Name: Conan O’Brien on Prince Lying to Him, Interviewing Obama and "Conan O’Brien Must Go"
Uploaded: 2025-03-20T16:29:30.000Z
Duration: 10 min 43 s
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Uh, congratulations on the podcast, uh, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.

Yeah, and what's been fun is it, um, started...

It started as almost kind of a joke, and then it really blew up, and it's been so much fun, and I do it with Sonam Ovsessian, Matt Gourley, and...

She's my assistant in real life, and always mouths off to me and doesn't care, and she's wonderful.

And, um, and I love doing it because as much...

This is, as you can attest, this is the best job in the world, but there is a thing where you talk to these people, and, you know, it's like six minutes, and then take a break, seven minutes, take a break, because you got to make sure you...

That's the format, and now I talk to people for an hour, and I just talked to, you know, one of my all-time heroes from when I was a kid, Carol Burnett, and talked to her for an hour, and I left the interview, and I'm driving home thinking about me as a kid sitting on the heating grate, you know, in Brookline, Mass, with my family, because whoever got the heating grate got the heat, and watching Carol Burnett, and how she was television comedy to me for a while, and the fact that I just spent an hour with her and had a mind meld, and I'm practically crying.

Irish Catholic, I can't really cry, but...

I loved this, I absolutely adored it, but this is a nice thing to do at this stage in my life.

When you did this job, you met everybody.

I know people ask you this question, but...

I bet you we have one person in common, which is McCartney, because we're both Beatle fanatics, so the times that I've had a chance to, a couple of times, interact with Paul McCartney.

Yeah, he almost acts like he's doing an impression of Paul McCartney.

I go, well, you know, that's great, Jimmy, you know, that's good, and I go, don't do that.

We were doing the podcast, and President Obama came on the podcast, and he comes into this room.

He comes into the room where we're gonna do it, and I'm just in the kitchen area of this nice hotel suite, and I hear him come in, and I just hear, like, hello, everybody.

And I start laughing, and all of a sudden,

Obama's head sticks around the corner, and he says, what are you laughing about, Conan?

And I said, it just sounds like someone doing a Barack Obama impression.

I have to say the most unique person was Prince, because, you know, just, people talk about talent, and then you see one person who's, there's 75,000 talented people in one person, but also, it was, he had this sort of trickster thing about him, do you know what I'm talking about?

He was almost like a Batman villain, who was perfect looking, but also playing little mind games on you in a fun way, and I, and so I did this benefit once.

Tiger Woods asked me to emcee a benefit, and so I'm out in Las Vegas, and I'm hosting this benefit, and they got everybody to be on this thing, and the closer's gonna be Stevie Wonder, and so I say, ladies and gentlemen, Stevie Wonder, and there had been a rumor that Prince was gonna join

Stevie Wonder on stage for the last song, and I was like, that would be amazing.

So I go back, I say, ladies and gentlemen, Stevie Wonder.

I go backstage, and I'm standing there, and then you just feel a presence.

I just felt a presence, and I look over, it's Prince, and he's the most perfect looking, right, person in the world, like, just beautiful skin, wearing like a turquoise body suit, just perfect, and he's just standing there, and he looks like he's made out of porcelain, just gorgeous, seriously.

He's like a statue of Prince, and he's gorgeous, beautiful, and I just look over at him, just as he looks at me, and he goes, hi.

And I go, hi, hi, hello, and I don't know what to call him, because his name was changing, and I'm like, oh, Fred.

And he went, no, and I said, oh, you're not gonna play with Stevie Wonder?

And he went, no, they tried to get me to, but I just don't feel it tonight, and I said, oh, and I said, so, huh, because that's what they're saying, and he went, no, it was a rumor, just a rumor.

Just a rumor, not gonna play with Stevie Wonder, and I went, oh, okay, so then I listen, and out on the audience, Stevie Wonder starts to play the opening to Superstition, you know, on the piano, he starts to play it, and just then I see some motion, and out of the corner of my eye, a guy has put a guitar over Prince, and he starts playing the guitar lick, because he's radioed in.

Ba-dum-bum-bum-bum, dum-dum-dum-da-dum-da-dum-da-dum, and he looks at me, and he says, bye, and walks out.

Just walks out like, bye, dum-dum-dum-dum-da-dum-da-dum.

Yeah, and then, I'll teach it to you guys, Jesus.

And then I realized, there's a beauty to it, it's a surprise, so it's a surprise for the, whatever, 30,000 people in the crowd, but also for Conan, too.

Or, I just was like, that is so weird, but I also loved it.

Yeah, I mean, all sorts of weird stuff, and trickery, and stuff like that.

I have a story where I got a text one night, and said, Prince wants to play ping pong against you.

Oh, it's never Prince, too, it's other people telling you.

Yeah, it was Prince's manager or something, and I go, I have to go, I think Prince wants to meet me, and so they go, okay.

It's like when Batman says, I need you, you just go, you know, it's just like.

I got in a cab, I went down to this place, Spin, and I went in, and I go, hey, I'm here to see, and she goes, Prince?

She goes, yeah, he's right in that room over there.

I go in, and Prince is waiting for me, in like a double-breasted, crushed, purple velvet, and holding a ping pong paddle, and he goes, you ready to do this?

And I was like, and it was the most insane night ever.

It was just us, playing ping pong, and it was just crazy, and I.

And I bet if I had run into him outside, and said, did you just play ping pong with Jimmy Fallon?

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Conan O’Brien on Prince Lying to Him, Interviewing Obama and "Conan O’Brien Must Go"

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