Conan O’Brien talked about a very tough time in his life on a new podcast episode, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. Over the past six months, he faced a lot of challenges — both of his parents passed away, he had to leave his home because of the wildfires in Los Angeles, and he hosted the Academy Awards.
All this happened while he was also supposed to be filming his travel show, Conan O’Brien Must Go.
Late November, I got the call about hosting the Oscars. I said, Yes. I would like to do that. And then we asked Nina Rosenstein at Max: Is it okay if we do that? And she said Yes, we’re thrilled with you doing the Oscars, but we do need you to finish up the last travel show. It would be great if you could do that.
O’Brien remembered
The comedian and his team “hurried to Austria” to wrap up the second season of the Max series, but they couldn’t finish filming before a tragedy occurred.
We were halfway through when I got a call that my father had passed away. We dropped everything. I jumped in a van, flew a couple of flights back to Boston, got there. And then two days after arriving, my mom passed away. And so it was this very powerful, strange time, and it was this double funeral, and everything was sort of chaotic and hard to process.
O’Brien said
Jose Arroyo, a writer for Must Go who was also on the podcast, shared a darkly funny memory from the day O’Brien got the phone call about his father’s passing.
You said, ‘There’s no easy way to say this, but my father passed away. And you just said, ‘I know one thing: I won’t be taking a yodeling lesson today.
Arroyo recalled
O’Brien said that Arroyo’s story was true.
That was on the schedule for that day. I was gonna meet up with a fan and learn how to yodel. And I just knew that you can’t — if you hear about your father passing away unexpectedly, and you go, ‘Right, okay, time to yodel in leather shorts,’ that is the definition of a sociopath. The holidays rolled around shortly after his parents’ deaths, and then the Los Angeles wildfires erupted just one week into the new year. [I’m] dislocated from my home and we’re working on the Oscars. I’m living in a hotel. Craziness.
he said
O’Brien hosted the Oscars on March 2 and was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on March 23.
He didn’t get even one day off between that event and picking up where he left off with his travel show.
The next morning, we all jumped on planes and flew to Austria to continue the Austria show.
he remembered
Unsurprisingly, the comedian said the past few months’ events had a major impact on him.
Because of all this stuff that had happened before and because I was kind of running on fumes, I think I was sillier during those three days. I was extra crazy silly and free associating like someone on drugs. So when you guys put the show together — I was in a fugue state.
he said of the Austria shoot
O’Brien pointed out that there’s a clear difference between the first and second parts of the Austria episode.
I watch it, and I know that it’s, like, bifurcated. It’s divided between, ‘This is before I hear about my parents’ and ‘This is much later afterwards. I’m back.’ But the viewer wouldn’t know that, but it’s just interesting.
he said
The former Late Night host explained that this was the only time Conan O’Brien Must Go faced such a major disruption in the middle of an episode.
We’ve never had to leave a country and then come back to it a couple of months later to finish one show.
he said
Source: EW