Conan O’Brien might be a visitor on ‘The Tonight Present,’ 14 years after his acrimonious exit
Does time — and a brand new host — heal all wounds? Fourteen years after Conan O’Brien was messily ousted from NBC’s “The Tonight Present” to make manner for the return of Jay Leno — the comic is lastly again.
O’Brien will seem on the April 9 present to advertise his new journey sequence “Conan O’Brien Should Go” for Max in dialog with Jimmy Fallon, who took over from Leno in 2014.
After greater than 15 years of internet hosting “Late Evening with Conan O’Brien” on NBC, O’Brien was promoted to steer the community’s flagship late-night present in 2009, after it was introduced Leno could be given a brand new prime-time present, additionally on NBC.
After seven months of slipping “Tonight Present” scores and and stress from associates who mentioned “The Jay Leno Present” wasn’t a powerful sufficient lead-in to their nightly newscasts, NBC made a plan to shorten Leno’s present to a half-hour and provides it a 11:35 p.m. timeslot, which might have bumped “The Tonight Present” to 12:05 a.m.
“It was my mistaken perception that, like my predecessor, I might benefit from a while and, simply as essential, some extent of scores assist from the prime-time schedule,” O’Brien mentioned on the time in an announcement.
He refused to just accept the transfer, and the general public spat ended with O’Brien and his employees receiving a multimillion-dollar payout to exit NBC in early 2010.
“And I simply need to say to the youngsters on the market watching: You are able to do something you need in life. Until Jay Leno needs to do it, too,” O’Brien mentioned in a monologue earlier than his departure, calling “The Tonight Present” the success of a lifelong dream.
O’Brien did not keep off the airwaves for too lengthy, returning to late-night in November 2010 on basic-cable community TBS. “Conan” would run for almost 11 years. (The primary episode beat Leno’s “Tonight Present” within the scores.)
In 2012, O’Brien instructed The Hollywood Reporter that whereas he nonetheless had latent resentment, he acknowledged a onetime “superb partnership with NBC.”
“There are moments of, ‘What the hell occurred? Why did that individual do this or say that?’ However there’s additionally lot of, ‘OK, let’s file this beneath There’s A Lot I Can’t Management,’” he instructed the commerce publication, including that he and Leno now not spoke to 1 one other.
O’Brien’s return to “The Tonight Present” — which moved from Southern California to New York when Fallon took the helm — is not the primary time Fallon has used his present to increase an olive department. On his first evening as host, Joan Rivers made a short look in a bit the place celebrities paid up after betting cash Fallon would by no means be host. Rivers had been infamously banned from the present when Johnny Carson was the host after she bought her personal late-night present on Fox. (After his acrimonious departure from NBC, O’Brien himself visited “Late Evening with Jimmy Fallon” in a shock look.)
As for O’Brien, he now hosts the podcast “Conan O’Brien Wants a Pal.” In his new journey present, O’Brien visits nations like Eire, Thailand, Argentina and Norway.
The general vibe amongst late-night speak present hosts has additionally advanced from the times of intense competitors between Leno and CBS’ David Letterman to congeniality — and even friendship. Final summer season, Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, John Oliver and Jimmy Kimmel teamed up for a podcast known as “Strike Power 5” to assist their employees throughout the writers strike.
