qp
in
conan_obrien
interview
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6453980n
So, uh, what's with the beard?
The first day that I woke up and no longer was the host of The Tonight Show, I remember the first thought I had is 'I am not shaving.' And that was my small victory, you know? 'Okay, so I lost the Tonight Show, but I'll show them. I'll stop shaving.'
This has been quite a year.
Yeah. (pause) That's it, we're done, this has been a lot of fun. This year has been- this year is still incomprehensible to me. The amount of stuff that's happened in my life in the last year- it's gonna take me a long time to process it.
(clip about him being home, assembling staff, making a tour - caught up with him in Seattle)
I went through some 'stuff', and um, and got very depressed at times. It was like a marriage breaking up (snaps) suddenly, violently, quickly, and I was trying to figure out what happened. When we started putting this tour together, it got... I started to feel better almost immediately. And then this. There's no better antidote to what I've juts been through than to do this every night.
(joke, song from the tour, clip of jay/conan shaking hands, string dance clip on the tonight show.)
Was it in the back of your mind that 'oh, if I don't do that, they can just pop Leno back in?
I'm a paranoid person. and I think I'm the kind of person that can come up with lots of negative scenarios but I remember thinking that was a stretch, even for me.
It just felt like the tone went very quickly from 'take your time, we understand this is a tough decision' to ... (taps arm of the chair, snaps fingers) you know, let's go. and that probably helped me a little bit feel a little, this environment doesn't feel right, and I've been with these people a long time, and I don't like, I really don't like the way this is going.
When it started to get toxic and I started to feel that I'm not sure these- people even really want me here, let's just- let's just- I can't do it.
Do you think they wanted you to leave?
Uh... yeah, that's crossed my mind. I don't know how thought out this whole thing was. But if they wanted me to leave, (thumbs up) it worked! (chuckles)
---LIZA---
This was just really really hard for him. It was watching someone's heart get broken.
Did you approve of everything he did?
100%.
You thought he should have left.
Absolutely.
What do you think of the way he was treated by NBC?
From my perspective it felt like they never really gave him the job. That they said, "we're going ot give you this job in five years" and they kept him with the company, and he said "I won't go anywhere else, I'll keep working for you, and I'm in it for the long haul," and they lost their nerve to really make a change and it's too bad. It's a shame. 'cause it would haev been great to see what he had done if he had had their full support and had some more time.
---END LIZA---
You've got this non-disparagement agreement.
Do you have an extra copy? 'Cause I haven't read one in a while. (talks over the interviewer) I keep one in my wallet. (laughs)
You do? (Conan's still laughing)
Yeah, any time people come up to me. So what's the deal with Jay Leno? Hold on a second. Uhhh... (he mimes unfolding and examining a loong paper). (jokes) He's a fine and good man. There we go, put that away...
Can I assume that this interview would be taking a different (tenor) if it did not exist?
No, I don't think it would. I have so many people who come up and say this to me, in gas stations, in restaurants, I have so many people say to this to me. "Hey partner, you got screwed." I don't, and I always tell them, "No I didn't, I didn't get screwed. I'm fine. It just it didn't work out."
Well, you did get screwed.
You think I got screwed.
Well, I think most people think you got screwed. I mean Jay Leno thinks you got screwed. Jay Leno thinks he got screwed.
How did he get screwed?... (laughs) Explain that part to me. I'm sorry.
Jay's got The Tonight Show, I've got a beard and an inflatable bat(?) and I'm touring from city to city. who can say who won and who lost?
I'm laughing because crying would be sad.
Has Jay reached out to you?
No.
Has he called?
No, I do not think I will be hearing from him. We should get him in here. Is he going to be a surprise walk-on?
(Do you have his number? I'm sure he would come on.)
...He may have caller ID. He won't pick up.
I think Leno would say 'Look, I was riding high, I was number one, and I was number one when I left, and Conan made this deal with NBC and NBC said 'we're going to take you off the air in 5 years or whenever whether you're number one or number two' and he felt forced out.... was pushed out the door. that's his argument.
It's hard to get into his head and argue his side of the whole thing. Well, here's what I can say. I'm happy with my decision, I sleep well at night, and I, you know, um, hope he's happy with his decision.
Do you think Jay lobbied for this?
I don't know but, um, what I know is what happened which is that he went and took that show back.
Do you believe he acted honorably during all of this?
*exhales* I don't think I can answer that. I don't think, um, I can just tell you maybe how I would have handled it and I would do it differently. If I had surrendered The Tonight Show and handed it over to somebody publicly and wished them well, um, and then, and then, I would not have come back six months later. But that's me, you know. Everyone's got their own, you know, way of doing things.
What would you have done?
Done something else, go someplace else. I mean, that's just me.
Has Zucker called you?
No.
You haven't heard from Zucker since they made this deal with you.
That's right. you know at some point I'm sure I'm gonna bump into these people and I'm not sure if I'm going to have our arms each other and be drinking beer and singing old Irish fight songs because I don't think they know any. But, you know, I I wish, this may sound crazy, I do wish these people well.
Zucker was quoted as saying at the end of the day, viewers voted, and they didn't like Conan as the host of The Tonight Show.
Can I take back what I just said?
You take issue with that.
In my opinion, I don't think that's fair or accurate. But he's entitled to his opinion. I think for anyone to say that the results were in after six months - that doesn't ring true to me.
They said that for the first time that The Tonight Show was losing money...
I don't see how that... i honestly don't see how that's possible. It's really not possible. It isn't possible.
Did you expect NBC to give you more of a chance?
Absolutely. Yes.
Do you feel like it was a failure?
My Tonight Show? No. Absolutely not.
(voiceover says that Conan agrees that nbc's comment re: the decision was "a business decision motivated by money.")
Some people have reported that NBC reported 150 mililion dollars to pay Jay off.
So if you look at it that way... and say, you're working for, I dunno, General Electric and you tell them uh, you know, there's this (makes motions like a big bar on a bar graph) to make that guy go way or there's this... (smaller bar), that decision's pretty clear and I think in my gut, I honestly believe everyone knows that's that what happened. They did what they had to do, and I get it, and the only thing I take exception to is subsequently people saying "Well, you know Conan was... rrrr, losing money, and actually... he was murdering cats? What? Whatever."
---
I do not look down my nose at cable and anyone who does isn't paying attention to television these days because television is changing very quickly.
You've got $30M that you didn't have before, you've got a very lucrative new gig on TBS, which has an audience that-
Very young audience.
-custom made for you- It wasn't all bad.
That's the point I keep making.
It's crucial to me that anyone seeing this- if they take anything away from this, it's I'm fine, I'm doing great, I hope people still people find me comedically absurd and ridiculous, and I don't regret anything. I do believe, and this may be my Catholic upbringing or Irish magical thinking, but I think thinkgs happen for a reason. I really do.
I thought the Lutherans believed that.
Oh my god, these Lutherans. Okay, I believe that if I enjoy any joy in my life I'll go to hell. That's what I believe. And uh, you get my point.
(show clip)
So, uh, what's with the beard?
The first day that I woke up and no longer was the host of The Tonight Show, I remember the first thought I had is 'I am not shaving.' And that was my small victory, you know? 'Okay, so I lost the Tonight Show, but I'll show them. I'll stop shaving.'
This has been quite a year.
Yeah. (pause) That's it, we're done, this has been a lot of fun. This year has been- this year is still incomprehensible to me. The amount of stuff that's happened in my life in the last year- it's gonna take me a long time to process it.
(clip about him being home, assembling staff, making a tour - caught up with him in Seattle)
I went through some 'stuff', and um, and got very depressed at times. It was like a marriage breaking up (snaps) suddenly, violently, quickly, and I was trying to figure out what happened. When we started putting this tour together, it got... I started to feel better almost immediately. And then this. There's no better antidote to what I've juts been through than to do this every night.
(joke, song from the tour, clip of jay/conan shaking hands, string dance clip on the tonight show.)
Was it in the back of your mind that 'oh, if I don't do that, they can just pop Leno back in?
I'm a paranoid person. and I think I'm the kind of person that can come up with lots of negative scenarios but I remember thinking that was a stretch, even for me.
It just felt like the tone went very quickly from 'take your time, we understand this is a tough decision' to ... (taps arm of the chair, snaps fingers) you know, let's go. and that probably helped me a little bit feel a little, this environment doesn't feel right, and I've been with these people a long time, and I don't like, I really don't like the way this is going.
When it started to get toxic and I started to feel that I'm not sure these- people even really want me here, let's just- let's just- I can't do it.
Do you think they wanted you to leave?
Uh... yeah, that's crossed my mind. I don't know how thought out this whole thing was. But if they wanted me to leave, (thumbs up) it worked! (chuckles)
---LIZA---
This was just really really hard for him. It was watching someone's heart get broken.
Did you approve of everything he did?
100%.
You thought he should have left.
Absolutely.
What do you think of the way he was treated by NBC?
From my perspective it felt like they never really gave him the job. That they said, "we're going ot give you this job in five years" and they kept him with the company, and he said "I won't go anywhere else, I'll keep working for you, and I'm in it for the long haul," and they lost their nerve to really make a change and it's too bad. It's a shame. 'cause it would haev been great to see what he had done if he had had their full support and had some more time.
---END LIZA---
You've got this non-disparagement agreement.
Do you have an extra copy? 'Cause I haven't read one in a while. (talks over the interviewer) I keep one in my wallet. (laughs)
You do? (Conan's still laughing)
Yeah, any time people come up to me. So what's the deal with Jay Leno? Hold on a second. Uhhh... (he mimes unfolding and examining a loong paper). (jokes) He's a fine and good man. There we go, put that away...
Can I assume that this interview would be taking a different (tenor) if it did not exist?
No, I don't think it would. I have so many people who come up and say this to me, in gas stations, in restaurants, I have so many people say to this to me. "Hey partner, you got screwed." I don't, and I always tell them, "No I didn't, I didn't get screwed. I'm fine. It just it didn't work out."
Well, you did get screwed.
You think I got screwed.
Well, I think most people think you got screwed. I mean Jay Leno thinks you got screwed. Jay Leno thinks he got screwed.
How did he get screwed?... (laughs) Explain that part to me. I'm sorry.
Jay's got The Tonight Show, I've got a beard and an inflatable bat(?) and I'm touring from city to city. who can say who won and who lost?
I'm laughing because crying would be sad.
Has Jay reached out to you?
No.
Has he called?
No, I do not think I will be hearing from him. We should get him in here. Is he going to be a surprise walk-on?
(Do you have his number? I'm sure he would come on.)
...He may have caller ID. He won't pick up.
I think Leno would say 'Look, I was riding high, I was number one, and I was number one when I left, and Conan made this deal with NBC and NBC said 'we're going to take you off the air in 5 years or whenever whether you're number one or number two' and he felt forced out.... was pushed out the door. that's his argument.
It's hard to get into his head and argue his side of the whole thing. Well, here's what I can say. I'm happy with my decision, I sleep well at night, and I, you know, um, hope he's happy with his decision.
Do you think Jay lobbied for this?
I don't know but, um, what I know is what happened which is that he went and took that show back.
Do you believe he acted honorably during all of this?
*exhales* I don't think I can answer that. I don't think, um, I can just tell you maybe how I would have handled it and I would do it differently. If I had surrendered The Tonight Show and handed it over to somebody publicly and wished them well, um, and then, and then, I would not have come back six months later. But that's me, you know. Everyone's got their own, you know, way of doing things.
What would you have done?
Done something else, go someplace else. I mean, that's just me.
Has Zucker called you?
No.
You haven't heard from Zucker since they made this deal with you.
That's right. you know at some point I'm sure I'm gonna bump into these people and I'm not sure if I'm going to have our arms each other and be drinking beer and singing old Irish fight songs because I don't think they know any. But, you know, I I wish, this may sound crazy, I do wish these people well.
Zucker was quoted as saying at the end of the day, viewers voted, and they didn't like Conan as the host of The Tonight Show.
Can I take back what I just said?
You take issue with that.
In my opinion, I don't think that's fair or accurate. But he's entitled to his opinion. I think for anyone to say that the results were in after six months - that doesn't ring true to me.
They said that for the first time that The Tonight Show was losing money...
I don't see how that... i honestly don't see how that's possible. It's really not possible. It isn't possible.
Did you expect NBC to give you more of a chance?
Absolutely. Yes.
Do you feel like it was a failure?
My Tonight Show? No. Absolutely not.
(voiceover says that Conan agrees that nbc's comment re: the decision was "a business decision motivated by money.")
Some people have reported that NBC reported 150 mililion dollars to pay Jay off.
So if you look at it that way... and say, you're working for, I dunno, General Electric and you tell them uh, you know, there's this (makes motions like a big bar on a bar graph) to make that guy go way or there's this... (smaller bar), that decision's pretty clear and I think in my gut, I honestly believe everyone knows that's that what happened. They did what they had to do, and I get it, and the only thing I take exception to is subsequently people saying "Well, you know Conan was... rrrr, losing money, and actually... he was murdering cats? What? Whatever."
---
I do not look down my nose at cable and anyone who does isn't paying attention to television these days because television is changing very quickly.
You've got $30M that you didn't have before, you've got a very lucrative new gig on TBS, which has an audience that-
Very young audience.
-custom made for you- It wasn't all bad.
That's the point I keep making.
It's crucial to me that anyone seeing this- if they take anything away from this, it's I'm fine, I'm doing great, I hope people still people find me comedically absurd and ridiculous, and I don't regret anything. I do believe, and this may be my Catholic upbringing or Irish magical thinking, but I think thinkgs happen for a reason. I really do.
I thought the Lutherans believed that.
Oh my god, these Lutherans. Okay, I believe that if I enjoy any joy in my life I'll go to hell. That's what I believe. And uh, you get my point.
(show clip)