Conan O’Brien, who will premiere his new TBS late night talk show Conan on Monday November 8, gives the featured interview in the new issue of Playboy magazine. While Conan‘s appearance in Playboy does NOT include any nudie pics of the ginger comic, it does feature quite a bit of that Conan O’Brien charm that [...]
Conan O’Brien, who will premiere his new TBS late night talk show Conan on Monday November 8, gives the featured interview in the new issue of Playboy magazine. While Conan‘s appearance in Playboy does NOT include any nudie pics of the ginger comic, it does feature quite a bit of that Conan O’Brien charm that has endeared him to millions anxiously awaiting his return to late night TV. Here are a few excerpts from Conan‘s new Playboy magazine interview:
“I’m going for eight months on the air. All I want to do is break my Tonight Show record,” says Conan O’Brien when talking about goals for his new show in Playboy’s December Interview (on newsstands and available HERE on Friday, November 12). “I’m a guy who wants to say I did more push-ups today than I did the day before, and the good news is, I did only one push-up yesterday.” After losing one of the most coveted jobs in comedy when NBC pulled the plug on Late Night, Conan went out with class by thanking the network, along with his staff, friends, family, and fans. It seems that his good spirits and positive attitude bought him many additional inquisitive viewers (ratings skyrocketed during his last few shows), an unofficial Facebook group dedicated to “Coco,” and the greatest prize of all—his new show Conan, premiering Monday, November 8 on TBS. Playboy Contributing Editor Rob Tannenbaum caught up with O’Brien at his Burbank office, so new that it had little more than a desk, a few chairs, and a poster of his sidekick Andy Richter. “When I commented on the lack of décor,” Tannenbaum says, “Conan’s answer was, ‘Everything in this office is designed to come down quickly, in case there’s trouble and we need to get out of here.’” In the Interview, O’Brien talks about the shortcomings of his Irish heritage, paying people to watch his show, his need to please, and his old NBC cohort Jay Leno. Following are select quotes from the Interview:
On his impassionate parting Tonight Show speech, and whether he is bitter after the whole experience: “I wanted to end on an optimistic note. I thought it could end up being the most important moment of my television career. It still could be…I have had too many good things happen in my career to end on any kind of bitter note. I’m just saying this to you; we’re alone in this office, and I don’t have to say this: I am an incredibly fortunate person…And as crazy as this sounds, my career with NBC was overwhelmingly positive until this…The entertainment business has an amazing way of turning really lucky people into bitter, angry, rage-filled, jealous, resentful wretches who can’t believe they got screwed. Some things have worked out great for me, some things haven’t. You keep going…Doing those last Tonight Shows was a high. A lot of people tuned in, and I was really proud of what I was able to make in that situation. So this was good, this was bad, this was ugly, this was beautiful, this was f*cked-up, this was sublime. It was cherry, it was vanilla, it was frogurt, it was mocha chocolate chip.”
On how close his new studio is to Jay Leno’s, and whether or not they bump into each other: “We’re in Burbank, and NBC is not far away…I think if I worked out and had help with hydraulics we could hit it with a tennis ball. [Leno is] a guy you hear coming a long way off. There aren’t many three-cylinder engines in California that run on peat moss. And we hang out in different circles, so I don’t think we’ll be bumping into each other.”
On inviting Jay Leno on his new show as a guest: “He can come as the musical guest, because that I want to see. No one knows he has an operatic range [sings as Jay Leno]. No, there are certain things I will not do, regardless of the price.”
After the jump, read a few more excerpts from Conan‘s Playboy magazine interview …
On his new show Conan on TBS: “I don’t want to get lost thinking how this show will be different from any other show I’ve done. Will I overthink it? Yes. Do I think I should? No. How’s that? At the end of the day, it’s going to be me doing whatever is in my power to entertain people for an hour. I’ll break any rule. I’ll use dangerous chemicals if I have to. I will meddle with the laws of God.”
On why he wants another show so badly, after once saying “the pace will kill you”: “The pace does kill you. You keep going back for that; there’s no other explanation. There are probably 35 variables that make up a show…How’s the audience, who are the guests, what mood am I in? Add all those things up, and you can never have back-to-back-to-back great shows. If you have a show that’s less than great, you’re desperate to have a great one. But when you have one you feel is great, you want that high again. And it’s too late for me to become a neurosurgeon or a cobbler…So why keep doing it? I think there’s this compulsion, the way a serial killer has to kill and kill again. Are these analogies helping me or hurting me? I’m just compelled to make people laugh—and then quickly move to another state where my DNA can’t be traced.”
On whether he feels like a comedy veteran after 17 years in the business: “I’ve actually been around long enough that when I look at a show from 1993 it looks ancient to me. Andy looks like a 13-year-old boy and I look like a 15-year-old girl. There’s a whole generation now that has watched primarily reality television, and more and more they accept only comedy that looks like a real occurrence, whether it’s The Office or Borat. They’re suspicious of traditional comedy. Everything on YouTube is real—epic fail, guy falls down, Snooki gets punched. And so now there’s this hypersensitivity to anything that’s processed or fake.”
On his Irish heritage: “Nobody cares if you make a disparaging comment about the Irish. It is the one ethnic group no one gives a sh*t about. ‘Oh, those wife-beating drunks.’ Irish people go, ‘Yes! Ha-ha! We got mentioned.’ They don’t care.”
On whether or not he drinks or has used drugs in the past: “I’ve tried pot, but it doesn’t do much for me. And I’m not one of those people who gets high on life; life really does not get me high. The concept of me on cocaine is absurd. Here’s a true story: I went to a doctor for a physical when I’d been on the air a couple of years, and he asked about drug use. I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘You don’t do cocaine?’ I said, ‘No.’ And he said, ‘I’ve seen your show.’ [laughs] He assumed I was coked up…I like to have a drink now. I like to have two drinks now. Two and a half to three drinks now. Five is just the right amount. Eight is perfect. Nine is too much, but then 10 is better and I become more focused, which is weird.”
Conan O’Brien belongs on late night TV … he’s a very funny, extremely likable guy who you just want to root for and see succeed. In all honesty, I’m not a big fan of late night talk shows … even when Conan was on the air at NBC, I never tuned in with any regularity (usually, I would DVR eps just to watch the musical performances that I wanted to see on TV as opposed to on the computer). That will change when Conan hits the airwaves on Monday night. I really want to tune in and be a part of Conan‘s triumphant return to late night TV. We are just days away from the premiere of Conan. I am so already ready already.
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AnnaLynne McCord
Kate Beckinsale
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