Known for his spontaneous hosting style, which has been characterized by The New York Times as "awkward, self-deprecating humor", O'Brien's late-night programs combine the "lewd and wacky with more elegant, narrative-driven short films".[4] His segments outside the studio, dubbed "remotes", have also become some of his best-received work, including the
international travel seriesConan Without Borders. With the retirement of
David Letterman on May 20, 2015, O'Brien became the longest-working late-night talk show host active in the
United States.[5] This active streak ended with O'Brien's retirement from late-night television in June 2021, with his entire run as a late-night host lasting nearly 30 years.
After graduating as
valedictorian in 1981, O'Brien entered Harvard University.[13] He lived in
Holworthy Hall during his first year with future businessman
Luis Ubiñas and two other roommates,[14] and in
Mather House during his three upper-class years.[15] He majored in History & Literature, and graduated magna cum laude with a
Bachelor of Arts degree in 1985.[16][17] O'Brien's senior thesis, entitled Literary Progeria in the Works of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, concerned the use of children as symbols in the works of
William Faulkner and
Flannery O'Connor.[18][19] During college, O'Brien briefly played drums in a band called the Bad Clams and was a writer for the Harvard Lampoon humor magazine.[20][better source needed] During his sophomore and junior years, he served as the Lampoon's president.[21] At this time, O'Brien's future boss at
NBC,
Jeff Zucker, was serving as president of the school newspaper The Harvard Crimson.[22]
Career
Early writing jobs and Saturday Night Live (1985–1991)
O'Brien, like many SNL writers, occasionally appeared as an extra in sketches; his most notable appearance was as a doorman in a sketch in which
Tom Hanks was inducted into the SNL "
Five-Timers Club" for hosting his fifth episode in 1990.[33] O'Brien and Robert Smigel wrote the television pilot for Lookwell starring
Adam West, which aired on NBC in 1991.[34] Even with support from
NBC president
Brandon Tartikoff, the pilot never went to series.[35] Despite the negative reviews, it became a
cult hit.[36] It was later screened at The Other Network, a festival of unaired TV pilots produced by
Un-Cabaret; it featured an extended interview with O'Brien and was rerun in 2002 on the
Trio network.[37]
In 1991, after the failure of his sitcom, O'Brien also had an engagement to be married fall through and he quit Saturday Night Live, citing
burnout.[38] "I told Lorne Michaels I couldn't come back to work and I just needed to do something else," O'Brien recalled. "I had no plan whatsoever. I was literally in this big transition phase in my life where I decided, I'll just walk around New York City, and an idea will come to me."[39]: 160–161 O'Brien would later return to the show as host in 2001,[40] and in a 2022 cameo appearance.[41]
The Simpsons (1991–1993)
I was very nervous when I started. They showed me into this office and told me to start writing down some ideas. They left me alone in that office. I left after five minutes to go get a cup of coffee. I heard a crash. I walked back to the office, and there was a hole in the window and a dead bird on the floor. Literally, in my first ten minutes at The Simpsons, a bird had flown through the glass of my window, hit the far wall, broken its neck, and fallen dead on the floor.
George Meyer came in and looked at it, and said, "Man, this is some kind of weird omen."
— O'Brien on his first moments at The Simpsons[39]: 160–161
Mike Reiss and
Al Jean, then
showrunners of the animated sitcom The Simpsons, called O'Brien and offered him a job.[42] The series was prestigious in the writing community at the time; O'Brien recalls "everyone wanted to be on that show, but they never hired."[39]: 160–161 O'Brien was one of the first hires after the show's original crew. With the help of an old Groundlings friend, actor
Lisa Kudrow, O'Brien purchased an apartment in
Beverly Hills.[38][39]: 163 He and Kudrow became romantically involved as well, and Kudrow believed he should begin performing rather than writing. O'Brien disagreed, feeling that Kudrow was flattering him, and asserting he was happy as a writer. In his speech given at Class Day at Harvard in 2000,[43] O'Brien credited The Simpsons with saving him, a reference to the career slump he was experiencing before being hired for the show.[44]
From 1991 to 1993, O'Brien was a writer and producer for The Simpsons. When O'Brien first arrived at the Fox lot, they temporarily gave him writer
Jeff Martin's office. O'Brien was nervous and self-conscious, feeling that he would embarrass himself in front of what he regarded as an intimidating collection of writers.[39]: 160–161 O'Brien would pitch characters in their voices, as he thought that was the norm, until Reiss informed him that no one did this.[39]: 162 [45] He fit in quickly, commanding control of the room frequently; writer
Josh Weinstein called it a "ten-hour Conan show, nonstop".[39]: 160–161 According to John Ortved, one of his fellow writers said that Conan had been a shoo-in to take over as showrunner.[39]: 160–161
O'Brien wrote some of the series' most acclaimed episodes: "
Marge vs. the Monorail" and "
Homer Goes to College".[39]: 160–161 [46] The show was initially a highly realistic family sitcom; after O'Brien's debut, the show took a rapid shift in the direction of the surreal.[39]: 164 O'Brien also has sole writing credits on "
New Kid on the Block" and "
Treehouse of Horror IV", on which he wrote the episode
wraparounds.
Wallace Wolodarsky described a "room character" Conan put on for the writers: "Conan used to do this thing called the Nervous Writer that involved him opening a can of
Diet Coke and then nervously pitching a joke. He would spray Diet Coke all over himself, and that was always a source of endless amusement among us."[39]: 162 During his time at The Simpsons, O'Brien also had a side project working with Smigel on the script for a musical film based on the "
Hans and Franz" sketch from Saturday Night Live, but the film was never produced.[47][48]
Meanwhile,
David Letterman was preparing to leave the talk show Late Night, prompting executive producer Lorne Michaels to search for a new host. Michaels approached O'Brien to produce; then-agent
Gavin Polone stressed that O'Brien wanted to perform, rather than produce.[39]: 164 He arranged with Michaels that O'Brien would do a test audition on the stage of The Tonight Show.
Jason Alexander and
Mimi Rogers were the guests, and the audience was composed of Simpsons writers.[39]: 165 Wolodarksky recalled the experience: "Seeing this friend of yours, this guy that you worked with, walk out from behind that curtain and deliver a monologue was like something you could only dream up that you couldn't ever imagine actually happening."[39]: 165 The performance was beamed by satellite to New York, where Lorne Michaels and NBC executives watched.[4] The audition was not well received by media commentators, citing his "awkward" humor.[49][50]
O'Brien was picked as the new host of Late Night on April 26, 1993.[4] During pre-production, writer
Robert Smigel suggested fellow writer
Andy Richter to sit beside O'Brien and act as a
sidekick.[51] As the writers headed to the voice record for "Homer Goes to College", O'Brien received a phone call from Polone informing him of the decision.[52] "He was passed out facedown into this horrible shag carpet. He was just quiet and comatose down there on that carpet," recalled postproduction supervisor Michael Mendel. "I remember looking at him and saying, 'Wow. Your life is about to change, in a really dramatic way.'"[39]: 166–167 Fox, however, would not let O'Brien out of his contract. Eventually, NBC and O'Brien split the cost to get him out of the contract.[39]: 166–167 [53][54] After O'Brien's departure, the writers at The Simpsons would watch videotaped episodes of Late Night at lunch the day following their midnight broadcast and analyze them.[39]: 166–167
Late Night with Conan O'Brien, originating from Studio 6A at
30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, premiered on September 13, 1993, to unfavorable reviews from contemporary critics.[55] This reception was not completely unsurprising: there was significant public apprehension due to O'Brien being virtually unknown to the public,[56][57][58] and O'Brien himself wrote a self-deprecating The New York Times piece titled "O'Brien Flops!" on the day of the show's premiere.[59] Critics attacked O'Brien:
Tom Shales of The Washington Post suggested that "the host resume his previous identity, Conan O'Blivion."[4][60] Generally, critics viewed O'Brien as nervous and fidgety on-camera, and that he was "too smart, too East Coast, too sophisticated, too young and even too tall to be successful."[4] The show was constantly at risk for cancellation; at one low point in 1994, NBC threatened to put him on a week-to-week contract. Executives were anxious to replace him with
Greg Kinnear, who followed O'Brien with Later at 1:30 am.[4] Interns filled empty seats in the audience while affiliates began to inquire about replacement hosts.[61][62] In one installment after a short stretch of reruns, sidekick
Andy Richter described his vacation activities as follows: "I sat back and reminded myself what it's like to be unemployed." The in-joke alluded to the rumors floating in the trades that NBC was near canceling the program.[63]
Late Night under O'Brien slowly but steadily acquired commercial and critical success. Banter between O'Brien and Richter improved, and sketches grew in popularity ("If They Mated", "Desk Drive", "In the Year 2000").[62] A reliable staple involved a TV screen, lowered behind O'Brien's desk and displaying a still photo of a news figure. The lips and voice of these characters (
Clutch Cargo) – frequently a party-crazed hillbilly interpretation of
Bill Clinton – were supplied by writing partner
Robert Smigel.[62] A turning point was David Letterman's February 1994 appearance. "It was a morale boost," said O'Brien. "I'm thinking, If the guy who created the 12:30 thing comes on and says we're smart and funny, let's go."[64] The show went through a wobble in January 1995 when Robert Smigel, feeling burned out, quit as head writer.[38] The show's quality improved slowly over time, and most credit O'Brien's growing comedic performance.[65] Within a year, a comedic formula began to arise: the show would combine the lewd and wacky with a more elegant, narrative-driven remotes.[4] Aside from the studio sketches, the show featured segments that occurred in the field, called
remotes.[66] One famous remote was when Conan visited a historic, Civil War-era baseball league.[4] That piece was one of O'Brien's personal favorites, later remarking, "When I leave this earth, at the funeral, just show this, because this pretty much says who I'm all about."[67]
O'Brien's audience, largely young and male (a coveted demographic), grew steadily and the show began to best competitors in the ratings, and continued to do so for 15 seasons.[4] In the early days of the Internet, fans launched unofficial websites, compiling precise summaries of each episode.[68] Even Tom Shales was a convert: he called the show "one of the most amazing transformations in television history."[62] Beginning in 1996, O'Brien and the Late Night writing team were nominated annually for the
Emmy Award for Best Writing in a Comedy or Variety Series, winning the award for the first and only time in 2007. In 1997, 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2004, he and the Late Night writing staff won the
Writers Guild Award for Best Writing in a Comedy/Variety Series. In 2001, he formed his own television production company,
Conaco, which subsequently shared in the production credits for Late Night.[7] That same year, he returned to Saturday Night Live, hosting the show during its 26th season.[40]
As of October 2005[update], Late Night with Conan O'Brien had for eleven years consistently attracted an audience averaging about 2.5 million viewers.[61] The apotheosis of the Late Night remotes centered on the realization, in 2006, that O'Brien bore a striking resemblance to
Tarja Halonen, entering her second term as president of
Finland. Capitalizing on the resemblance and on the
2006 Finnish presidential election, O'Brien and Late Night aired mock political ads both in support of Halonen and against her main opponent
Sauli Niinistö, which influenced popular perception of the race, which Halonen eventually won.[69] O'Brien traveled to Finland shortly after the election.[70] "We took the show to
Helsinki for five days," O'Brien recalled, "where we were embraced like a national treasure."[4][71] As part of the five-day trip, which was released as a one-hour special episode of Late Night, O'Brien met with Halonen at the Finnish
Presidential Palace.[72]
On February 20, 2009, NBC aired the last episode of Late Night with Conan O'Brien.[75] The show consisted of a compilation of previous Late Night clips and included a surprise appearance by former sidekick Andy Richter.
Will Ferrell,
John Mayer, and the
White Stripes also appeared. O'Brien ended the episode by destroying the set with an axe, handing out the pieces of the set to the audience,[76] and thanking a list of people who helped him. Among those thanked were Lorne Michaels, David Letterman,
Jay Leno, and O'Brien's wife and children.[77]
In 2019, clips from O'Brien's time on Late Night began to be posted on his TBS website and on the Team Coco YouTube channel.[78]
As part of a new contract negotiated with
NBC in 2004, the network decided that O'Brien would take over The Tonight Show from
Jay Leno in 2009.[80] Leno then moved to a
prime time slot, named The Jay Leno Show.[81] Hosting The Tonight Show was a lifelong dream of O'Brien's, and the promise of succeeding Leno kept him in NBC's employ despite the fact that he likely could have secured a more lucrative deal at another network.[82] O'Brien was a guest on Jay Leno's final episode of The Tonight Show.[83] On June 1, 2009,
Will Ferrell became Conan's first Tonight Show guest on the couch and
Pearl Jam appeared as his first musical guest.[84]
Conan acquired the nickname "Coco" after its use in the first "Twitter Tracker" sketch during the second episode of his Tonight Show run.[85] Guest Tom Hanks used the nickname during his subsequent interview, even getting the audience to chant it. In reaction to the
moniker, Conan remarked to Hanks in jest, "If that catches on, I'll sue you."[86] During the taping of the Friday, September 25, 2009, episode of The Tonight Show, O'Brien suffered a mild concussion after he slipped and hit his head while running a race as part of a comedy sketch with guest
Teri Hatcher. He was examined at a hospital and released the same day. A rerun was aired that night, but O'Brien returned to work the following Monday and poked fun at the incident.[87][88]
By November 2009, ratings for O'Brien's The Tonight Show declined by around 2 million viewers since the previous year when Leno was host.[89] On January 7, 2010, NBC executive Jeff Zucker met with Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien to discuss how to move Leno out of prime time, where his ratings were lackluster, and back into late night.[90] It was proposed that O'Brien would remain as host of The Tonight Show, which would run at 12:05 am with Leno hosting a 30-minute show at 11:35 pm.[91] Three days later,
NBC Universal Television Entertainment chairman
Jeff Gaspin confirmed that The Jay Leno Show would be moved to 11:35 pm following NBC's coverage of the
2010 Winter Olympics.[92]
Every comedian, every comedian dreams of hosting The Tonight Show and—for seven months—I got to do it. I did it my way, with people I love, and I do not regret a second [of it].... All I ask is one thing, and I'm asking this particularly of young people that watch: Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism; for the record it's my least favorite quality. It doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen.
—Conan O'Brien, on his departure from The Tonight Show, January 22, 2010[93]
Sources familiar with the situation stated that O'Brien was unhappy and disappointed with NBC's plan.[94] On January 12, O'Brien released this statement: "I sincerely believe that delaying The Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn't The Tonight Show."[95] On January 21, 2010, it was announced that Conan had reached a deal with NBC that would see him exit The Tonight Show the next day. The deal also granted him $45 million, of which $12 million was designated for distribution to his staff, who had moved with Conan to Los Angeles from New York when he left Late Night.[96]
Jay Leno returned to The Tonight Show following NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Under the $45 million deal with NBC, Conan was allowed to start working for another network as soon as September 2010.[99][100] Conan's rumored next networks ranged from Fox to
Comedy Central.[101] Other networks reportedly interested in O'Brien included
TNT,
HBO,
FX,
Showtime,
Revision3,[102] and even the
NBC Universal–owned
USA Network.[103]
On February 8, 2010, it was reported that O'Brien was attempting to sell his
Central Park West penthouse in New York with an asking price of $35 million.[104] He had purchased the apartment in 2007 for $10 million.[105] Two years earlier, O'Brien had purchased a home in the
Brentwood section of Los Angeles for over $10.5 million.[106] Some industry insiders have speculated that O'Brien had chosen to stay on the west coast in order to facilitate a return to late night television and because he did not want to put his children through another move.[107]
O'Brien was included in the 2010
Time 100, a list compiled by Time of the 100 most influential people in the world as voted on by readers.[108] After being prohibited from making television appearances of any kind until May, O'Brien spoke about the Tonight Show conflict on the
CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes on May 2, 2010.[109] During the interview with
Steve Kroft, O'Brien said the situation felt "like a marriage breaking up suddenly, violently, quickly. And I was just trying to figure out what happened." He also said he "absolutely" expected NBC to give him more of a chance and that, if in Jay Leno's position, he would not have come back to The Tonight Show. However, Conan said he did not feel unfortunate. "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," said O'Brien. "I hope people still find me comedically absurd and ridiculous. And I don't regret anything."[110]
On March 11, 2010, O'Brien announced via his Twitter account that he would embark on a 30-city live tour beginning April 12, 2010, entitled, "
The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour".[111] Co-host
Andy Richter, along with members of the former
Tonight Show Band, joined O'Brien on the tour.[112]Max Weinberg, however, was not able to join,[113] except for a guest appearance at one of Conan's New York City shows.[114] On April 12, 2010, O'Brien opened his two-month comedy tour in
Eugene, Oregon, with a crowd of 2,500 and no TV cameras.[115] The tour traveled through America's Northwest and Canada before moving on to larger cities, including Los Angeles and New York City, where he performed at
Radio City Music Hall, next to his former Late Night studios.[116][117] The tour ended in
Atlanta on June 14.[118] In 2011, the documentary film titled Conan O'Brien Can't Stop was released which followed O'Brien throughout his comedy tour.[119] The film premiered March 2011 at the
South by Southwest media festival to positive reviews.[120][121] It was directed by
Rodman Flender who is O'Brien's personal friend and classmate at Harvard University.[122]
The day his live tour began, O'Brien announced that he would host a new show on cable station
TBS.[1] The show,
Conan, debuted on November 8, 2010, and aired Monday through Thursday at 11:00 pm ET/10:00 pm CT.[123][124] O'Brien's addition moved Lopez Tonight with
George Lopez back one hour.[2] Refusing at first to do to Lopez what had happened to him at NBC, O'Brien agreed to join the network after Lopez called to persuade him to come to TBS.[125]
In February 2015, following the onset of the
Cuban thaw, O'Brien became the first American television personality to film in
Cuba for more than half a century.[126] O'Brien then visited
Armenia for his next show abroad, during which he featured his assistant
Sona Movsesian, who is
Armenian American.[127] While visiting, Conan guest-starred as a gangster on an Armenian soap opera.[128] In April 2016, O'Brien visited
South Korea in response to a fan letter urging him to visit, as well as a growing fan base online. His visit included a trip to the
Korean Demilitarized Zone, which resulted in O'Brien and
Steven Yeun also visiting
North Korea on a technicality by stepping across the border line at the
DMZ. Conan commented on the significance during the sketch, claiming, "The idea that you and I could be in North Korea, talking and communicating freely, seems like kind of a cool message."[129][130] These remotes were later branded Conan Without Borders and became part of their own series, with O'Brien eventually traveling to thirteen countries in total.[131][132] The series became some of his most popular work, winning an Emmy in 2018.[133][131] The international shows became available on
Netflix before moving to
HBO Max.[134][135]
TBS extended the show through 2018 in 2014[136] and through 2022 in 2017.[137] In late 2018, Conan took a three-month hiatus while O'Brien launched another national comedy tour. The show returned January 22, 2019, in a new half-hour format without the live band.[138]
In response to the
impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the program switched to a remotely-produced format from O'Brien's home beginning March 30, 2020.[139][140] In July 2020, it was announced that Conan would continue with this format, but would be filmed with limited on-site staff from the
Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles and no studio audience — making it the first American late-night talk show to return to filming outside of the host's residence (albeit still not from its main studio).[141] In November 2020, TBS announced that Conan would end in June 2021.[142] The final show aired on June 24, 2021, featuring a live audience and marking the end of O'Brien's twenty-eight year run as a late-night host.[143] It was announced that O'Brien would move to a weekly untitled variety show on fellow
WarnerMedia property
HBO Max, where he was expected to focus more on his podcast and travel shows with a relaxed production schedule.[144][145] On his final show, O'Brien featured fictional character
Homer Simpson, marking also the three episodes that O'Brien wrote for the series.[146] Comedians
Will Ferrell and
Jack Black also paid their farewell to the show in the series finale.[147]
Podcasting and Conan O'Brien Must Go (2018–present)
In 2018, O'Brien's production company, Team Coco, partnered with
Earwolf to launch his own weekly podcast, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.[148] The podcast debuted November 18, 2018, with
Will Ferrell as the first guest.[138] O'Brien stated the title is
tongue-in-cheek, saying he would like to see if celebrity guests would actually be his friends.[149] In each episode, Conan is joined by his guest, as well as his assistant
Sona Movsesian and the show's producer
Matt Gourley.[150] Guests on the podcast have included
Barack and
Michelle Obama,
Stephen Colbert, and
Bob Newhart among others.[151] The podcast has received strong reviews and became the top podcast on
iTunes. The podcast has also won numerous awards throughout its run.[152][153]Deadline Hollywood reported that, as of August 2021, the podcast had been downloaded over 250 million times and was averaging more than 9 million downloads per month.[150]
In May 2022, O'Brien's podcast, as well as the entire Team Coco
digital media business, was sold to
SiriusXM for $150 million.[a] This sale included all other Team Coco podcasts including Inside Conan and Parks and Recollection, as well as the development of a comedy channel for SiriusXM radio service.[156][157]
On April 18, 2024,
HBO released a four-episode international travel series titled Conan O'Brien Must Go on
Max to widespread critical acclaim.[158] The series featured O'Brien traveling to Norway, Argentina, Thailand, and Ireland to meet fans whom he had previously featured via video calls in his podcast series Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan.[159][160][161][162] The show was renewed for a second season of six episodes in May 2024.[158] To promote the first season's release, O'Brien appeared on the interview show Hot Ones, where guests eat increasingly spicy
chicken wings. The intensity and humor of his episode received significant media attention, resulting in widespread praise of his performance and more generally as a comedic performer.[163][164][165]
O'Brien was executive producer and co-wrote the
pilot of the 2007
NBC adventure/comedy series Andy Barker, P.I., starring O'Brien's sidekick
Andy Richter.[166] After six episodes and low ratings, the show was canceled despite being named one of the Top Ten Shows of 2007 by Entertainment Weekly.[167][168] Later,
USA Network ordered a pilot episode of the medical-themed Operating Instructions, which was produced by O'Brien's production company
Conaco.[169] In January 2010, NBC ordered two pilots from Conaco, the one-hour courtroom drama Outlaw and a half-hour comedy.[170]Outlaw was produced in eight episodes and premiered on September 15, 2010.[171]
On the TV show 30 Rock, O'Brien is depicted as an ex-boyfriend of lead character
Liz Lemon, who works in the same building.[178] In the episode "
Tracy Does Conan", Conan appears as himself, awkwardly reunited with Lemon and coerced by network executive
Jack Donaghy into having the character
Tracy Jordan on Late Night, despite having been assaulted in Jordan's previous appearance.[179] O'Brien also made a cameo appearance on the U.S. version of The Office. In the episode "
Valentine's Day",
Michael believes that he spots former SNL cast member,
Tina Fey, but has actually mistaken another woman for her. In the meantime, Conan has a quick walk-on, and the camera crew informs Michael when he returns from talking to the Tina Fey lookalike.[180] In 2011, he starred as himself in the web series Web Therapy (opposite
Lisa Kudrow) for three episodes.[181] O'Brien also made a guest appearance as the "Wandering MC" in the 2019 video game Death Stranding,[182][183] where he communicates with the player using voice lines and facial expressions recorded during his visit to
Kojima Productions' headquarters.[184]
O'Brien, seen here demonstrating his long legs at
SXSW in March 2024, is known for his active, spontaneous, and self-deprecating humor.
On Late Night, O'Brien became known for his active and
spontaneous hosting style,[7] which has been characterized as "
self-deprecating" by both media outlets and O'Brien himself.[216][217] This spontaneity is also apparent in remotes in which he is put in novel and open-ended environments. Some of these, such as a "Civil War-era baseball" remote during Late Night and his international Conan Without Borders shows, are among his best-received work.[67][218]
Personal life
O'Brien met Elizabeth Ann "Liza" Powel in 2000, when, as a senior copywriter for the advertising agency
Foote, Cone & Belding, she appeared in a skit on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in which O'Brien sought to craft a more effective TV commercial for
Hilton Furniture, a store in Houston, where O'Brien's show was only broadcast at 2:40am.[219][220] The couple dated for nearly 18 months before their 2002 marriage in Powel's hometown of
Seattle.[221] O'Brien and Powel have a daughter, Neve (born 2003)[222] and a son, Beckett (born 2005).[223]
O'Brien often speaks about his
Irish Catholic heritage.[224][225] On a 2009 episode of Inside the Actors Studio, he stated that ancestors from both sides of his family moved to America from Ireland starting in the 1850s, subsequently marrying only other Irish Catholics, and that his lineage is thus 100% Irish Catholic.[7] His entirely homogenous ancestry was confirmed via DNA test a decade later, which he shared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. O’Brien noted that being entirely descended from just one ethnic group is extremely rare, and that his being so “shocked” his doctor.[226]
He has been a registered
Democrat since casting his first vote for president in 1984 for
Walter Mondale. He considers himself a
moderate on the political spectrum.[7][227] O'Brien founded the anti-hunger organization Labels Are For Jars with his friend and former Harvard dormmate Father Paul B. O'Brien.[228] He also helped open the Cor Unum meal center in
Lawrence, Massachusetts in 2006.[229][230]
Starting in September 2006, O'Brien was
stalked by Father David Ajemian of the
Archdiocese of Boston, who, despite multiple warnings to stop, sent O'Brien letters signed as "your priest stalker".[231] Ajemian later sent O'Brien death threats and tried to forcefully enter a taping of Late Night before being arrested.[232] On April 8, 2008, Ajemian pleaded guilty to stalking, and was later
laicized.[233][234]
In January 2008, after his show was put on hold for two months owing to the
strike by the Writers Guild of America, he reemerged on late-night TV sporting a
beard, which guest
Tom Brokaw described as making him look like "a draft dodger from the Civil War."[235] After leaving The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien in 2010, O'Brien again grew a beard, which he kept until May 2011, when it was partially shaved on the set of Conan by
Will Ferrell (and completely shaved off-screen by a professional barber).[236]
On June 12, 2011, O'Brien was awarded an honorary
Doctor of Arts degree from
Dartmouth College.[241] In addition to the honorary degree, he delivered the
commencement speech.[242][243] On October 21, 2011, O'Brien was ordained as a minister by the
Universal Life Church Monastery,[244] allowing him to perform a same-sex marriage in New York, then one of the few states in the US where gay marriage was legal, to tape a week's worth of shows.[245] The wedding, between a member of O'Brien's staff and his partner, was held on the stage of the
Beacon Theatre on November 3, 2011, and broadcast on Conan.[246] The
same-sex marriage ceremony was the first to be broadcast on American late night television.[247]
^Citing unnamed sources, The Wall Street Journal stated the deal was worth $150 million.[154] The official terms of the deal were not made public.[155]
^Aucoin, Don (August 31, 2003).
"Understanding Conan". The Boston Globe Magazine. Archived from
the original on October 7, 2021. Retrieved May 23, 2022.