Very nice to have you on the program. Thanks for coming.
I am a big fan and I'm really happy to be here.
Oh! Well, thank you very much for saying that.
Of Andy's.
[Andy] Ha ha ha!
Really. I think you're the best.
Well, thank you! You really are.
After that tooth thing, I lost him. Yeah.
You know, I want to ask you about, first of all,
the thing that's interesting,
'cause people my age first saw you in "Roots"
and everyone knows you from that,
but you've got this whole new generation of fans
with the Star Trek gig, would you say.
And I was curious, first of all,
that thing you wear over your eyes-
The visor. The visor.
Is that thing a pain in the ass or what?
I mean, what's the story with that?
Actually, the truth is, it is painful.
Not necessarily in the ass.
(Conan laughs)
I'm glad to hear that.
It hooks onto the ass.
And then there's a strut that moves its way up.
I had no idea!
Believe it or not, believe it or not,
we screw this thing into my head.
What? That is how-
'Cause you look at the show,
and I'm always like an idiot looking at the show,
like how does thing attach? How does it stay on?
They screw it into your skull?
They screw it into my head.
Now, that's what you need an agent for.
"We want to give LeVar Burton this new role,
but he has to have something
screwed into the side of his head."
"The good news is you're in Star Trek.
The bad news is..."
Really? So how far do they screw it in?
Just enough to give me a migraine.
Oh, really? No more than that.
Uh-huh. No more than that.
But if you sneezed, it would stay on, right?
It would absolutely stay on, that's the point.
Okay, but you can see through it, right?
Not at all.
You can't see through it?
80% of my vision is taken away when I put that thing on.
That is so annoying, I would think.
So you just have to rely,
like when you're eating food in the commissary,
you know, you need someone to tell you,
"It looks okay today, LeVar."
Well, Conan, I don't wear it off the set.
What?
You mean you're not really that character?
(Conan groans)
Major bummer.
What was it like coming to grips with the fans?
Fans for Star Trek shows,
the original and the subsequent shows,
they're just so rabid.
I mean, it's great, they're very loyal,
but they're incredibly devoted,
probably to the point of distraction.
Are they hard to deal with?
Well, I prefer to refer to them as really enthusiastic.
So rabid, likening them to a dog with a frothing mouth,
is probably not a good thing.
Well, I consider that these are the people
that are putting my children through college.
Bingo.
And so I tend to be nice to them.
I mean, sometimes they can be very intense though.
Very intense.
I don't do a lot of them,
but you know about these Star Trek conventions.
(audience laughs)
Yes, I do.
(audience applauds)
Yes.
Actually, I've never been to one,
but yes, I understand they're quite intense.
Well, there was a woman once
that came up to me dressed in Klingon garb,
a rather large woman, that insisted that I sign her breast.
Sign her breast? Sign her breast.
And we all know that the Klingons,
they have easily removable garb up top.
[LeVar] That's right, that's right.
And so did you sign the-
Well, I was faced with this massive...
(Conan laughs)
They were large! Breast, yeah.
So you started writing a letter.
"Dear ma'am.
It's nice to meet you."
"Continued on next breast."
I signed it. I signed it. You signed it?
Any opportunity to please a fan.
Uh-huh. (laughs)
Good for you. You're a good man that way.
Let me ask you, you know, it's funny,
'cause I said in the intro,
it's been 20 years since "Roots," which is amazing 'cause-
Where were you January 23rd, 1977,
which was the first night- I was in high school.
It was my freshman year in high school.
Wow.
And I remembered it was just this giant event.
I mean, people, there hadn't been...
I don't think there had been a TV show,
correct me if I'm wrong,
that had been on consecutive nights,
like a miniseries like that.
"Roots" was the second miniseries.
"Rich Man, Poor Man" was the first
and it aired in weekly installments,
but "Roots" was the first opportunity
to program in eight consecutive nights.
That had never been done before.
Which at the time was this stunning idea.
I mean, today maybe it might not seem strange to people,
but that was very unusual.
Who thought of that? Why did they think of that idea?
The programming genius at ABC behind that decision,
their thinking was, "You know what, we like this,
we think it's good, but it's about Black people.
And if nobody watches, we'll just cut our losses
and be done with it in eight consecutive nights."
And the final episode of "Roots"
is still the third most-watched television program
in the history of the medium.
My. Yeah.
Yeah. It's true.
(audience applauds)
That's great. Yeah.
Actually, I...
I believe our Christmas episode is number two for all time.
I know it's in the top 10.
I wasn't aware that it was two.
Now, people must,
because it was one of those events
where people do know where they were at the time,
you know, what they were doing.
I remembered watching it with my brothers.
And I remembered that I was a freshman in high school,
I remember what I was doing.
Do people come up to you sometimes
and offer where they were or what they were doing?
Yeah, I had a guy come up to me once,
and actually, this was in prison.
[Conan] You were in prison for a time.
Well, we were having the conversation in prison.
He was incarcerated, I was there working.
I was on location.
[Conan] You were filming something in a prison.
Filming something in prison. Okay.
Filming something, to set the record straight.
Thank you, Conan, very much. Good.
You just gotta make sure, you know.
"I was in prison for a time..."
Uh-huh?
And avoided the showers.
(audience laughs)
But you had your visor to guide...
Yeah.
To get me around. Oh my god.
This was a paperhanger, a guy who made a living
writing bad checks in shopping malls.
And "Roots" aired in January originally in '77.
And this guy told me that he actually cut his hours short.
He had a whole crew of people
that were out in the malls. Forging checks.
Doing credit card forgery and bad checks.
And he would pull them all out of the malls early
so everybody could get home to watch "Roots."
That's amazing. A criminal.
A career criminal cut things short.
Everybody watched "Roots." Yeah.
Now tell us, you've written a book.
I don't know how you find time to do these things,
but "Aftermath: A Novel of the Future."
Actually, I started this project
just after my daughter was born two and a half years ago
and I wasn't getting any sleep anyway, so...
Well, that's interesting.
That's an interesting idea. I'm up already.
I'm up, I might as well use the time well.
The baby's crying. That's right.
Most people don't think that way.
Well, we do at my house.
So tell us what the book is about.
The book is actually a cautionary tale.
I call it a science fiction thriller.
And I begin with the premise that America is destroyed,
the last, best hope on Earth has fallen.
The New Madrid fault in the Midwest
erupts with a 9.1-magnitude earthquake
and NASA collapses and creates some economic factors
that contribute to the fall.
And the race war
is really the straw that breaks the camel's back.
America's engulfed in a civil war.
And that's just the first two pages.
That's an interesting idea. That's the first two pages?
And that's the first two pages, yeah.
Then it really gets quiet.
Everyone just has coffee for the rest of the book.
"That was wild, man, those first two pages."
"Tell me about it."
That sounds fascinating though.
People should check this out. "Aftermath."
It's out everywhere.
It is in the bookstores as we speak.
All right. Well, thanks so much for coming by.
It was really nice talking to you.
I loved being here. LeVar Burton, everybody.
Very nice to meet you.
We're gonna take a break.
We'll be right back. Stick around.