There are things that are important for me to know,
which is that everybody has imposter syndrome.
And if you don't have it, something's wrong with you.
Yeah. Then you're a narcissist.
Yeah. And I'm a narcissist.
Or just happy. I don't know.
There's some healthy people, probably.
This is what people in show business always do, though.
We always go, "I mean, everybody feels terrible, right?"
And then you meet some healthy people
and you're like, "So did anything bad happen to you?"
And they're like, "Not really."
And you're just like, "What?"
I was quite happy as a child.
Yeah.
I hate it when I meet someone who's really funny
who was a great athlete and good looking-
Oh, I hate that shit.
And because I'm just enraged.
I'm like, no, no, no.
This is my consolation prize.
Yeah.
I got this because I didn't have any
of the other stuff.
Yeah.
And now you're telling me that, "Oh no.
I mean, I got recruited,
it was either male model or football quarterback,
and I decided comedy."
Yeah.
And it's just gone well ever since.
I don't want quarterbacks making callbacks successfully.
Nicely. Thank you.
I wasn't athletic.
That's why I'm able to give you gems like that.
(group laughs)
That's a marching band side effect.
I dislike people who are, you know,
too happy and healthy and symmetrical.
And I do try to dig for the trauma in their childhood
so that I can like them-
Right.
As people, which is my issue.
And I know that, and we're working through it.
In your last special "Look at You,"
you talk a lot about things, darker periods of your life.
It's probably something if you look at your trajectory,
you couldn't have accessed that stuff
earlier on in your career.
I know your mom- Oh, I tried.
Your mom passed when you were eight.
Eight. Jesus.
Sorry about that.
That's all right. Damn.
That has to have had a just momentous effect on you.
Oh yeah. I think for sure.
Because anytime you succeed in some way, you know,
you get a Conan set or you get on Netflix,
or what have you, or even personal things,
there is a degree of sadness to it
'cuz you go, oh man,
like the person that you would love to be here, isn't here.
And you're like trying to impress somebody
who doesn't exist anymore.
Like you don't realize that until you're older.
You're like maybe I'm only...
I do a joke about it in "Look at you,"
I'm like, do you think I'd be this successful
if I had a live mom?
'Cuz I really don't.
Like I saw my grandma recently,
and she was like, "Your mom would think this was so cool.
She'd be in the front row."
And I'm like, "I wouldn't be doing this if my mom-
You don't think you would be?
I don't know.
I don't know that I would be,
because I sort of fell into it in high school
and maybe I would have,
but I don't know.
I think I probably would've just ended up being
like a drama teacher or something
and getting married or what.
I don't know.
I just, it's impossible to know.
But I think about it a lot where I go,
"Oh man, it's so sad that she's not here to see it,
but also if she was here,
my life would've taken an entirely different road."
So-
And you have been pretty open
about your mental health things
that you're doing to try and cope,
take care of yourself, deal with it.
Which is something we end up talking about a lot
on this show because oh, here we go.
I couldn't, they were moving the drink away from me.
Yeah.
Because I kept hitting it with my hand.
Well also we are, our main sponsor is an iced tea.
Oh.
You you have an iced coffee,
and we're not allowed to or show
or admit that iced coffee exists.
Oh yeah. And I kept jostling it
like a goddamn unprofessional child.
(Sona laughs)
I love that we're in the middle of talking
about this trauma in your childhood-
I know.
and Adam Sachs runs over
and moves an iced coffee away from you.
You know what it felt like?
It felt like you guys were like,
"You know, you're not being that funny,
and we are gonna take something away from you
until you get back on track.
If you don't stop talking about your mom
that passed when you were eight,
we're gonna take this iced coffee away from you.
You know, this drink is for winners.
We reward punchlines here
at Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.
We count the laughs
and this is a big shock to all of us,
but when we got into your mom passing
and your mental health struggles,
the laughs started to dip.
(ladies laugh)
And that means no iced coffee for you.
The levels went down.
We are hemorrhaging money right now.
I'm looking at a stock chart
where we're now a publicly traded podcast,
(ladies laugh)
we're bottoming out.
If you guys could get back to private jets.
(Conan laughs)
They've been mouthing at Conan behind me,
"Boring. Get out of it."
(Sona laughs)