Conan O’Brien was full of praise and laughs on his return to Late Night.
O’Brien used to host the show, which is now hosted by Seth Meyers, for 16 years and he returned last night for the first time since leaving.
He joked about what NBC turned his studio into after he left. “Between my show, the Late Night show that I took over from Letterman, and then SNL, if you add those up I was here almost 20 years in this building and then I didn’t come here for a long time. Then I came back briefly and they showed me my old studio and it was Dr. Oz,” he said.
Meyers replied, “We thought that was a nice tribute.”
“You know what it’s like ‘I’m going to go see the house where I grew up, that little gingerbread… and it’s a Jiffy Lube. They said, ‘You missed Dr. Oz’ and I’m like ‘No, I didn’t’. I’m not sure he’s a real doctor,” O’Brien added.
O’Brien, who also briefly hosted The Tonight Show, reminisced about segments from his version of Late Night including Horse Riding A Horse, Shoeverine and The Always Disappointing FedEx Pope.
“I’ve always had a very cartoonish sense of humor,” he said.
He also paid tribute to his writers and Meyers writers and said that the latter does a “beautiful” job with his show.
“You have found the things that you really love to do that pop. We’re on in this very late-night time slot. There’s a giant orchestra, there’s a lot of noise and I’m just banging my triangle. If you just stay true to what you believe in and you keep doing it with purpose, eventually they’ll only hear the triangle. I think you and your staff is proof – there’s a lot of noise and there’s more late-night than there’s ever been, there’s the internet – you’re competing with all of this noise that I didn’t have to compete with but you just keep doubling down on sharp, smart, this is what we want to do and not trying to do what someone else does and it cuts through the fog. It’s really beautiful,” he added.
