Conan O'BrienO'Brien in 2025BornConan Christopher O'Brien (1963-04-18) April 18, 1963 (age 62)Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S.EducationHarvard University (BA)Notable workSaturday Night Live (writer, 1988–1991)The Simpsons (writer, producer, 1991–1993)Late Night with Conan O'Brien (host, 1993–2009)The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (host, 2009–2010)Conan (host, 2010–2021)Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend (host, 2018–present)Spouse Liza Powel (m. 2002)Children2RelativesDenis Leary (third cousin)Comedy careerYears active1983–presentMediumTelevisionfilmpodcastGenresImprovisational comedysketch comedyphysical comedysurreal humorblack comedymusical comedySubjectsAmerican cultureeveryday lifepop culturecurrent eventssocial awkwardnessself-deprecation Signature
Conan Christopher O'Brien (born April 18, 1963) is an American television host, comedian and writer. He is best known for hing hosted late-night talk shows, beginning with Late Night with Conan O'Brien (1993–2009) and The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (2009–2010) on the NBC television network, and Conan (2010–2021) on the cable channel TBS. Before his hosting career, O'Brien was a writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1988 to 1991, and the Fox animated sitcom The Simpsons from 1991 to 1993. He has hosted the podcast series Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend since 2018, and starred in the 2024 trel show Conan O'Brien Must Go on Max.
Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, O'Brien was raised in an Irish Catholic family. He served as president of The Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, where he graduated with an AB degree in history and literature. He was a writer for the sketch comedy series Not Necessarily the News. After writing for several comedy shows in Los Angeles, he joined the writing staff of Saturday Night Live. O'Brien was a writer and producer for The Simpsons for two seasons until he was selected by Lorne Michaels and NBC to take over Did Letterman's position as host of Late Night in 1993. Despite unforable reviews and threats of cancellation in the show's first years, O'Brien and the show developed and became highly regarded, earning a Primetime Emmy Award. He hosted Late Night for 16 years, and as of 2025 is still the longest-serving host in the history of the franchise.
In 2009, O'Brien moved from New York to Los Angeles to host his own incarnation of The Tonight Show for seven months until highly publicized network politics prompted a host change in 2010. After this departure, O'Brien hosted a 32-city live comedy tour titled The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour, which was the subject of the documentary Conan O'Brien Can't Stop (2011). He then hosted Conan from 2010 to 2021. Throughout his career, he has also hosted a number of awards shows and television specials, including the Emmy Awards in 2002 and 2006, the White House Correspondents' dinner in 1995 and 2013, and the Academy Awards in 2025.[1][2] O'Brien was named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in 2010,[3] and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2025.[4] He is the 2025 recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.[5]
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".[6] His remotes he also become some of his best-received work, including the international trel series Conan Without Borders. With the retirement of Did Letterman on May 20, 2015, O'Brien became the longest-working late-night talk show host active in the United States.[7] 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.
Early lifeConan Christopher O'Brien was born on April 18, 1963, in Brookline, Massachusetts.[8] His father, Thomas Francis O'Brien (1929–2024), was a physician and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, specializing in epidemiology.[9][10] His mother, Ruth O'Brien (née Reardon; 1931–2024), was an attorney and partner at the Boston firm Ropes & Gray.[11][12] O'Brien has three brothers and two sisters,[13] and is a third cousin of fellow comedian Denis Leary.[14][15] O'Brien attended Brookline High School, where he served as the managing editor of the school newspaper, then called The Sagamore.[9] He was a congressional intern for Congressmen Robert Drinan and Barney Frank, and in his senior year won the National Council of Teachers of English writing contest with his short story "To Bury the Living".[16][17]
After graduating as valedictorian in 1981, O'Brien entered Harvard University.[18] He lived in Holworthy Hall during his first year with future businessman Luis Ubiñas and two other roommates,[19] and in Mather House during his three upper-class years.[20] He majored in history and literature, and graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1985.[21][22] 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 Faulkner and O'Connor.[23][24] During college, O'Brien briefly played drums in a band called the Bad Clams and was a writer for the Harvard Lampoon humor magazine.[25] During his sophomore and junior years, he served as the Lampoon's president.[26] At this time, O'Brien's future boss at NBC, Jeff Zucker, was serving as president of the school newspaper The Harvard Crimson.[27]
Career Early writing jobs and Saturday Night Live (1985–1991)After graduating from Harvard, O'Brien moved to Los Angeles to join the writing staff of HBO's sketch comedy series Not Necessarily the News, where he worked for two seasons.[28] Around this time, he started taking improvisation classes with Cynthia Szigeti and The Groundlings.[29][30] His next job as a writer was on the short-lived The Wilton North Report.[31] In January 1988, Saturday Night Live (SNL) executive producer Lorne Michaels hired O'Brien as a writer.[32] During his three years on SNL, he wrote such recurring sketches as "Mr. Short-Term memory" and "The Girl Watchers"; the latter was first performed by Tom Hanks and Jon Lovitz.[33]
While on a writers' strike from Saturday Night Live following the 1987–88 season, O'Brien put on an improvisational comedy revue in Chicago with fellow SNL writers Bob Odenkirk and Robert Smigel called Happy Happy Good Show.[34][35] While living in Chicago, O'Brien briefly shared an apartment with Jeff Garlin near Wrigley Field.[36] In 1989, O'Brien and his fellow SNL writers received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series.[37]
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.[38] O'Brien and Robert Smigel wrote the television pilot for Lookwell starring Adam West, which aired on NBC in 1991.[39] Even with support from NBC president Brandon Tartikoff, the pilot never went to series.[40] Despite the negative reviews, it became a cult hit.[41] 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.[42]
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.[43] "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."[44]: 160–161 O'Brien would later return to the show as host in 2001,[45] and in a 2022 cameo appearance.[46]
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[44]: 160–161 O'Brien in the offices of the writers of The Simpsons, 1992Mike Reiss and Al Jean, then showrunners of the animated sitcom The Simpsons, called O'Brien and offered him a job.[47] 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."[44]: 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.[43][44]: 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,[48] O'Brien credited The Simpsons with sing him, a reference to the career slump he was experiencing before being hired for the show.[49]
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 ge 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.[44]: 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.[44]: 162 [50] He fit in quickly, commanding control of the room frequently; writer Josh Weinstein called it a "ten-hour Conan show, nonstop".[44]: 160–161 According to John Ortved, one of his fellow writers said that O'Brien had been a shoo-in to take over as showrunner.[44]: 160–161
O'Brien wrote some of the series' most acclaimed episodes: "Marge vs. the Monorail" and "Homer Goes to College".[44]: 160–161 [51] 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.[44]: 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" O'Brien 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."[44]: 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.[52][53]
Meanwhile, Did Letterman was preparing to lee the talk show Late Night, prompting executive producer Lorne Michaels to search for a new host. Michaels approached O'Brien to produce; then-agent Gin Polone stressed that O'Brien wanted to perform, rather than produce.[44]: 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.[44]: 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."[44]: 165 The performance was beamed by satellite to New York, where Lorne Michaels and NBC executives watched.[6] The audition was not well received by media commentators, citing his "awkward" humor.[54][55]
O'Brien was picked as the new host of Late Night on April 26, 1993.[6] 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.[56] "He was passed out facedown into this horrible shag carpet. He was just quiet and comatose down there on that carpet," recalled postproduction supervisor J. Michael Mendel. "I remember looking at him and saying, 'Wow. Your life is about to change, in a really dramatic way.'"[44]: 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.[44]: 166–167 [57][58] During pre-production, writer Robert Smigel suggested fellow writer Andy Richter to sit beside O'Brien and act as a sidekick.[59] 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.[44]: 166–167
Late Night (1993–2009) Main article: Late Night with Conan O'BrienLate Night with Conan O'Brien, originating from Studio 6A at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, premiered on September 13, 1993, to unforable reviews from contemporary critics.[60] This reception was not completely unsurprising: there was significant public apprehension due to O'Brien being virtually unknown to the public,[61][62][63] 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.[64] Critics attacked O'Brien: Tom Shales of The Washington Post suggested that "the host resume his previous identity, Conan O'Blivion."[6][65] 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."[6] 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.[6] Interns filled empty seats in the audience while affiliates began to inquire about replacement hosts.[66][67] 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.[68]
Late Night under O'Brien slowly but steadily acquired commercial and critical success. Sketches grew in popularity ("If They Mated", "Desk Drive", "In the Year 2000").[67] 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.[67] A turning point was Did 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."[69] The show went through a wobble in January 1995 when Robert Smigel, feeling burned out, quit as head writer.[43] An increase in quality over time, perceived by some observers, was sometimes credited to a growth in O'Brien's comedic performance.[70] Within a year, a comedic formula began to arise: the show would combine the lewd and wacky with more elegant, narrative-driven remotes.[6][71] One famous remote was when O'Brien visited a historic, Civil War-era baseball league.[6] That piece was one of O'Brien's personal forites, later remarking, "When I lee this earth, at the funeral, just show this, because this pretty much says who I'm all about."[72]
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.[6] In the early days of the Internet, fans launched unofficial websites, compiling precise summaries of each episode.[73] Even Tom Shales was a convert: he called the show "one of the most amazing transformations in television history."[67] 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.[9] That same year, he returned to Saturday Night Live, hosting the show during its 26th season.[45]
O'Brien at the US Embassy in Helsinki in 2006As of October 2005[update], Late Night with Conan O'Brien had for eleven years consistently attracted an audience eraging about 2.5 million viewers.[66] In 2006, O'Brien exploited his perceived 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.[74] O'Brien treled to Finland shortly after the election.[75] "We took the show to Helsinki for five days," O'Brien recalled, "where we were embraced like a national treasure."[6][76] 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.[77]
During the writers' strike in 2008, O'Brien staged a mock feud with Comedy Central's Jon Stewart (of The Daily Show) and Stephen Colbert (of The Colbert Report) over a dispute about which of the three were responsible for giving a "bump" to Mike Huckabee's campaign to become the Republican presidential nominee.[78] This feud crossed over all three shows during the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike.[79]
On February 20, 2009, NBC aired the last episode of Late Night with Conan O'Brien.[80] 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,[81] and thanking a list of people who helped him. Among those thanked were Lorne Michaels, Did Letterman, Jay Leno, and O'Brien's wife and children.[82]
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.[83]
The Tonight Show (2009–2010) Main articles: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien and 2010 Tonight Show conflict