View. They'd be on every single show playing all those songs. They'd be on all the magazine shows. They'd be on Entertainment Tonight and by the time they got to Ed Sullivan, you'd be like, "Jesus, I like the song, but enough." A lot of these guests go a lot of places now, and to me, it's always been what do you do with those guests? It's very rare that I interview someone on television that you weren't able to see anywhere else. It's happened a few times. Ted Williams, not long before he passed away, came on my show. I'm from Boston. I have a picture in my office that's signed of Ted Williams on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. But that's a rarity these days. A lot of these guests, how often have you said, "I'm sorry, I'd love to go to that party, but, Salma Hayek is on Conan O'Brien tonight, and I just must see her with Conan O'Brien." Well, she's making the rounds. So the business has changed a little bit. I think it's what you do with those guests. Stunts, what you talk to them about, your chemistry with them, and I feel that that's the challenge. I think we're going to have the same issues. Basically nothing has really changed.
Crave Online: So you won’t change your entrance?
Conan O’Brien: You mean all the jumping around and acting like an ass? Sounds like you think I should. You like the thing with the string where I move my ass around? That's who I am. I couldn't make up that crap if I wanted to. I am a big kid. I get excited. I jump around too much. There's that famous quote that television is a cool medium and that people with ironic detachment tend to do well. When I read that quote, I thought if that's true, I'm in a lot of trouble because what you see is what you get. I like to stand on things. I like to lick things. I like to jump around. I get excited. I'm very physical. There's an old Irish saying, "You go with what brung you." That's who I am, and I'm going to bring that to The Tonight Show. I don't know specifically how much small things might change here and there, but I constantly meet people, and I don't mean for this to sound self-absorbed or anything, but I'm always meeting people that really like the show because I'm a little different. Whatever seemed maybe upsetting or somewhat freakish to people in 1993, they ended up saying, "You know what? That's who he is, and he's kind of funny when he did that." I think it would be a big mistake to try and reinvent myself completely.
Crave Online: What are your expectations about moving to Hollywood?
Conan O’Brien: I will say this: I have had the best deal that you can have in television for a long time, which is we do a show in Rockefeller Center in 6A, and that's the studio where David Letterman did his late-night show, and Tom Snyder was there before him. I love television, and I'm a student of the history of television. I walk through that lobby every day, and I'm grateful. I look at those murals, and it's the opening scenes from Quiz Show, and it feels like My Favorite Year. I love doing a television show there. I've done, I think, 2,725 shows there and we've been doing it for 16 seasons. Creatively, there's an old saying that you have to keep moving or die. I do believe that this move for our show, change isn't comfortable. And to quote our president, there will be false starts, and there will be missteps, and it may take longer than four years. Please write that. I believe that this change, it's time. It's time for me to go and take another challenge. It's time for us to go and do something else and moving to L.A. is going to change the show in some small ways that I can't even imagine, but I think it's going to be rocket fuel. Johnny Carson did his show in New York for 10 years and then moved it in 1972 and did it for 20 more. The other example I think about sometimes, who I used to watch all the time as a kid, is Jackie Gleason, moved his show down to Miami, and it changed everything. But it was, I think, creatively a big benefit and a burst of energy for his show. So I'm looking forward to it and although it can be a scary thing, I think it's time to go. It's "The Tonight Show." I watched Johnny Carson host this show with my father when I was a kid, and we would laugh together. This is a very powerful thing for me. This has a lot of meaning for me. This is the time. I'll never have any regrets.
Crave Online: How do you feel about going up against Letterman?
Conan O’Brien: It's funny because I was having dinner with Lorne Michaels the other night. He said, “The funny thing about you, Conan, is that you aren't competitive with other people. You're fiercely competitive with yourself." And it's true. Everyone's different. I'm not making a value judgment, but there are some people that they're better when they're trying to look at someone else and beat them. In comedy, that never did it for me. I can see stuff that other people do and think it's funny or think it's not funny, but it never helped me. I've always put my blinders on. I like to do things that I think are really funny. When I fail, I'm very depressed and upset. And when it succeeds, I'm as high as a kite. I think it is something where I think I'm just going to run my race and do the best show that I can. I don't think I can touch David Letterman's legacy in television. I really don't. I think if I can achieve a fraction of what David Letterman's achieved in this medium, I'll die a happy man. I think I could cure cancer on the air my first show, and I don't think it would change anybody's opinion about the work that David Letterman's done. I'll always be in awe of that man.
Crave Online: Is it safe to say you won't be adopting Headlines and stuff like that?
Conan O’Brien: No, no, no. I don't take other people's bits. I like to do my own things.
Crave Online: How are you using your down time?
Conan O’Brien: We're working and I'm be going to affiliates so that will not be me sitting in a Jacuzzi somewhere, not that I ever do that, but that's going to be a busy time.
Crave Online: What are you looking for in the new set?
Conan O’Brien: You know, it's not rocket science. What we're not going to do is reinvent the wheel. It's going to be pretty and attractive and something that people are going to be willing to have on their TV screen night after night after night, but I'm not going to make the mistake of it's all beanbag chairs and bubbling goo, because you've never seen that. Everyone eventually figures out, and these things are always a work in progress, so you get out there with your set and then you start tweaking it. What Jay did is he got out there with his set and then he realized you know what? I'm more comfortable, I want it to feel more like a nightclub, because that's his milieu, so that's what he did. Mine might eventually become more like a basement rec room because that's where I did my best work.
Crave Online: Will you do any primetime specials?
Conan O’Brien: Oh my God. Well, apparently, in late night, if you wait around long enough, it becomes a primetime special. So if I just stick around, if nothing else, it just gives me a new timeslot to shoot for.
Crave Online: Will you work with Jay on any talk show synergy?
Conan O’Brien: We haven't talked about that but I don't know. I really don't know. There's that gap because then there's the local news in between. So then we'd have to get local newsmen involved and then it becomes like a three-way orgy. It's disgusting frankly.
Crave Online: Did you give Jimmy Fallon any advice when he took over?
Conan O’Brien: I hate to always just sound like I'm a preacher of common sense, but I've told Jimmy that nobody who hasn't done one of these shows every single day can possibly imagine what that's like, and so the way to learn is by doing it. There's no way that you can go off into a cave somewhere and completely conceive and conceptualize your show and then go on the air and start cranking out an hour a night. I learned how to do one of these shows by doing it. It was not pretty to watch sometimes, but it's the only way that you can do it. There's no college they can send you to. There's no other way to learn than just by doing. So my advice to Jimmy has been, "Get people around you who will be honest with you." I have people around me who are very honest with me. I'm hard on myself, but I have people who tell me, "Yeah, that wasn't right. That looked awkward. You shouldn't have taken your pants off." Those are things that I hear from my team. They tell me when I'm wrong and I think that the biggest danger with these kinds of shows, the volume is so great, it's so much work, and it's a lot of pressure. If you get into a bubble, you can get lost. It's all about having the right people.
