In our Pop Culture Lead today,
you guys,
it gives me great joy
to tell you that CONAN O'Brien
is returning to television.
The award winning comedian,
late night TV host
and podcaster
is now
starring in a new travel series
called CONAN O'Brien
Must Go, which debuts next week on Max.
And we should remind you
that Max and CNN are both owned
by Warner Brothers Discovery.
But that's not why I'm doing this.
The show is super funny.
And guess who's joining us now?
It's CONAN. Hey, CONAN is right here.
Thank you so much.
May I call you Jay? Because I'm happy.
You may. You may.
Thanks for having me.
This is huge.
Let's show
that show folks, a little clip.
This is a part of your trip to Norway.
Yes, I went to Norway
and really got in touch with my roots,
but I don't have there.
Anyway, take a look. Let's take a look.
I'm CONAN.
The Red.
Oh, my pants falling.
I think my pants are falling down.
Yeah.
This is a travel show I'm doing.
Oh, my.
Where is it? My fans
from around the world.
We must embrace the way
people do in this country, which is?
I'm supposed to kiss you right?
You're making it so weird.
That's what I do.
It's true, though.
I think we do need some weird right now.
Tell me how the series came about.
Well, I do a podcast called Conor
O'Brien needs a friend.
I know. I've been on it.
You've been on it twice.
I just needed to tell you again,
because I know you just blow your friends
off left and right.
And I. And it.
It grew and grew. And then we started.
I mostly talk to celebrities,
but I said,
I want to talk to
people out in the world.
And so we started taking calls
from people all over.
And occasionally a fan in this farthest
part of the world would say, Hey, Conor,
if you're ever in Bergen,
Norway, stop by sometime.
And that gave me the notion,
had you ever heard of Bergen,
Norway before?
I had no. I had heard it in Norway.
And but I don't think
I specifically heard of Bergen.
But I said yes.
And so what we do is
we use saw it in that clip right there.
I surprised my fans, as you.
And so that was a kid named Arlo,
who's half of a rapping, rapping duo.
He looks like Daniel Radcliffe and
and it's I'm
not as muscular,
not as muscular as Daniel Radcliffe.
And and he's a very sweet kid
and they're actually very talented duo.
But I surprised him.
So that's me ringing his doorbell.
And he and I and I disguise my voice.
You can't see it there, but I go
back FedEx
and then he comes down
and he was really excited.
And then I proceed to go
and tear up his apartment
and then get involved
in his musical life.
And I'm determined to put
he and his friend
at the top of the charts.
That's pretty good.
You have a you provide
some of the singing the way
I thought I should do a bridge,
the way, you know, Sting
used to sometimes sing the bridge
on someone else's song.
Yours is about a fjord, though.
Mine is about a salmon and a fjord,
but it's in my patented Irish falsetto.
So you hosted CONAN on TBS for ten years,
then you started CONAN O'Brien.
He's a friend of your podcast.
They give me the spin off.
CONAN O'Brien needs a fan. Yes.
And I want to play a clip of you
comparing your job to a fish farmer
in Norway. And here we go.
I am not envious
because, Guy, what I do is very similar.
No, no, I come out here,
I don't know if the
if the temperature in the podcast
booth is going to be 71 or 72.
I don't know if my,
if the iced tea they got me
is going to be completely unsweetened
or have a little bit of sugar.
So I too am battling
the elements in my own way.
Absolutely.
I'm so happy that I'm up here in there
in the Arctic and not down there.
It's I'm so glad
what you just said.
So.
So, Kai, you're
just very happy that you're that you're
you and not me.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's sort of what I'm saying.
I can't imagine being able to.
I have to say, like, you're so great
when you're interviewing
celebrity guests and such,
but like, you,
you really seem
to love interacting with normies.
I love talking to people.
That is a guy,
a guy
who is a salmon fisherman, salmon farmer.
And I,
after I meet one of the fans, he's
another one of the fans.
I go up and I find him
and I go out on his boat
and try and he's having a difficult time
with his partner on the boat
who helps him
find the salmon or grow the salmon.
And so I try and get them
to be friends again.
And so it's just a joy.
It's really fun.
I love
my favorite thing is meeting people
who am I'm constantly bumping into people
who don't know who I am.
They're not that impressed
and I egg them on
until they really put me down.
And I don't know why,
but it makes me so happy.
That guy on the street,
there's a guy on the street
who's criticizing my jacket.
He says, That's the jacket
you're trying to wear.
Makes you
you're trying to look too young.
And we really get into it and I love it.
It makes me happy.
So.
And you go to Norway,
Thailand, Argentina, Ireland, Ireland.
Yeah.
What were was any
one more fun than the other?
You know, they're all very different.
The one thing that was fantastic
and interesting about Thailand,
what it was,
it was a bunch of months ago.
It was the hottest day
they'd ever had in Thailand.
It was 108 degrees, 109 degrees.
And so when you're doing
improvizational comedy
as you're sweating out your body weight,
it's fascinating.
But it was really it was fun.
And I cannot say
I liked one country more than another.
Each of the specials is very different,
but they were really fun to do.
So You also made some history this week.
You returned to The Tonight Show. Yeah.
14 years
after your time there ended,
you sat down with Jimmy Fallon
and you reminded him of some advice
that was really, really hitting home
for you at in that moment.
Let's run that clip.
You'll have this show
as long as you want to.
But when you're 98, you'll move on
and someone else,
someone else will be in the studio.
Yeah.
When someone else is in your studio,
it feels weird.
So I walked in
and I said, Who's in my old studio?
And I said, Kelly Clarkson.
Yeah. And I love Kelly Clarkson.
Who doesn't love Kelly Clarkson?
But still, I felt like it's not right.
It's in the museum.
In the museum.
They should have burned to the ground.
What was it like to be back
in that scene?
It was a great feeling.
I didn't actually.
Jimmy Studio is across the hall,
so he's in six feet.
I was in six eight,
which was this iconic studio
that David Letterman had from,
I think 1981 to 93.
And and my studio
was I went into the same studios.
Dave So Jimmy's across the hall.
I didn't go in and look, Oh, really?
But it felt very nice
to just be back on that floor.
And there are still
some people who came out
who are still working at NBC,
who were there when I was there.
And so it was very emotional.
You know,
they came out in their gray
hair, like
with me, and I was hugging people.
And it was a very sweet feeling.
It was so nice to be back.
And Fallon couldn't have been nicer.
He was oh, he was great.
And he's done an amazing job.
And I'm a fan.
And I think it all
whatever happened all those years ago,
it all worked out
beautifully for everybody.
And so it was a it was a nice return.
It really was.
Before we
go, I have to ask you
about something in the news today. Yep.
O.J. Simpson died.
Yes.
And yes,
He was a lot of fodder for you
and a lot of other late night comics.
Yeah, it was that era.
It was a huge deal back then.
And most notably,
he's he's passed on.
Norm MacDonald.
Oh, my God, You're one of my
best guests of all time.
And one of the great comedians
of all time
just told some of the most did,
most brilliant,
I think, comedy of anybody
during that whole lost his job at SNL
because it was making fun of O.J.
Simpson for being the real killer.
Yes.
And
and the head of the network at
the time was was tight with O.J.
and Don Ohlmeyer.
Yeah.
And oh, who can remember these names
anyway?
Water under the bridge.
But yeah, that was a huge moment
in in the history,
I think, of this country was
it was a it was a, you know, massive.
And there have been many times
in this country
where we've needed to kind of stop
and reassess where we are
in our racial history
and where are we
what progress if we made.
And that was one of those moments
and it was such a watershed moment.
So he is gone now.
Yeah. Yeah.
You have no, you're
you're not going to make any jokes about.
Oh, I never make a joke
about someone the day they pass.
Okay, I'll hit you up tomorrow.
Yeah, tomorrow at 6 a.m..
You can hit me up.
All right. It's East Coast time.
East Coast time as no Central.
Central. Okay.
I'll hit you at 730. Yeah.
CONAN O'Brien, thanks so much.
You really must watch.
CONAN O'Brien must go. His new series.
It's on Max starting April 18th.