Name: Conan O’Brien on Hosting the Oscars Again & the Letterman Bit That Would Have Ended His Career
Uploaded: 2026-03-17T21:32:45.000Z
Duration: 19 min 47 s
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To-infinitive

Our first guest tonight is the tallest and pinkest man ever entrusted to host the Academy Awards.

He returns to the Oscars live Sunday night, 7 Eastern, 4 Pacific, right here on ABC and on Hulu 2.

The imperative

You sound like an angry jury, so just settle down.

That's more alarming than fun, but I appreciate it.

this is my show and none of them chanted my name when I came in, when I walked out here, so there's a lot of anger in that.

You're hosting the Oscars in like three and a half days.

You've been there and there are many challenges.

Of all media, you do a lot of press, right.

And you tell each city in America that you're my favorite city.

And then the station in Bangor, Maine said that you just cheated on them with Cincinnati.

But I've been working on this for a while and I've been out workshopping jokes in different clubs.

I think it's interesting that I was always too paranoid to go and read the jokes to an audience in a club because I worried that somebody would give it to TMZ or something.

And I'm really heartened by this idea that the one thing that people will still protect is punchlines to jokes and the endings to movies and TV shows.

I also think if the jokes aren't great, they don't repeat them.

How do you decide where you're gonna go to test the jokes?

You know, I a terrific writer who worked with me for years and worked with me on the Oscars last year and this year, and

And Lori Kilmartin is like my coach and she's a terrific stand up in addition to being an amazing writer.

And she will say, all right, Conan, tonight you're going to, you know, the Chatterbox in Covina.

And the next thing you know, I'm changing passports.

I mean, I'm driving for a really long time, but

I go to these places and I love it there.

A lot of young comics and they all hang out in an alley before the show and there's just a great vibe.

And they're probably very excited that you're there.

They get over the shock of seeing what I look like in person.

And then once they recover from that, we have a really good time hanging out.

And what's lovely is you go to these different places.

I mean, I've played places where you have to hold the joke because you can hear that bowling is going on and behind a wall.

And I love showing up where no one expects me to be there.

They don't particularly want me to be there.

There are times where there are certain areas we cannot crack.

Can't get a good joke for Train Dreams, which maybe means there is no good joke for Train Dreams.

And let me ask this audience who has seen Train Dreams go live?

And so I think my writers, they write a lot of jokes and I keep going out and trying them out.

I think they've written 5,000 jokes in train Dreams.

Like if you have seen the movie, it's probably worse, right?

I mean, first of all, it's a beautiful movie.

It's a beautiful movie, but it's just no joke.