Will Arnett Returns

Actor Will Arnett feels just fine about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Will sits down with Conan once more to discuss the power of healing through comedic bits, developing a stand-up act for his new film Is This Thing On?, reevaluating his own geographical placement, and more. For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: (669) 587-2847.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Conan O'Brien?

  With the US Bank Smartly Visa Signature Card, you earn an unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase. Huh, it's a good deal.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:10Conan O'Brien?

  No quarterly activations, no categories to track, just unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase. Sona, just the other day, I bought you this antique wig stand.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 0:21Conan O'Brien?

  And I didn't get cash back, and I regret it now.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Well, that's a very thoughtful gift.

• 0:27Conan O'Brien?

  Do you wear a wig, or is that your hair?

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely not. It's definitely my hair. And so it's kind of insulting you would buy that gift for me.

• 0:34Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I'll just return it anyway, but I do wish I got cash back.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:38Conan O'Brien?

  Visit usbank.com/smartlycard to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions may apply.

• 0:52Conan O'Brien?

  Now, Sona, clearly, I'm a very important person to you.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:55Conan O'Brien?

  Just accept the premise and we'll move ahead.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 0:57Conan O'Brien?

  I'm a very important person to you. What would you get me from Macy's for the holidays?

• 1:03Speaker 01

  A vase.

• 1:04Conan O'Brien?

  No, I don't want a vase. I want something better.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  A jacket.

• 1:09Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, nice jacket. I love a nice jacket.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that jacket. Nice jacket.

• 1:11Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, so now you have to do it, because you said you would.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Aw, man, I didn't know you were doing that.

• 1:15Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I know the holidays are months away, but it's never too early, Sona, to find gifts that I will love, gifts I will wear, and surprises that make the season unforgettable for me.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:27Conan O'Brien?

  Macy's Gift Guide makes holiday shopping easy with beauty favorites, stylish fashion, jewelry, cozy essentials, must-have toys, home upgrades, and picks for every person on your list. Coach handbags, Breville appliances, Lego UG, and more, all in one place. You can skip the scrolling and shop with confidence. Shop now in-store or online at macy's.com/giftguide.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Hi, my name is Will Arnett.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  And I feel just fine about being Conan O'Brien's friend.

• 2:25Conan O'Brien?

  Hey there and welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, joined by Matt Gourley. How are you, Matt? Good, thanks. And Sona Movsesian.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  And Sona? Yeah.

• 2:34Conan O'Brien?

  Of course, famously, my assistant for many years.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38Conan O'Brien?

  And then things started to change a bit.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  I had babies.

• 2:41Conan O'Brien?

  You had babies.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43Conan O'Brien?

  You stepped back from that role and you've risen to great fame on this podcast and in your own right. And you're an author now, a lecturer.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:54Conan O'Brien?

  You're a phenomenon.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  I am a lecturer and an author.

• 2:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. You're like Cher now, I think.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Oh, I wish.

• 3:02Conan O'Brien?

  Another Armenian star.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 3:05Conan O'Brien?

  So, this is unusual because David Hopping, a young lad from Southern Illinois, rose up from the ranks. You anointed him and he's my day-to-day assistant.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:15Conan O'Brien?

  He's gone right now. He's gone to the Midwest for a wedding, I believe, and you stepped back into my role today as my assistant.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:26Conan O'Brien?

  So you texted me this morning, you know, asking me, "We need to do these things today. Here's what's happening." And I thought, "Sona's back. We're back in the New York groove."

• 3:36Speaker 01

  You know what's funny? We just had an interview and I had ordered you lunch before the interview and in my head I was like... I hope Conan's lunch is here. Is it here? Should someone go and take it and like maybe put it in the fridge? Like, I started to just go back into assistant mode.

• 3:51Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  It's, it's weird.

• 3:53Conan O'Brien?

  How easily does it come back?

• 3:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:55Conan O'Brien?

  Is it like riding a bike?

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really, it's really not hard. Although today I had to get on my phone for something and I was driving. So I had to, you know, I was really nervous about doing whatever I needed to do on time. And I, I had to pull off the freeway and then park and like do whatever I needed to do. So I got nervous.

• 4:12Conan O'Brien?

  We immediately got into the thing where you're my assistant and you have to take care of things. And I start riffing and being a fool. So this morning, you knew that I have this medical appointment later on, just to go to an eye doctor, get my eyes checked. Uh, and cause I'm just wondering, do I need a new glasses prescription or whatever? So I'm just gonna go see this doctor. He's gonna give me those drops that dilate your eyes. And I know that. And so Sona this morning said, you can't drive. So, um, I'll drive you to the appointment. So, so she told me, don't take your car to work today. Cause I'll be driving you. And then you'll get a whatever, you'll give me a lift home. So all of that's gonna happen.

• 4:56Conan O'Brien?

  So I need a way to get to work. And Sona said, I'll call you an Uber. Let me know. And then, I might even have it here.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  It was intense.

• 5:06Conan O'Brien?

  This is what happens.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  It was, uh, it's also, I was like, I gotta, I gotta order him an Uber. I gotta do it quick. I can't let him waiting forever.

• 5:13Conan O'Brien?

  So here we go. Um, she says, let me know when you're ready and I'll order an Uber for you. And I was done with a meeting I had at the house. And I said, okay, you can order it now. And she says, okay, hold please. And I immediately respond, hurry! Exclamation point. What's happening? Exclamation, what? Question mark. Hello? Question mark, question mark. I'm scared! Three exclamation points. And Sona, that's like immediately, immediately. And she says, I'm doing it. I have to connect my corporate card. Don't poop yourself. And then she writes back, two minutes! Double exclamation point. Let me know if you need more time and I'll tell the driver to wait. Your name is Sona. Cause she's ordering it for me, it's in her name.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:56Conan O'Brien?

  And I write all caps, that's too long to wait! She writes back, you've changed. I write, ahh!

• 6:06Conan O'Brien?

  This is all happening instantly. She says, "Actually, no, you haven't." And I said, "I just died from waiting." "I'm a ghost." And then I sent an emoji of a ghost. She writes, "Who's gonna interview Rachel Sennett, who's we're recording for today? Who's gonna record today's guest? Not it," she says. And then I write her, "Hello, I am a policeman. I just found this cellphone next to a skeleton of someone waiting for an Uber." Sona immediately writes back, "Does he have any cash on him, police officer? We can split it." I write, "Deal." She says, "Thank you for your service."

• 6:48Speaker 03

  How are you even ordering an Uber and texting all this at the same time? Like, how are you even doing your job? Your job is you just have to riff with Conan?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  It's riffing with Conan. It's doing it and then riffing with him. That's what I remember the job is.

• 7:01Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, and Sona knows that the riff is more important than the Uber showing up. So she's immediately all in on the riff. And then she immediately goes into, "Oh, hello, officer." When I lay out that I'm a skeleton.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  I prioritize. It's prioritizing. So the riff takes priority over him coming to work.

• 7:20Conan O'Brien?

  And the best thing that would happen if there was a screw up, this is where it gets tricky. If there was a screw up and the Uber didn't come, that's, I don't care if I'm late. I don't care if there's, you know, major problems in our company because I'm late. I'm more interested in, oh, my God, this is great. The Uber didn't come. Now I get to have that as, you know, as new improv fun. And then I can make that work for two days. There can be two days' riffs of me wandering the streets of LA.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Two years!

• 7:53Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  You would then, in two years, you'd be like, hey, remember when you didn't get that Uber for me? You would say it.

• 7:59Conan O'Brien?

  Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. And you know what? When I have something like that on somebody, it's a tasty.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:06Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, it's a, it's a sweet gummy treat. It's an everlasting gobstopper. It's an everlasting Willy Wonka gobstopper. It never stops giving.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:14Conan O'Brien?

  Make a mistake around me and I'm delighted.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Oh, he loves it. He loves the mistakes more than you actually doing your job.

• 8:20Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  He's hoping, he's rooting, you're rooting against me.

• 8:23Conan O'Brien?

  I root against you.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:24Conan O'Brien?

  Because it's the most delicious thing in the world. Must be a fulfilling job to have.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  It sure is, girls. Yeah.

• 8:30Conan O'Brien?

  Well, welcome back.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm happy to be back here.

• 8:33Conan O'Brien?

  All right, well, let's get into today's show, and I root against this guest. I want him to screw up. I hope he doesn't show, because I like the riff more than I like the actual interview.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:43Conan O'Brien?

  My guest today is a hilarious actor who starred in the Emmy award-winning series Arrested Development and co-hosts the Smartless Podcast. Now you can see him in the new movie, Is This Thing On? I'm thrilled he's here. He's hilarious.

• 9:00Conan O'Brien?

  Will Arnett, welcome.

• 9:05Conan O'Brien?

  This is crazy. You just opened a box. This is like Pulp Fiction. A light is coming out. What is that? It's like his Tommy gun in a case.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Oh, this is just a U-87. That's right. I don't know. It's only the Rolls Royce of microphones. It really is.

• 9:21Conan O'Brien?

  Is it really is? What are you?

• 9:22Speaker 02

  You know, this is.

• 9:23Conan O'Brien?

  This is a reissue or this is an original?

• 9:25Speaker 02

  No, this is a real, that's a real.

• 9:27Conan O'Brien?

  Real deal. This is like a Beatles mic.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  I'm so excited right now.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  From Germany.

• 9:31Conan O'Brien?

  I'm sorry.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  You don't, you wouldn't understand it, because you don't have a vocal quality. I mean, it's barely.

• 9:37Conan O'Brien?

  There is not a thing you can talk about in mics that I don't know.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  It's, it's, you know.

• 9:43Conan O'Brien?

  The dream right here. I mean, this is the U-87s.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  I'm too scared to hold it.

• 9:48Conan O'Brien?

  I mean, god damn it, what year do you think this is?

• 9:51Speaker 02

  And it also modeled after me.

• 9:54Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, it looks like you.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, they took a.

• 9:56Conan O'Brien?

  Looks like you.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  From me, they said, "It's a special." You know the Germans are.

• 10:00Conan O'Brien?

  I mean, first of all, you, uh, you know.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:04Conan O'Brien?

  I don't want to blow smoke up your ass, but you are the master of.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  It's by so many liquids.

• 10:09Conan O'Brien?

  You're the master. You are the master of voiceover. You really are.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 10:15Conan O'Brien?

  And I hear your, I mean, I can't.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Go ahead.

• 10:18Conan O'Brien?

  I try to flee your ads. Reese's Pieces.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Good luck.

• 10:22Conan O'Brien?

  That's a truck. You once got all confused because you shoot so much of this shit.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:27Conan O'Brien?

  Do you remember the commercial you did where you went, "Reese's, it's a truck."

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. I do. I do, as a low light, yeah, but thank you, of course I remember that.

• 10:35Conan O'Brien?

  Why did they even air it?

• 10:37Speaker 02

  It was humiliating.

• 10:37Conan O'Brien?

  Why did they air it?

• 10:38Speaker 02

  You humiliate me.

• 10:39Conan O'Brien?

  But this is, I mean, I'm not gonna lie, this is a U-87.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:44Conan O'Brien?

  Thanks for telling the truth on that.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:46Conan O'Brien?

  This is a P-48. These are gorgeous, these are amazing. It's funny, remember, Eduardo, when you were working out the mics? Yep. You asked me about what mic I wanted, and I said I want a Blauhauser, remember? Blauhauser. Blauhauser 57. Yeah. Uh, 57 KK. Yep. There, you can't get them, you can't get a Blauhauser 57, uh, and they're hard to get.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  Can't get one new. You know anything, you know anything about the dark web?

• 11:11Conan O'Brien?

  I've heard of the dark web.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Where's this show broadcast, just for legal reasons?

• 11:17Conan O'Brien?

  Well, listen.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  I didn't even plug it, I just, I just brought it into flex.

• 11:21Conan O'Brien?

  Incredible to have.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  I wanted you guys to know how I'm living.

• 11:25Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, there's nothing sad, it's impressive. There's nothing sad about carrying around a microphone in a box, there's nothing. There's nothing at all sad about that.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  By the way, imagine that I packed it up from my house, I had it in the passenger seat in my car. I drove across town.

• 11:40Conan O'Brien?

  You put a seatbelt over it.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Basically, because I thought it was cool. It is cool.

• 11:46Conan O'Brien?

  Listen, you're on a real podcast now.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:49Conan O'Brien?

  None of this, "Hey, me and two of my friends are not gonna know anything about a guest."

• 11:54Speaker 02

  You know.

• 11:55Conan O'Brien?

  And then jerk off.

• 12:02Conan O'Brien?

  God.

• 12:07Conan O'Brien?

  Fuck.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:09Conan O'Brien?

  You guys are killing it.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Listen, let me just.

• 12:11Conan O'Brien?

  I mean, that all came from envy. Because I remember when you guys, before you started, this guy called me before they started their podcast. We were like, ugh, podcast, we're killing it. I get a call from this guy and he's like, we're just trying to do a fraction of what you do. And he was all scared. He was all scared. I was like, Will, what's wrong? Just lower your voice a little. And he's like, when I'm scared, it's a pie. And I said, what is it? And he said, you just don't know what to do. And I said, calm down. I said, just, you know, make sure that you get, what is it? A U eighty seven?

• 12:42Speaker 02

  U eighty seven.

• 12:43Conan O'Brien?

  He's like, I'm writing this down. And then remember he said, what are we doing? I said, these are your friends. Just talk. Just talk.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  I could barely write. If you remember, I said, because the tears, the paper was so wet. Remember, he couldn't write anything down. You're so, this is so accurate.

• 12:58Conan O'Brien?

  It was tears and urine. He was peeing onto the paper.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  But that was, that was just for, that was just for gigs. You know, I did this podcast back, uh, back at the, uh, the old location.

• 13:10Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  And, uh, I'm short on time.

• 13:13Conan O'Brien?

  Sure. Location. Yeah.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  So I'm over there and I, and I remember walking out, I remember walking out to my car after doing it, after absolutely destroying.

• 13:23Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Right. And I remember, I remember I was carried out by your staff on their shoulders.

• 13:28Conan O'Brien?

  True.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  Right. It was an unbelievable, and I'm like, who the fuck, who the fuck stuffed confetti in the ceiling? They knew. They knew this was gonna happen.

• 13:36Conan O'Brien?

  I whispered to him, take me with you. And remember, I don't know if you remember this, but I think one of the interns made a golden crown for you and put it on your head and it said, best podcaster ever.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Ever. And they filled up, they had one of those huge tanks around the lot of Warner Brothers. And they said, could you walk across this? One of, one of your PAs with this look of amazement, right?

• 13:58Conan O'Brien?

  I remember that.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  So I remember getting in my car and I says to my driver, I says, just drive.

• 14:04Conan O'Brien?

  Just drive.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Just drive. I remember thinking, if this fucking guy can do a podcast. If, if, if this.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Fucking.

• 14:20Conan O'Brien?

  Are you Maniscalco? Are you Sebastian Maniscalco? This fucking guy. This fucking guy.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  I wish. I wish I was.

• 14:30Conan O'Brien?

  I know.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  I wish I was selling out arenas.

• 14:32Conan O'Brien?

  Me too.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Every night of the week, that would be great.

• 14:34Conan O'Brien?

  I'm saying this out of jealousy. I wish I met people routinely in my life who so amazed me, I could go, this fucking guy.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:43Conan O'Brien?

  Anyway.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  Anyway, I know I wasn't doing. Yeah, let's get back to me for a second. And you know, let me know if it's okay to interrupt you. I'm only the guest. And, and, and, and.

• 14:54Conan O'Brien?

  This is heaven.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  Incredible. What's the expression? I think it was just desserts. Okay.

• 14:59Conan O'Brien?

  Get it.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  No, I did. I is true story. I did the podcast with you guys and it was so much fun. And I thought it would be fun to do with people that I like and have fun with. That's actually a true story.

• 15:12Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  And I did think, I hate saying it. You guys are very good at what you do. And so I thought if we do it every time we're doing a podcast, or we're gonna look like a bunch of ding dongs.

• 15:22Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  So we, I went to it with even less of a format than you had. If you can imagine.

• 15:28Conan O'Brien?

  If that's possible.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:29Conan O'Brien?

  I don't. And the thing is, we don't have a format.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  No, you don't.

• 15:32Conan O'Brien?

  We have a title.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  We got as far as a title. Right.

• 15:34Conan O'Brien?

  And we have that thing we do up front.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  The concept is this, right? Is this thing.

• 15:39Conan O'Brien?

  Who knows? That's not. That fell away very quickly. Now it's just.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Apparently it's being held on to pretty tightly.

• 15:44Conan O'Brien?

  Well, Adam Sachs, he is Rain Man when he doesn't get to watch Wapner. If we don't do that right away, he flips.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  That's our format.

• 15:54Conan O'Brien?

  He flips.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  That's all we've got.

• 15:55Conan O'Brien?

  It's our format. It's our format.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  Rain Man when he doesn't get to. I mean, listen, you might want to update the references. What is happening?

• 16:03Conan O'Brien?

  Well, first of all, that movie just came out. Didn't it?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  No.

• 16:08Conan O'Brien?

  Are you sure?

• 16:09Speaker 01

  I think it's been 40 years, 35 years.

• 16:11Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, you know what? I think it's funny. It's time to go back in time. Remember?

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Well, let's do that as a. That should be a new segment.

• 16:17Conan O'Brien?

  Didn't that come out?

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's go back in time.

• 16:21Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, hey.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Hey, and now we're here.

• 16:24Conan O'Brien?

  Now we're here. Uh, you, um, you guys are killing it, obviously.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  We're having fun. We're having fun.

• 16:30Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, don't do that.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  No, no, no, we're having a good time.

• 16:32Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I don't know what that's like, but I want to say this. I.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  You catch the wink?

• 16:37Conan O'Brien?

  I look at the, I look at you three. I saw it. Trust me, I saw the wink. And I saw how hard it was for you to do the wink. I saw how ballsied you are. You can't do the wink.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  Oh, way to go. Just give him stuff to cut.

• 16:49Conan O'Brien?

  You know what's amazing? I get Sean Hayes. I get it.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  You do?

• 16:55Conan O'Brien?

  I get the Sean Hayes. And then, when you said, and Bateman's gonna be there too, I have to admit.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:00Conan O'Brien?

  I thought, oh, this guy wants to fly.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:03Conan O'Brien?

  And so, in one arm, he's got this giant wing.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:07Conan O'Brien?

  And then, you're holding an anvil in the other hand. I was shocked that you chose Bateman.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Have you had Bateman in here?

• 17:13Conan O'Brien?

  Well, he's, we did, we did. And you know what he did the whole time?

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:18Conan O'Brien?

  I think, at one point, someone tried to get him to eat a Tic Tac. And he was like, I can't, oh. You know what he did say at one point? I took a sip of a soda, and he went, you don't like your body very much. Because I think he wants to live, I don't want to live as long as Bateman wants to live. He wants to live to be 190.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  I've said this a couple of times, so forgive me, but I said to him recently, I said, you know what's gonna happen? You're gonna be on your deathbed from malnutrition, and I'm gonna be gurney side with a hot fudge sundae.

• 17:50Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  With 30 years to go.

• 17:54Conan O'Brien?

  You're visiting him.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm visiting him. Smoking.

• 17:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  And eating a hot fudge sundae. Is there anything better than a hot fudge sundae, by the way?

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Oh, it's so good.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  That to me.

• 18:02Conan O'Brien?

  It's really good.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Oh, I love a hot fudge sundae. Sorry.

• 18:06Conan O'Brien?

  Wow. And so, are you getting better at podcasting?

• 18:10Speaker 02

  No. We're getting, I'm getting worse at it. Have you ever read the comments on your own podcast? You something, every, no, you don't.

• 18:17Conan O'Brien?

  They edit them heavily. They only show.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  I think they do.

• 18:20Conan O'Brien?

  You know, Adam takes, Adam, Adam makes sure I don't see the ones that are like, how, why, why is he allowed to have a podcast? He takes all those ones out, and he shows me ones that goes, he says, we got three comments from last week. And I'll be like, well, I hear it says we got over 75,000 comments. He's like, nope, it was only three. Yippee Conan, you go Conan. They're all from. Carefully curated.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  You're the same I'd be interested.

• 18:43Conan O'Brien?

  AdamSacks.net.

• 18:47Conan O'Brien?

  Conan is a host was one of the comments you chose to show me, which shows you.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Still this guy?

• 18:56Speaker 02

  How many kicks at the can? So my, I used to look at the thing and they'd be like, these guys are terrible. They interrupt people all the time. These guys are the worst. I hate this. And I keep going like, let me get, let me remind you. It's free. They don't have to listen. What's the problem?

• 19:12Conan O'Brien?

  It's not an assignment.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  I read the greatest quote that we don't have to get into now, but I get about comments online. It's quite long, so I'm not going to bore you, but it's so good. It's from this book written, do you know Sally Rooney? Have you ever read it?

• 19:23Conan O'Brien?

  I've no Sally Rooney.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Did you ever read Intermetso? She was last year and.

• 19:27Conan O'Brien?

  I didn't read that, no.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Really, really good. And she has this other one called Beautiful World. Where are you? It came out like three or four years ago. There's this quote at the end that Buck is about. Can I read it?

• 19:35Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, please go to the quote because you just keep listing things she's done.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  I know.

• 19:40Conan O'Brien?

  She's great. She's great. Uh, yeah. She went to Amherst.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, no.

• 19:45Conan O'Brien?

  She displaces about 65 liters of water. If you put her in a tank, I got them, right?

• 19:51Speaker 02

  Honestly, your references are all like old and or about New England. There's a whole fucking world out there. I'm so, it's so boring. Get out.

• 20:01Conan O'Brien?

  Why don't you go choke on her Red Sox bat while you're at it?

• 20:05Speaker 02

  This is what I'm talking about.

• 20:06Conan O'Brien?

  What are you, Mayor White in it's 1975?

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Carlton Fisk over here.

• 20:10Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Oh, Jesus Christ. Hey, why don't you go fill in the back bay so there's more usable land asshole.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  What?

• 20:18Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I mean, you know.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  I got it with the back bay.

• 20:21Speaker 04

  I don't understand it.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Newbury Street. He's getting into a whole.

• 20:25Conan O'Brien?

  Tell him to shoot the noob.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  Shoot the noob. Yeah.

• 20:27Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Well, anyway, uh, get back to, you were gonna get to the quote at some point.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  I'm on Starro Drive and.

• 20:34Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, we get off Route 9.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  So this woman writes this thing, uh, in this book, they're writing emails to each other. This woman, she's a, uh, she's a writer and she's writing a, a note to her friend. And she's just done an interview about her new book. She says, uh, I don't know if you've been following any of this, but about a month ago, I was doing an interview over email. And a journalist asked me what my partner thought of my books. Unthinkingly, I wrote back that he'd never read them. So of course this became the headline of the interview. Alice Kelleher, my boyfriend has never read my books. And afterwards Felix, her boyfriend, saw a popular tweet saying something like, this is tragic. She deserves better. He showed me the tweet on the screen of his phone one evening without saying anything. And when I asked what he thought about it, he shrugged. And at first I thought, a perfect example of our shallow self congratulatory book culture in which non readers are shunned is morally inferior. And the more books you read, the better you are than everyone else.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  But then I thought, no. What we really have here is an example of a presumably normal insane person whose thinking has been deranged by the concept of celebrity. An example of someone who genuinely believes that because she has seen my photograph and read my novels, she knows me personally and in fact knows better than I do what is best for my life. And it's normal. It's normal for her not only to think of these bizarre thoughts privately, but to express them in public and receive positive feedback and attention as a result. She has no idea that she is, in this small, limited respect, quite literally insane because everyone around her is also insane in exactly the same way. They really cannot tell the difference between someone they have heard of and someone they personally know. And they believe that the feelings they have about this person they imagined me to be,

• 22:06Speaker 02

  intimacy, resentment, hatred, pity, are as real as the feelings they have about their own friends. And it makes me wonder whether celebrity culture has sort of metastasized to fill the emptiness left by religion like a malignant growth where the sacred used to be. Jesus Christ.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  How fucking good is that?

• 22:24Speaker 01

  That was pretty good.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Does that sum it up? It is amazing. Guys, great show.

• 22:28Conan O'Brien?

  Can I just say?

• 22:29Speaker 02

  You did it.

• 22:30Conan O'Brien?

  My only regret is that it wasn't longer. Do you mind? I just maybe think of something. Can I just?

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Your attention span.

• 22:38Conan O'Brien?

  Hey, Will. Will, I'm sorry. That just made me think of something. Is it, is it okay? There's this book called Moby Dick.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 22:45Conan O'Brien?

  By Melville. Can I, is it okay if I just read the whole thing?

• 22:47Speaker 02

  You know what?

• 22:48Conan O'Brien?

  Here we go. Page one.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  That was pretty great, wasn't it?

• 22:51Speaker 01

  I liked it.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  It's great to speak to the adults.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I enjoyed it, actually.

• 22:54Conan O'Brien?

  Call me Ishmael.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Okay. Don't lick your fingers that much. Yeah, stop licking your, what are you, a quarterback?

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Also, his voice is cooler than yours, so it's easier to like listen to him.

• 23:04Conan O'Brien?

  I think my voice is pretty cool.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 23:14Conan O'Brien?

  You know, winning an award, that's a big achievement, right?

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:16Conan O'Brien?

  Every now and then in life, maybe something nice like that comes your way. Winning them consistently is almost impossible. It just doesn't happen, you know? Well, guess what? Winning five times in six years? You know what that sounds like to me? Sustained excellence.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 23:31Conan O'Brien?

  Hyundai has done just that, earning the title of America's best SUV brand for 2026 from US News and World Report. You are a very happy Hyundai driver.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  I drive a Hyundai Palisade and I love my car. I love it. I love driving it around.

• 23:44Conan O'Brien?

  I've been tooling around in an Ioniq 5N, which I love. Beautiful car. Well, listen, whether you need an SUV for everyday life, your next big adventure, or extra room for family and friends, Hyundai has an option for you. The Tucson Hybrid is loaded with technology and built for everyday life. The Santa Fe Hybrid's fully capable and ready for adventure. The Palisade, that's yours, right?

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Hello?

• 24:04Conan O'Brien?

  They're gonna rename that the Sona. The Palisade Hybrid, yeah, delivers premium capability and class-leading interior space. With available, I have this memorized, H-Track all-wheel drive, up to an EPA-estimated 619 miles of range on vehicles like the Palisade Hybrid and Hyundai's industry-leading warranty, it's easy to see why Hyundai continues to deliver the quality, innovation, technology, and value drivers expect from an award-winning brand. View US News Best Cars at cars.usnews.com and call 562-314-4603 for complete details.

• 24:39Conan O'Brien?

  Did you know that one in four Americans targeted by scams end up falling for them? You fell for one.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  I fell for a scam?

• 24:45Conan O'Brien?

  Now, you didn't lose too much money, but you did lose.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  I did lose and it was very inconvenient and now they put protections on my account like I'm, uh, dumb.

• 24:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I don't know where they got that impression. Criminals are now using AI to make scams look more realistic than ever. In 2025, AI fraud spiked 1,210% and cost Americans $893 million. That's incredible. Well, with AI, it can get so smart now.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:14Conan O'Brien?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Maybe I should start scamming.

• 25:16Conan O'Brien?

  No, that's not the point.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  No, that's not the point of this.

• 25:19Conan O'Brien?

  That's not the point. One accidental click, Sona. Expose your information, putting you at risk of identity theft. Luckily, this is the point. Not that you should start scamming, but that everyone should get LifeLock.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right.

• 25:30Conan O'Brien?

  LifeLock has live US-based restoration specialists who will be with you every step of the way to fix your identity theft from first alert to full restoration. This is fantastic. How do you not have this?

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:42Conan O'Brien?

  If you have expenses or money stolen due to identity theft, you're backed by the million-dollar protection package with up to $3 million coverage in some plans.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Mm.

• 25:50Conan O'Brien?

  Join now and save up to 30% off your first year. Go to lifelock.com/conan. That's lifelock.com/conan to save 30%. Terms apply.

• 26:01Conan O'Brien?

  Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype?

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, like all the time.

• 26:06Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. I did that with an all-potato restaurant.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 26:12Conan O'Brien?

  Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, like impressions, but then they don't see revenue. You know what I'm talking about, I'm telling you, son.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, all the time.

• 26:22Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. LinkedIn has a word for that: bull spend.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Bull spend.

• 26:26Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Instead, you can get the highest ROAS of major ad networks with LinkedIn ads.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:31Conan O'Brien?

  Cut the bull spend.

• 26:34Conan O'Brien?

  Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 and get a $250 credit. Go to linkedin.com/conan. Terms apply.

• 26:48Conan O'Brien?

  That's a long quote to read on a podcast.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Of course it is.

• 26:50Conan O'Brien?

  And I know that you're new to this, but...

• 26:52Speaker 02

  No.

• 26:53Conan O'Brien?

  That's... that was a... that's a bug.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  It's a bug.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  I am so sorry. I think it's a mosquito.

• 26:58Conan O'Brien?

  Is it?

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Do you guys see it?

• 26:59Conan O'Brien?

  I saw it.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  I'll fuck it up.

• 27:00Conan O'Brien?

  You know what? You reading that quote now seems professional. Because right after I gave you shit about being so long, Sona started trying to kill a bug.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  I'm sorry.

• 27:09Conan O'Brien?

  And, um...

• 27:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, sorry, I'm not doing a stupid voice, and you know what I mean? Doing some bit.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  Sorry, I'm not referencing Barry Levinson films from the 80s. Remember in Diner?

• 27:30Speaker 02

  This is my show now. My worst nightmare came true.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  You were so nice to me.

• 27:37Conan O'Brien?

  It's still flying around.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  It's a fruit fly.

• 27:40Conan O'Brien?

  It is.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  You were so nice to me in the green room. You're such a, you're such a Jekyll and Hyde. Cause.

• 27:44Conan O'Brien?

  You never know what you're gonna get. Jekyll or Hyde. One of them's the good guy, one of them's the bad guy. Who knows which? I don't know. I'm busy reading your quotes.

• 27:54Conan O'Brien?

  Listen, I wanna be.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Most people are on a walk, they're on a thing, they're exercising, they're driving, and they're listening to this quote, and they're having a profound moment.

• 28:01Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. And you know what? I did, I, I went after you, cause it was very long.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:05Conan O'Brien?

  It's not just a quote. That was several pages. But I should have acknowledged what a profound quote it was.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 28:12Conan O'Brien?

  And it was cool of you to think of it and read it, but I didn't. I panicked. I went for the gag.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:19Conan O'Brien?

  The quip, the joke, the jape, the gaffe, the goof. This is getting longer than the quote. And I, I'm trying to make it last longer than the quote. Okay. And by going for the, the quick, you know, uh, laffaroo, as you, I think you called it laffaroo when we worked together.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  One, one time when I was in Australia, I did.

• 28:39Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Cause I love tossing an ooh on the end of things.

• 28:42Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. But it was profound. And you've had to deal with that, cause of celebrity culture.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  No.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Don't drag me into deep water. Nice try. No, but it is, it is a, uh.

• 28:55Conan O'Brien?

  Well, you don't know what it's like. I've been really fucking famous for like 32 years, and at the top of my game.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Only because you're tall and you stick out.

• 29:04Conan O'Brien?

  I don't think that's the only reason.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  And you're loud.

• 29:07Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, tall and loud's the way to go. Tall and loud.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Again, it's the only, it's the only reason.

• 29:13Conan O'Brien?

  When you look at what women are into. If you had been on these sites where women are like, who's got riz? They all say tall and loud. Give me tall and loud. Give me tall and loud.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  What are those sites?

• 29:21Speaker 02

  If you, if you had been, if you had been.

• 29:23Conan O'Brien?

  I don't even know what a site is.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  If you had been born, if you were 5'5", you would have been taking, you had been working tolls on the Mass Bike. I really believe that.

• 29:30Conan O'Brien?

  Near Sturbridge?

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 29:32Conan O'Brien?

  Near Sturbridge Village. Right? Get off that.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 29:35Conan O'Brien?

  Right there where the tolls are. That's where Sturbridge Village is.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 29:37Conan O'Brien?

  Hey you, you got a buckle on your hat? Um, listen.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Let, let, first of all, enough for the, let's be real, enough for the insults. I love you.

• 29:47Speaker 04

  What, mom?

• 29:48Speaker 02

  No.

• 29:49Conan O'Brien?

  Couldn't do it.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  No, you couldn't do it.

• 29:50Conan O'Brien?

  No.

• 29:52Speaker 04

  Oh? Woo, what the fuck? I'm half a war.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  I knew, I knew I could break you.

• 30:02Conan O'Brien?

  Here's what I did. I can't, I'm gonna tell you what I said in the green room.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  I think you're a great guy. I think you're really funny. I think you're really talented. You've been doing it at a high level for many years, and I respect you.

• 30:12Conan O'Brien?

  This ruins everything.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:14Conan O'Brien?

  Let's change the topic.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 30:16Conan O'Brien?

  This guy, this guy, there's so much to talk about.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  I love seeing you succeed.

• 30:22Conan O'Brien?

  I can't say that about you. It kills me.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  I know.

• 30:27Conan O'Brien?

  That Smartless is a phenomenon. It just kills me.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  This is the best part.

• 30:31Conan O'Brien?

  And especially, I mean, again, I, I root.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  It really rubs you.

• 30:35Conan O'Brien?

  I root for you, and I root for Sean, and then Bateman.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  What is it about Bateman?

• 30:41Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, come on. What is it about Bateman? He just gets my goat. Uh, he's so pleased with himself. And he doesn't age, and he has such self-control. And he sits there and he's, he's, he, he fires off these little ice daggers. Fuck him, right? I mean, come on, right?

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Am I, am I alone? Does this sound like love?

• 31:07Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah. I love him.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  I knew, I knew it.

• 31:09Conan O'Brien?

  I would do him.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Hang on, man.

• 31:12Conan O'Brien?

  What?

• 31:16Speaker 01

  We just thought you like loved him, but a friend, oh, you wanna do him?

• 31:20Speaker 02

  You wanna do him?

• 31:21Speaker 01

  No, that's cool. That's fine.

• 31:22Conan O'Brien?

  You'd do it, too. He's interested.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  I can't speak to that.

• 31:25Conan O'Brien?

  He says he likes tall and loud. I've seen his sites.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  What, what's been going, what's been going on? What's been going on over here? Can I tell you something about maybe, you want me to read you something else? This is shorter, but this is you-centric.

• 31:35Conan O'Brien?

  Please, okay?

• 31:36Speaker 02

  Okay?

• 31:36Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, let's hear it.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  I got you.

• 31:38Conan O'Brien?

  If it's you got me with you-centric.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  I know.

• 31:40Conan O'Brien?

  And, and, and don't feel the need for it to be short.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  By the way, I've never, I've never used my notes app so much as in this fucking podcast.

• 31:48Conan O'Brien?

  You're on, you're on that thing all the time.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  I know.

• 31:50Conan O'Brien?

  Let's see.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  So, this is, this is, this happened last year. This is a true story. So this has to do with your Christmas party. Mm hmm. Years go by, Jason never gets invited to Conan's Christmas party. Did you guys know about this?

• 32:02Conan O'Brien?

  I didn't know.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  And he's brought it up before, right? Maybe when he came on the show, did he bring it up? Yeah. I think so.

• 32:06Conan O'Brien?

  I know you and Sean pretty well.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:08Conan O'Brien?

  I don't know Jason as well.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  So, but a couple of times it's coincided multiple times with another mutual friend of ours' Christmas party.

• 32:15Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  And so.

• 32:16Conan O'Brien?

  And let's be fair, she's a massive star.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  She's a massive star.

• 32:19Conan O'Brien?

  Massive star. I mean, there's the, she's, she's a couple of clicks above me and I give that up. She should be.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  But your, your, your party is very well attended. It's a very ritzy affair.

• 32:29Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  A lot of glossy names.

• 32:31Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  So people often go either to Conan's first and then this person's or vice versa. So people are coming and going from this other person. So. A bunch of times I've gone to Conan's and then I've gone over there and baby's like, did you guys just come from Conan's? Like, yeah. He's like, what the fuck? And he's so mad that he hasn't been invited. Makes a big deal about it.

• 32:51Conan O'Brien?

  And then when I heard that he was mad, I kind of didn't want to invite him to keep it going.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  Even worse, we did the live Smartless show in Boston. Conan came out, Jason gave you shit in front of a live audience that you didn't, and you said.

• 33:03Conan O'Brien?

  In my hometown.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  In your hometown, and you said for sure next year, and then the next year you did not invite him, right? It was epic.

• 33:10Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  And nobody was happier than me.

• 33:12Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. It was, it was sweet. It was sweet.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  To me, it was one of the best all time. I just, I'd love that he wasn't invited.

• 33:19Conan O'Brien?

  It was better that he wasn't invited.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, way better.

• 33:22Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  So he, now he's really pissed. Finally, last year you invited him.

• 33:27Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  And he's all proud about it. And he's like, well, you know, I got invited to the thing. And then he's like, first of all, he was like, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to make it.

• 33:35Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  Cause I got another party.

• 33:37Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  At which point I hear this, but I don't, I don't really say anything. So I get Conan to come on our show.

• 33:43Conan O'Brien?

  Secretly.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Secretly. And then get it, and it was so easy to get Bateman talking about the Christmas party and about Conan. He's like, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to go.

• 33:49Conan O'Brien?

  I'm listening, I'm listening in, uh, it's on Zoom, but I'm listening.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  You were here in the.

• 33:54Conan O'Brien?

  I was in here in this room and I'm listening and you guys say, uh, so, uh, hey, Jason, uh, you think you're gonna go to Conan's? He was like, I don't know. And he's very casually and he's, and he's casual.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Super casual, like, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to, I've actually got this other party. At which point Conan reveals him, it's like, you, and he lays into Bateman.

• 34:10Conan O'Brien?

  I went after Bateman.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  He lays into him. Hilarious. So we're done. So then, not long after that, uh, if I may bring up a touchy, actual, this is real personal.

• 34:21Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, it's okay. It's okay. I know what it is.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  Death in the family.

• 34:23Conan O'Brien?

  Yep. My parents pass.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  So, well, first, let me just say the timeline, because I have it here. I wrote it down last year because the timeline was so good.

• 34:30Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  So, I hear that your dad passes away and I text you that day or the next day and I said, "Hey, listen, I'm sorry to hear about your dad's passing. Sending love from our family to yours."

• 34:40Conan O'Brien?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  And you wrote, "Thank you, Will. To be honest, I blame Bateman."

• 34:46Conan O'Brien?

  For the death of my, for the death of my father.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  The day after his father dies.

• 34:50Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Right? So, I wrote, "It's not a terrible theory," and Conan texted me back, "He killed my dad."

• 34:58Speaker 04

  Oh, my God!

• 34:59Conan O'Brien?

  My dad, can I say, in fairness, my dad would have loved this.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Okay. So, so, so, uh, so then Bateman, Bateman, I tell Bateman this, we're dying, we're doing a thing that day, so he, the next day, Bateman texts you, and he says, "Ernest tells me you're on to me."

• 35:20Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  And Conan texts Bateman, he says, "Bateman, do yourself a favor, turn yourself in."

• 35:31Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  Two days after your dad passes, of course, your mom passed away.

• 35:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, which we didn't, I did not see coming.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Which I did not see coming, so I text you, two days after, I knew you were in Boston, I said, "Bateman is asking for your sister's street address."

• 35:53Speaker 02

  Okay to give.

• 35:55Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  And you were busy that weekend, like, a day and a half later, you texted back, "Just seeing this now, fantastic. 625 Borison Street, apartment 12C. Tell Bateman to make it look like a robbery."

• 36:11Speaker 04

  Oh, my God!

• 36:12Conan O'Brien?

  You know what's weird? I swear to God, this is how I grieve.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  I know.

• 36:16Conan O'Brien?

  Everyone has their way and...

• 36:19Speaker 02

  And I forget who I was assisting at the time, it was like, it might have been Sean or something, and they were like, "What do you think?" And I go, "This is what he wants."

• 36:26Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  "This is what he wants right now. He wants to laugh and do bits. This is what he wants." And I know the vibe, and obviously, obviously, our heart was with you and we love you and all that stuff. But I knew that, and honestly, that was, "Tell him to make it look like a robbery."

• 36:42Conan O'Brien?

  You're so sick. I know, I'm a sick, I'm a sick person, but uh, but I do know my parents, who I'm very sentimental about, but they, a big driving force in my life was making them laugh.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 36:54Conan O'Brien?

  And I did used to think about, am I gonna wanna do comedy after my parents are gone? Because that was the whole reason I did everything. But I remembered very much wanting to, I don't know, connect. It was so comforting to me to screw around with you guys at that moment. It just was. And uh, so if that makes me a madman, then so be it.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  No, I get that, man. It is that old, my grandfather used to say, I mean, it's not that too profound, but he's like, you know, if you didn't, uh, if you didn't laugh, you'd cry. So.

• 37:25Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Like, they're sort of in that same area and you're still emoting, you're still feeling, and you're kind of doing it in a different way. I, I totally get that. There have been so many times, people call it gallows humor, or whatever it is. But, but I get that. And um, I can't wait till my parents die.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  No, just because I've got so many bits ready to go.

• 37:45Conan O'Brien?

  You've got so many bits. Oh my god. God. I had.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  I just.

• 37:49Conan O'Brien?

  That's, I know the feeling. I had, I knew that I had the Bateman bit.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  I've done everything.

• 37:54Conan O'Brien?

  And my dad was like, I feel great. And I was like, I've got this Bateman bit.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  I, I've tried, I cut the brakes, I did gasoline, I've done it all, and it's just like, they look it.

• 38:06Conan O'Brien?

  No one has said, cut the brakes in like 50 years. You can't make a car crash by cutting a wire anymore.

• 38:14Conan O'Brien?

  Don't worry, I took care of his Tesla. What'd you do? I cut the brakes with this big scissors, like they did in the 1920s. Um, I have to mention, we have, there's so much to talk about with you, but I watched your movie last night. Is this thing on? And I was very pleased. And I'm really, I'm really, I'm proud of you as a friend, and I'm really happy for you, because you're really magnificent in this film. And Bradley Cooper, who directs the movie, he has a part in it, and he's really funny as like a schlub, as a character actor. And um, and a friend of yours. And it was really fun to see that. Laura Dern's great. But I was looking at it and I was thinking,

• 38:58Conan O'Brien?

  I remember you once telling me that your big fear.

• 39:03Conan O'Brien?

  In life was being caught trying. You'd said that to me once. You said, I, I just don't want to get caught trying. I know that feeling and it's why we gravitate towards comedy because you can joke around. If something doesn't quite work, you can make that the bit. You can just be a shapeshifter all the time and nothing sticks to you. And you plant your feet in this project and you're another person. And it's a dramatic role and I'm very proud of you for doing that.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, thank you. Thanks a lot. And, and yeah, there is, there's a lot of truth in that. I think that, you know, along those lines, I spent a lot of time, uh, being very cynical about a lot of things. And because it's easy, it's kind of, it is easy to hide behind it. And I give people shit, you know, we talk about it on our own podcast. When we hear people use the term storyteller, we're like, oh, man.

• 39:54Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I know what you mean.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  I call 911 for an eye rolling incident. Like, you know what I mean? Like I'm going to die from rolling my eyes. And then I get.

• 40:00Conan O'Brien?

  No one's an actor anymore. Everyone's like, well, I think of my, I love to tell stories. It's like, it's acting.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's acting.

• 40:06Conan O'Brien?

  Shut up.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  But, but I get now a little bit more and again, I, I don't see myself differently, differently in any way. You have to do that thing where you have to kind of own it. And, and be it and be, and there is a vulnerability to it and I can't write it off as a bit. And I can't, uh, at the end, pull my pants down and, and make a fart sound. You know, so I, it is in that way for me, it was, uh, it was scary. And, and truthfully, uh, um, I feel very vulnerable even about people watching. When I knew that you were going to watch, they said, Bradley said that they sent it for you guys, for you to watch. Even Sean and Scotty here in it.

• 40:48Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Knowing, they just watched it, the full cut a couple of days ago, the final. And I remember just waiting for his reaction. He's my friend, loves me. You know, my partner, we work together, do all this sort of stuff. And I'm thinking like, oh boy, what if they, you know, they, what if they think I suck?

• 41:04Conan O'Brien?

  But here's the thing, you initially were quite interested in drama. That's what you wanted to do. That was, and if we went back to you and. Your twenties, this is what you were interested in.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  This is why this is why I moved to New York from Toronto and truthfully and I was joke. Of course, again, it's a nice cover that I was young enough and dumb enough to think that that was a pursuit that I wanted to do. And and I didn't, I didn't know anything about comedy at all. I had no, I didn't do sketch. I was in a stand up, all that stuff. And so I kind of backed my way into it. I really got into doing comedy stuff from auditioning for sitcom pilots because I need to pay the rent in the nineties.

• 41:41Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Like the first couple sitcom pilot auditions from my agent from the, I remember being like, I'm not going to do a sitcom. Like as if it was beneath, I wasn't working. I was, I was, I was making no money. I lived in the worst apartment you could imagine. And I'm thinking like, I'm not going to do a sitcom. It's like, what a fucking idiot I am. But I did, I, I went wanting to be a dramatic actor. And the other joke I made, what I used to make forever again as a cover was people thought my dramatic acting was funny.

• 42:10Conan O'Brien?

  Well, this is interesting because you're, it's a dramatic role where you play someone who is going through a breakup. You're married, you have kids, the marriage is running out of gas. You guys break up, separate. You move to an apartment, you're wandering past a bar, someone says you need to pay the cover charge to come in. And it's a high cover charge and like, well, why? And they're like, it's because it's a comedy club. You said, well, I don't have that money. And the guy said, well, just write your name down. This is a true story.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  It's, it's an actual true story. It's inspired by this, the story of this English comedian, really funny guy, John Bishop, whom I happened to meet not a bit.

• 42:46Conan O'Brien?

  On a, on a ferry.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  On a, on a barge in like a canal boat in Amsterdam at a lunch. And I went over there with a friend and it was a big, a bunch of people going over there for this thing. And I went, I sat next to him and he told me the story of how I became a stand up. And this story was, he was, he was separated from his wife, getting divorced. And he goes to a pub and he doesn't want to pay the cover and he puts his name down for open mic. So he gets in for free thinking they're not going to call me and they call him and he goes up and the first thing he says is I'm getting a divorce. I think I'm getting a divorce.

• 43:14Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 43:14Speaker 02

  He has no ambition to be a stand up, knows nothing about stand up. So that, that was the impetus.

• 43:18Conan O'Brien?

  But he has the catharsis, he keeps going back.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it makes him feel good.

• 43:22Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  Drinking, you try all that stuff, but this he actually, and this is a guy, you know, who had never, never been to therapy, never done any of that stuff, but going in front of a crowd of strangers and just kind of talking about his own reality made him feel better. He got relief from it, which was, which I totally get now. I'd never done stand up before and, and I, I can see how that works.

• 43:42Conan O'Brien?

  I was curious, to prepare for this role, you did stand up.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:47Conan O'Brien?

  And you did a lot of stand up.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:49Conan O'Brien?

  And were you telling the crowds, this is for a movie role?

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Um, no, well, once.

• 43:56Conan O'Brien?

  I know that in that situation, I probably would have said, this is for a project. I would have wanted some kind of shield.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  That was, that was the instinct.

• 44:05Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  And, and, and actually the truth is, the first time I went to do stand up, Shane Gillis, who was really kind to us and invited us down to Austin and to go up, uh, at the mothership. And he said, come down here and we'll give you some time. So Bradley and I went down there. This is right after New Year's last year, when we were in pre-production and I hadn't done stand up yet. And we went down there and we had all this material that, that we had written for very, the various sets that happened throughout the, the movie. And the first time I went up there, they introduced me as Alex Novak, my character's name. And so I go out, I'm nervous as hell. Again, you know, I've done lots of stuff before, but never done actual stand up, um, even though I was being introduced out. So people are sort of,

• 44:49Speaker 02

  you could see some people were, and here are some people were confused. They're kind of laughing and there were some people who were clearly fans and not everybody, but some people were like, oh yeah, okay. And what's the name and what's going on? And I said, I said something like, yeah, I'm Alex. Bear with me. Hopefully in a year or so, this will make sense is what I said.

• 45:06Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  And then I went on and I did this set, came out, uh, came off and it went, it went okay. It was like, I was, and, uh, I was about to go out again for the second time that night and Kirk Fox, this comedian, great dude, super funny dude. He was talking to me and he said, hey, man, don't. I don't know why, it just, he goes, you don't need to explain it. Just go out and do it.

• 45:26Conan O'Brien?

  Just go do it, yeah.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  And it was such a great, it was such a great piece of advice and, and I was like, yeah. So I just went, I did it and I thought, you know what? These people are gonna think I'm having a nervous breakdown. That's okay. It doesn't matter and, and that gave me license. And then a couple of days later, we, or the next day, we flew back to New York and for six weeks, virtually every night I'd go, we'd go to the cellar at night and do three sets a night. And then during the day, we'd rework this stuff because we're trying to track the, my character's progression and the story and everything. And I would go up and they'd introduce me sometimes as his second time up or his first. And I'd go up as Alex Novak and people would laugh or have a reaction and it didn't matter. And Bradley would say to me almost every time, you know, the instinct is, as you know,

• 46:09Speaker 02

  you go up there, you're a performer, you're doing this thing and then part of you is like, well, I just want to make them laugh anyway. Right? I just want to get the laugh because I'm there anyway. I might as well do something to get the laugh. I might as well lean on some of my old bits, my old standbys, you know? And Bradley would stop me and he'd go, we're doing something different. And I go, right, we're doing something.

• 46:27Conan O'Brien?

  God, what a dick.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  I know.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  You can't throw your fastball, you know?

• 46:33Conan O'Brien?

  You're talking about Bradley Cooper or?

• 46:35Speaker 02

  No.

• 46:35Conan O'Brien?

  But you're talking about, you're talking about General Omar Bradley from World War II?

• 46:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:40Conan O'Brien?

  Terrific general. And this is a film directed by General Omar Bradley.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  Omar Bradley, yeah. And, and we shot it, we, we shot it in the early 50s, I guess.

• 46:49Conan O'Brien?

  Before he passes away.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, before, right before he passed away and we were in, we were in the French sector of Berlin.

• 46:56Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, yes.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Because the French were still controlling it.

• 46:58Conan O'Brien?

  The part in the end where your character defeats Hitler. I didn't see that coming at all, with comedy.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, with, I killed him with comedy.

• 47:08Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I'll say one thing, I got pulled in and I think one of the compliments I can pay you is that I got, I got pulled into the movie and then at one point you're having an argument with your estranged wife, Lourdes, and I got mad at her.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 47:26Conan O'Brien?

  I, I got mad at the character.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Because you love me.

• 47:29Conan O'Brien?

  And I just, well, I, no, I did take your side. You have a big argument with her. Things are going, you have a big argument with her and I started to get agitated. Because I thought, no, he's right. You're not, you, you've, he tried to do something nice. Why the, why can't you? And I, I got worked up.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  I know the moment you're talking about, and it's funny, I've had a few people have, have had reactions from other people that I know. Other men.

• 47:56Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  And women who have very, you know.

• 47:58Conan O'Brien?

  So this morning, minor thing, because my wife and I watched the movie together and then this morning I'm doing something and she's like, did you lose those keys? And I went, I didn't lose those keys. And she said, well, were you gonna put them this time so you don't lose them? And I said, I didn't lose them. I didn't even go looking for them. They're not lost. They were here. And she went, well, you kind of did lose them. And I just said, don't Laura Dern me.

• 48:19Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 48:20Conan O'Brien?

  Because we had just watched the movie.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 48:22Conan O'Brien?

  Last, I said, don't Laura Dern me. And she's like, okay, if we're doing that, I'm out.

• 48:28Conan O'Brien?

  Cause she doesn't, did, put out, God bless Liza, she does not put up with my shit. She was like, if we're doing that game, I'm gone. And she went about her business and then we talked later and it was good. But, um.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Well, check your phone.

• 48:40Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Oh my God. The pool boy. Why is Liza calling me? An old cliche, um, yeah. Go through my assistant. Why is she directly contacting me?

• 48:52Speaker 02

  By the way, the pool boy's 80.

• 48:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 48:55Conan O'Brien?

  And he still wants to be called the pool boy.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  That's what makes you feel worse.

• 48:58Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. He's 80. He has no hips. They've been, both been removed but not replaced.

• 49:05Conan O'Brien?

  They carry him around in a wheelbarrow.

• 49:11Conan O'Brien?

  But, uh, but, uh.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Bateman has to have his hips removed for weight.

• 49:17Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. No, he's, he's the only guy I know who has joints removed for, to keep his weight down.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's unbelievable.

• 49:24Conan O'Brien?

  He had, remember the time he had just a spoonful of creme brulee? And then he went on a shooting spree?

• 49:32Conan O'Brien?

  I love the man. I do love the man and it's just jealousy.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Of course it's jealousy. He looks so good. He looks so good. Anyway, let's not waste, we're talking about.

• 49:39Conan O'Brien?

  Not another second on him.

• 49:47Conan O'Brien?

  You know, winning an award, that's a big achievement, right?

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love awards.

• 49:50Conan O'Brien?

  Every now and then in life, maybe something nice like that comes your way.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:54Conan O'Brien?

  Winning them consistently is almost impossible. It just doesn't happen.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:58Conan O'Brien?

  You know? Well, guess what? Winning five times in six years? You know what that sounds like to me? Sustained excellence.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 50:05Conan O'Brien?

  Hyundai has done just that, earning the title of America's best SUV brand for 2026 from U.S. News and World Report. You are a very happy Hyundai driver.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  I drive a Hyundai Palisade and I love my car. I love it. I love driving it around.

• 50:18Conan O'Brien?

  I've been tooling around in an Ioniq 5 N, which I love.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:22Conan O'Brien?

  Beautiful car. Well, listen, whether you need an SUV for everyday life, your next big adventure, or extra room for family and friends, Hyundai has an option for you. The Tucson Hybrid is loaded with technology and built for everyday life. The Santa Fe Hybrid's fully capable and ready for adventure. The Palisade, that's yours, right?

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Hello!

• 50:38Conan O'Brien?

  They're gonna rename that the Sona.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  It should!

• 50:42Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, delivers premium capability and class-leading interior space. With available, I have this memorized, H-Track all-wheel drive, up to an EPA-estimated 619 miles of range on vehicles like the Palisade Hybrid and Hyundai's industry-leading warranty. It's easy to see why Hyundai continues to deliver the quality, innovation, technology, and value drivers expect from an award-winning brand. View U.S. News Best Cars at cars.usnews.com and call 562-314-4603 for complete details.

• 51:12Conan O'Brien?

  Did you know that one in four Americans targeted by scams end up falling for them?

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:17Conan O'Brien?

  You fell for one.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  I fell for a scam?

• 51:19Conan O'Brien?

  Now, you didn't lose too much money, but you did lose.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  I did lose, and it was very inconvenient, and now they put protections on my account like I'm, uh, dumb.

• 51:27Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. I don't know where they got that impression.

• 51:31Conan O'Brien?

  Criminals are now using AI to make scams look more realistic than ever. In 2025, AI fraud spiked 1,210% and cost Americans $893 million. That's incredible. Well, with AI, it can get so smart now.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:48Conan O'Brien?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Maybe I should start scamming.

• 51:50Conan O'Brien?

  No, that's not the point.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  Oh, no, that's not the point of this.

• 51:52Conan O'Brien?

  That's not the point.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  It's so much money.

• 51:54Conan O'Brien?

  Sonna can expose your information, putting you at risk of identity theft. Luckily, this is the point. Not that you should start scamming, but that everyone should get LifeLock.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right.

• 52:04Conan O'Brien?

  LifeLock has live US-based restoration specialists who will be with you every step of the way to fix your identity theft from first alert to full restoration. This is fantastic. How do you not have this? If you have expenses or money stolen due to identity theft, you're backed by the million-dollar protection package with up to $3 million coverage in some plans. Join now and save up to 30% off your first year. Go to lifelock.com/conan. That's lifelock.com/conan to save 30%. Terms apply.

• 52:35Conan O'Brien?

  Sonna, you have to admit, the holidays, it's really about hanging with the people you love.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:41Conan O'Brien?

  And getting to be yourself, not going to some stuffy holiday party where you need to conform to what the man wants you to think about the holidays.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:50Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, it's about being yourself. Turn your holiday time into Miller time by enjoying a Miller Lite in a place where you're free to enjoy yourself on a walk with a cousin. With a cousin? Why are they getting all specific about?

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Because it's family.

• 53:02Conan O'Brien?

  But what about a niece or a nephew?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:06Conan O'Brien?

  Like a walk with an ex-wife? I don't know. I mean, they're just throwing, that's a weird, they just made a very specific choice.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:13Conan O'Brien?

  Now's the time for those unexpected holiday side guests and enjoy a great tasting light beer. 'Tis Miller time, as Dickens wrote. Miller Lite is brewed for taste, the taste you can depend on. The original light beer since 1975 and still iconic more than 50 years later. I like to be with my bros, my chums, my posse, crack open a Miller Lite, take a swig, a sip, look around and see my friends. We've known each other forever and we're just hanging out.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, you guys are just doing chest bumps and high-fiving.

• 53:43Conan O'Brien?

  Miller Lite is great taste done right. Go to millerlite.com/conan to find delivery options near you, or you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer. 'Tis Miller time. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.

• 54:05Conan O'Brien?

  I got some years on you, but I am liking this part of life where you've done the other thing for a long time, you got a lot of satisfaction out of it, and now you're just trying stuff and you're putting yourself out there and it's very cool.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  Thank you. You know, it's not like, I'm not making a big statement like, now I'm doing this at all, but it.

• 54:29Conan O'Brien?

  You did ask me to call you actor.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:31Conan O'Brien?

  Will Arnett. Storyteller. Storyteller.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Storyteller. Storyweaver, dreamweaver. Yeah. And I, but it is, it has been, it's been really, again, been really satisfying doing this. And also, I do feel like I'm at a stage in my life where I'm just, I'm much more sort of bound and determined to do stuff that I want to do.

• 54:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  And so, again, I'm not like, you know, now I'm doing this, now I am the storyteller at all, at all, at all, at all. I mean, I'm still a fucking idiot, you know?

• 55:10Conan O'Brien?

  Glad you said it. I'm not supposed to say it, but I'm glad you did.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  But is that like a known?

• 55:14Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:16Speaker 02

  But you've heard other?

• 55:17Conan O'Brien?

  No, it's, it's like, fucking, you're on your Wikipedia page. It says, moron Will Arnett.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  But do they?

• 55:24Conan O'Brien?

  Born.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  But do they?

• 55:26Conan O'Brien?

  These guys know.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  They, they.

• 55:27Conan O'Brien?

  We started it. Yeah.

• 55:28Speaker 04

  We know.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  Oh, you started it?

• 55:29Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  Oh, so you sound like somebody was talking about me.

• 55:32Conan O'Brien?

  Podcast is, total of your podcast is smartless.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  You know? What describes us best?

• 55:40Conan O'Brien?

  Um, I, and I do, I, you know this about me, I worship at the altar of Arrested Development. I think at its finest, it is maybe one of the highest levels of comedy that's been achieved. Or if not the, it's in very rare company. And so, it's, it's just a remarkable achievement. And so, you're an indelible part of that thing. That's a real major way that my son and I have bonded over the years is different comedic things. And he and I, to this day, When we get together, when he's back from school and he's glum or one of us is down, we start watching Arrested Evolutions and he's like a, you know, he's like a card dealer in Vegas.

• 56:25Conan O'Brien?

  He knows which ones to give me and he knows exactly which ones to deal out.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  Like what mood, what'll turn it around?

• 56:31Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, he knows that anything with Franklin in it will kill me.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 56:35Conan O'Brien?

  Franklin, the ventriloquist puppet, um, the close up shot of Franklin pushing in, which I've, I've talked to you about, uh, a reaction shot of a puppet. Um, but there are so many things in that show that give me such delight and I know that, um, Mitch Hurwitz has been like a huge part of your life, not just as the creator of a show that helped you get a toehold and gave you a real push, but as a friend and a mentor and a like, life guide.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  Without question.

• 57:04Conan O'Brien?

  And I don't, I don't know him well. I've met him a bunch of times.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  Which is funny because you guys live like 200 yards from each other.

• 57:09Conan O'Brien?

  I know.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  Um, true story.

• 57:11Conan O'Brien?

  And whenever he comes, I duck behind a hedge.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:14Conan O'Brien?

  And you know what? I, I am, uh, I'm, I, you know, it's that stupid thing in LA where you don't walk down the street.

• 57:22Speaker 02

  Nobody sees their neighbors.

• 57:23Conan O'Brien?

  No one sees their neighbors here, which is not how I grew up, but it's very strange.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  Can I ask you just sort of sidebar? I want to get into the Mitch thing because I, as you, you're right. And I adore Mitch and he's been incredibly impactful in my life, not just, not just as a sort of a comedic beacon and a guide and a mentor, but also as a friend and as a person, he's one of the all time great guys.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Do you guys dream about moving back to New York a lot these days?

• 57:49Conan O'Brien?

  Well, it's funny you say that. No. No, I'm kidding. I, I, uh, no, it's funny you say.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  I'm kind of half moving back now and, and I'm like, I can't get out of here fast enough.

• 57:59Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, okay. I still love, I love Los Angeles, but I really love a lot of things about Los Angeles and I'm happy to be here, but it's funny you say that because I've been going back more and more, uh, for work.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:13Conan O'Brien?

  Because, you know, Sirius XM, they have, uh, space there and also both my kids are on the east coast for school. So I'll go back east and I'll be in New York and I'm very happy. To be honest, I like both.

• 58:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:27Conan O'Brien?

  I like the contrast, but I like, I like spending now two weeks in the, you know, going up to Boston, seeing my, you know, my family.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:35Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, and, but hanging in New York is great.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  It's been, it's been, and I know it's like, it's like the oldest thing, you know, New York versus LA and I, for years, I got so sick of people going like, well, in New York, you can walk around, but I'm like, I know, I did the same thing. I lived in New York for over 20 years. I get it. So.

• 58:51Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  But I have lately, and I feel like I'm not alone. A lot of my friends and people you know, are like, I'm ready to go back. Like I see my, my later stages of life being in New York.

• 59:01Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  I'm just, LA has been, I don't know. Again, there are going to be people like, good, get the fuck out.

• 59:06Conan O'Brien?

  No.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  You know, but I don't know what to tell you.

• 59:09Conan O'Brien?

  I just got so much, you know, many properties here in LA. Oh, God. I mean, I own most of Catalina. You know that about me, right?

• 59:17Speaker 02

  I didn't know that.

• 59:18Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, I have, I mean, what I did is I took money that I made here on the podcast and I have bought up.

• 59:23Speaker 02

  Catalina.

• 59:24Conan O'Brien?

  Most of the valley, all of Catalina.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  You saw what happened in Catalina today, right?

• 59:28Conan O'Brien?

  What happened? Oh my God.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  You're, you're, they designated you Gavin Newsom.

• 59:35Conan O'Brien?

  What?

• 59:36Speaker 02

  It's a toxic site. It's worthless.

• 59:38Conan O'Brien?

  I built a massive dome.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  It's all worthless.

• 59:42Conan O'Brien?

  I, I seriously own like 6,000 acres.

• 59:45Speaker 02

  On the way here, Gavin Newsom said it's, it's toxic and, and, and they're just gonna, they're gonna raise it. And no one will ever, it's uninhabitable. No one will ever be able to go there.

• 59:54Conan O'Brien?

  I built, do you, you know that giant geodesic dome that just went up? That's my house.

• 59:58Speaker 02

  Destitute. You're destitute now. It's all gone. You lost everything. I told you not to put it all in Catalina. And you said nothing, and you actually said to me, this place will never be toxic. Which is, how could you?

• 1:00:14Conan O'Brien?

  I said, my marriage may be toxic and all my friendships, but this ground in Catalina never shall be. Remember? I said that to you?

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  Of course I remembered. You shattered it from a mountaintop.

• 1:00:24Conan O'Brien?

  And I said, I'm gonna build a giant geodesic dome and live there.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  And live there forever.

• 1:00:29Conan O'Brien?

  I put everything into that.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  And you did say you were gonna live forever also as part of it.

• 1:00:33Conan O'Brien?

  I shall.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:00:34Conan O'Brien?

  I'll outlive Bateman. You and I are gonna outlive Bateman. I go. Man, you know he's gonna dance on my grave.

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  Of course he will.

• 1:00:42Conan O'Brien?

  That's not for six years.

• 1:00:45Conan O'Brien?

  Will.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  Mitch Herwitz, one of the all time great guys, I just wanna say, he created Arrested Development, as you know, as you pointed out. I don't think, I mean, the wittiest, funniest, most naturally, just like such a gifted, gifted, gifted dude, yeah. Just amazing guy. He is, when I watched that show, I haven't actually rewatched in a while, but sometimes clips will come up and and I'll just think like, what a fucking brilliant scene. Like what a, everything, like to go, what a great idea.

• 1:01:14Conan O'Brien?

  To keep that many balls in the air and have it all pay off, to have that cast, but to have that vision.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  He was almost like a live act, we used to say, it's verging like on a live action Simpsons sometimes, like from back, especially from when you were there. Like those days. And we, I meant that always as the highest compliment to him.

• 1:01:34Conan O'Brien?

  No, cutaways, it's things that you can do in animation that you really can't achieve.

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Conan O'Brien?

  When you're shooting on a set. Uh, and you guys had that pace. The whole thing is beautifully rendered and man, does it hold up.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:49Conan O'Brien?

  It's great. And, um, so I, I always, it's been a lovely thing for me in my life, cause I always go back. So it's my favorite stuff and that includes Arrested Development and you are so funny in that show. But it's great now. I mean, you, like I say, you have all these things in your back pocket. And now you can go make a movie with Bradley Cooper. And it's good, it's really good.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks.

• 1:02:15Conan O'Brien?

  I just outed him as Bradley Cooper, not, I know a lot of people were like, you mean General Omar Bradley? I know people were going there, but.

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  Audience so obsessed with.

• 1:02:26Conan O'Brien?

  You know what? We know one thing, when you leave the comments, they're always like more World War II generals.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  Do they really?

• 1:02:31Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  That's bizarre, man.

• 1:02:35Conan O'Brien?

  You probably get that too, it's smartless.

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  Minor more UK said like Montgomery than one more Montgomery.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  Mentions of Montgomery.

• 1:02:42Conan O'Brien?

  Bernard Montgomery. Uh, Will, I'm very happy for you.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  Neville Chamberlain once said, oh, sorry, go ahead.

• 1:02:50Conan O'Brien?

  Will, you are a, you're a great friend and joking aside, it meant the world to me that you were texting me during a dark time and riffing with you over text was a true balm. It really did. It was a serum that helped me and just delighted that you're in my life. Say hi to the guys from me.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  I will, I will.

• 1:03:13Conan O'Brien?

  But do it more, like show more love to Sean from me and then let, you know what I mean, you'll know how to play it.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  Of course I know how to play it.

• 1:03:20Conan O'Brien?

  Let Beatty know like, oh, he's really all over Sean.

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna just pour a lot of sugar on Sean.

• 1:03:25Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:03:26Conan O'Brien?

  And then be like, no, no, he knows you're on the-

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 1:03:29Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, he definitely mentioned you, I'm pretty sure he mentioned you.

• 1:03:34Conan O'Brien?

  All right. I love it, man. This is it. We don't have a way to end this, really.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  Is there no ending to it?

• 1:03:39Conan O'Brien?

  There really isn't an ending. It just, and this way, this, you know, we usually wait for it to peter out and this petered out a couple of times. So there's a couple of endpoints we can use.

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:03:48Conan O'Brien?

  You know?

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  Oh, oh, you're, okay, sorry. You're gonna say create an endpoint.

• 1:03:52Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, and that's the way we do it!

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  And that's all we got!

• 1:03:57Conan O'Brien?

  What are you gonna say?

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  There goes another one, by the way.

• 1:04:07Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah?

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  There goes another one.

• 1:04:09Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, and I'll tell you something. That's what he said to her.

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  Where are you looking? Oh, there's a camera there.

• 1:04:16Conan O'Brien?

  Right there. Nothing ruins an audio presentation like a guy playing the camera!

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  Hey, can I just say something?

• 1:04:24Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, it's about time you spoke up. Hey, do you have another quote?

• 1:04:29Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, I got something. Hey, is it okay? I read this inspirational quote. It's a long sermon by Euripides.

• 1:04:41Conan O'Brien?

  Fucking man, that thing went on and on. And it was great. Oh, yeah, I get it. Yeah, but...

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  Can't you just say it in fewer words? Did you have to read the whole thing?

• 1:04:52Conan O'Brien?

  This guy fucking kills me. What's on your phone that's better than me? Fuck.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  I'm just giving you time.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:05:00Conan O'Brien?

  I got people to talk to. Oh, look.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  No, just looking at, I was just doing some texting. Hey.

• 1:05:06Conan O'Brien?

  Fucking cruel musicians are texting me.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  Oh, what's this?

• 1:05:11Conan O'Brien?

  Eddie Vedder did text you too.

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  What? Nothing.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  What was the question I was gonna ask you guys about, uh, about, God, we just cut the pauses out so I seem really snappy.

• 1:05:26Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, we'll cut off. We're gonna double up on your pauses.

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  Here it is.

• 1:05:31Conan O'Brien?

  When you don't have a fancy mic, you can have fun.

• 1:05:33Speaker 02

  You guys are at Sirius as well.

• 1:05:35Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:05:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  I think about a collab.

• 1:05:38Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Hey!

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  Should we do a collab?

• 1:05:42Conan O'Brien?

  But you know what, tell you something.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  We do in, we do like, uh, we come in here into the studio. Me and Sean and Babe and come into the studio. And we do, and we just do, and we just do something, you know?

• 1:05:55Conan O'Brien?

  You know what, tell you something.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:57Conan O'Brien?

  We got a huge thing going.

• 1:05:58Speaker 02

  Just to give you a spark.

• 1:06:02Conan O'Brien?

  That's fair.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:06:04Conan O'Brien?

  That's fair. We've been dragging ass lately.

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  You're looking a little lighter.

• 1:06:07Speaker 03

  I love that that came on the heels of you going, you know, we got a good thing going.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  You immediately changed to we're dragging ass lately.

• 1:06:17Conan O'Brien?

  Listen, tell you something.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:19Conan O'Brien?

  You guys come in, we join forces, you know? We, uh, we take the power of this show and then we add whatever you guys are doing. And we have-

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Whatever we're doing.

• 1:06:29Conan O'Brien?

  You're doing fine. Didn't you have a documentary or something?

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:06:33Conan O'Brien?

  I don't remember.

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  What, we did a docu-series.

• 1:06:35Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, okay. I don't know, remember. I tried to get it and it said, there's been little interest.

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  Do you mind if I just do this real quick?

• 1:06:41Conan O'Brien?

  What's that?

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  Sorry, I don't wanna interrupt.

• 1:06:42Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  GMC continues its commitment to professional-grade engineering in the GMC Truck Series. Like offering the world's first available six-function multi-pro tailgate on Sierra. I just gotta get a little business done. Is that okay?

• 1:06:59Conan O'Brien?

  You know, you get, you get a lot of that candy money from Reese's. I know you do. I hate to brag, but I got a candy bar too. Payday. Payday came to me. And I'm doing a payday bar now. And they want, yeah.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  No, Hershey's is your, Hershey's is your bar.

• 1:07:17Conan O'Brien?

  Don't, God, you can't have fun.

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  I'm sorry. Hershey's is your bar.

• 1:07:19Conan O'Brien?

  He can't have-

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  It's not payday.

• 1:07:21Conan O'Brien?

  What's that?

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  It's not payday, it's Hershey's.

• 1:07:24Conan O'Brien?

  God, he's... Do you have a guy in the room with you? Who's like, "Not monetizable." "There's no money here."

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  No, we don't have a cooler on set. That we bring to cool down the heat on the table.

• 1:07:38Conan O'Brien?

  Sorry, I mentioned the rival candy. That won't happen again. Why don't you just have a taser and just shock me?

• 1:07:44Speaker 04

  Oh my god.

• 1:07:45Conan O'Brien?

  No, Hershey's. You know, Hershey's came to me like, "Ooh."

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  Hershey's peanut butter cups?

• 1:07:50Speaker 04

  That's who owns Reese's.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  Not sorry.

• 1:07:52Conan O'Brien?

  What?

• 1:07:52Speaker 04

  That's who owns Reese's, right?

• 1:07:54Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, well, the big company that runs it all came to me. So you live for Reese's, and by the way, you don't even seem to like the candy when you talk about it. But I... Hershey came to me.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:06Conan O'Brien?

  And they were like, "Please, please, please, please." And I said, "All right, sure."

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  Oh, good. Yeah, it described him as sort of obsequious.

• 1:08:12Conan O'Brien?

  They were so like, "Please, please."

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 1:08:16Conan O'Brien?

  "Ooh, we're hemorrhaging cash." And so I was like, "Yeah, whatever. Hey, Hershey's. I like it." But they wouldn't, and then they were like...

• 1:08:23Speaker 02

  You're selling our ticket, I forget that. Keep going.

• 1:08:26Conan O'Brien?

  I said, "Hershey's good." But anyway, and then they said Hershey's candy bar, through the roof. Through the roof after I gave it my, my, my sign of approval.

• 1:08:40Conan O'Brien?

  Through the roof, through the fucking roof. True story.

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  Easily verifiable.

• 1:08:45Conan O'Brien?

  Don't, don't look it up.

• 1:08:46Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:08:47Conan O'Brien?

  Don't look it up.

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  Wait, that always is alarm bells when somebody says, "Don't look it up," and you tried to grab my phone.

• 1:08:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:54Speaker 02

  That's how worried you were.

• 1:08:55Conan O'Brien?

  Just don't look it up.

• 1:08:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:08:56Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, anyway.

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  What's the rest of you, uh, your day like, Conan? Be honest. Be really honest.

• 1:09:01Conan O'Brien?

  Facial.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  Is that true?

• 1:09:03Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, like, uh, one of those avocado scrubs. On the face, and then the back.

• 1:09:07Speaker 02

  What time you start drinking, like, four?

• 1:09:09Conan O'Brien?

  3:30.

• 1:09:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:09:10Conan O'Brien?

  3 o'clock.

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:11Conan O'Brien?

  2:30, 2:15.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  And then, uh, you gonna watch the baseball? You gonna watch the baseball? I mean, I'm not gonna say what they... But you gonna watch the baseball?

• 1:09:18Conan O'Brien?

  You can't say which teams? Oh, 'cause this doesn't air until... You know what, this airs...

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  Hey, welcome to Showbiz.

• 1:09:23Conan O'Brien?

  Hey. Hey, Merry Christmas.

• 1:09:26Speaker 02

  Fuck, dude.

• 1:09:27Conan O'Brien?

  Merry Christmas, man.

• 1:09:28Speaker 02

  Dude.

• 1:09:28Conan O'Brien?

  Merry Christmas.

• 1:09:28Speaker 02

  God.

• 1:09:29Conan O'Brien?

  Merry Christmas.

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  You're still just a writer up on 17.

• 1:09:32Speaker 04

  Does this need a punch up?

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  See?

• 1:09:35Speaker 04

  Lauren liked it.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  Fucking, this is what happened when you let the nerds in.

• 1:09:40Speaker 04

  It did well at read through.

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  This is what happened, the nerds never got it.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  You know what I mean?

• 1:09:47Speaker 04

  It works on the page.

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, we got it, don't worry.

• 1:09:49Speaker 04

  You didn't say it the right way.

• 1:09:51Speaker 02

  We're rolling, scram.

• 1:09:52Speaker 04

  Say it this way.

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  Talent's here.

• 1:09:56Speaker 04

  Cheese is coming out of my eyes. Oh my god.

• 1:10:01Conan O'Brien?

  We stopped recording so long ago.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:10:05Conan O'Brien?

  These mics blow, but you can lean against them. You know, you can't do that with yours. I can lean against mine.

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  Anyway, a time was had by all.

• 1:10:12Speaker 04

  You know what? And that's what they did!

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  Stop ruining it.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  We had a great... I just tied it up. It was perfect.

• 1:10:27Speaker 04

  To be continued?

• 1:10:29Conan O'Brien?

  Fuck you, don't come back. Don't come back. You're the worst. You're a terrible guy.

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

  By the way, all jokes aside, and I know we're done, but let me just say this. And I know you wanted to get in a voiceover and you said that all the people came at you, but I did think of a gig that you'd be really good for.

• 1:10:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, what's that?

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  Aflac.

• 1:10:47Speaker 04

  Aflac!

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  Fucking perfect. We got it.

• 1:10:51Conan O'Brien?

  They also... there's a helium balloon company that wants me.

• 1:10:54Speaker 04

  Oh, helium balloons!

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  Wait, voices can get higher?

• 1:11:03Speaker 03

  Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend with Conan O'Brien, Sonam Obsession, and Matt Gourley. Produced by me, Matt Gourley. Executive produced by Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and Nick Leo. Theme song by The White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy.

• 1:11:24Speaker 03

  Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair, and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering and mixing by Eduardo Perez and Brendan Burns. Additional production support by Mars Melnick. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, and Britt Kahn. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts, and you might find your review read on a future episode. Got a question for Conan? Call the Team Coco hotline at 669-587-2847 and leave a message. It too could be featured on a future episode. You can also get three free months of SiriusXM when you sign up at siriusxm.com/conan. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.

• 1:12:11Speaker 05

  Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie. When you use Angie for your home projects, you know all your jobs will be done well. Roof repair? Done well. Kitchen sink install? Done well. Deck upgrades? Done well. Electrical upgrade? Done well. Angie's been connecting homeowners with skilled pros for nearly 30 years, so we know the difference between done and done well. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find a pro for your project at Angie.com.

• 1:12:42Speaker 06

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