John Cena

Actor and wrestler John Cena feels curiously enthusiastic about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. John sits down with Conan to discuss wrestling as a training ground for comedy, minimizing self-sabotage, the importance of a long-term mindset, and his latest role in the new live-action animated comedy Coyote vs. Acme. For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: (323) 362-2295.

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

• 0:02Conan O'Brien?

  Owning a car or home comes with responsibilities. Sure, it's fun, but sometimes it makes you wonder why you ever longed for adulthood in the first place. I do that all the time. I'm like, oh, these bills, these bills. What am I gonna do?

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:15Conan O'Brien?

  You know, when you own a house, you gotta fix it yourself. Sona, you, you see this to be true, right?

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, your garage door breaks and you're like, well, I have to fix it.

• 0:22Conan O'Brien?

  Probably at first you said, hey, I'll get the super to fix it. It's your house, dude.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  It's mine, dude.

• 0:27Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance to save you money. In fact, they work overtime to tailor your insurance policy around what you actually need. The only thing they can't do is get that liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty jingle out of your head.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Liberty, liberty, liberty.

• 0:41Conan O'Brien?

  It's in my head all the time.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too.

• 0:43Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Start your quote at libertymutual.com.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  Granger knows if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility, you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation. Too much inventory? Costs climb. Too little? Production slows. Granger's $2 billion in on-hand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it. So you can help keep budgets balanced and lines moving. Call 1-800-GRANGER, click Granger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.

• 1:20Conan O'Brien?

  My name is John Cena and I am

• 1:25Conan O'Brien?

  curiously enthusiastic about being Conan O'Brien's friend.

• 1:29Speaker 03

  That sounds like there's an out there, yeah.

• 1:32Conan O'Brien?

  John Cena is one of those guys that's always thinking like nine moves ahead.

• 1:57Conan O'Brien?

  Hey there, welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. Sona Movsesian.

• 2:01Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 2:02Conan O'Brien?

  My co-pilot. And this is a plane that has two co-pilots. Or are you a navigator? Not really quite sure.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  I'm that guy that sits backwards and, you know, takes a nap while you fly.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too. I do that too. I feel like you're just one pilot.

• 2:15Conan O'Brien?

  There's two of those. Matt Gourley, good to see you. What's happening, Matt? You've got, it looks like you have a bee in your bun and you've got something to talk about.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  I think there might be something you're interested in happening not far from, actually from where I live. The original Wayne Manor from the 60's Batman show is for sale.

• 2:32Conan O'Brien?

  I heard about this.

• 2:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:33Conan O'Brien?

  And basically it's just the house, the mansion that was used in the exterior shot. So the 60's Batman TV show for people my generation was the formative comedy experience.

• 2:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:44Conan O'Brien?

  And it's up for sale.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  For only $32 million.

• 2:48Conan O'Brien?

  That's couch cushion money.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  You also might know it from the Charles Bronson film, St. Ives.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Oh, that's where I know it from. Oh, good. Oh, okay.

• 2:57Conan O'Brien?

  Wait, 32 million? Where is it?

• 2:59Speaker 03

  It's in Pasadena.

• 3:00Conan O'Brien?

  That is extremely, that is such a lot of money. How much land is it?

• 3:04Speaker 03

  It's big. I mean, look at this though. It's, you know, it's not unlike what it looks like inside the TV show Batman.

• 3:10Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, really? They actually made an attempt to?

• 3:13Speaker 03

  I mean, it's just a stately manor.

• 3:15Conan O'Brien?

  A stately, yes.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  It looks like a building on the USC campus.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  I know there's a lot more pictures. Yeah, look at these. So like it has a resort pool surrounded by boulders and stuff like that.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Can I, can you buy this for me, Conan?

• 3:28Conan O'Brien?

  This, you know what's so funny? When people, it looks like something that would be in the English countryside, but it's in LA, you know, kind of not far from the Mexican border.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  I know.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Can you buy this for me, Conan?

• 3:39Conan O'Brien?

  What's that?

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Can you buy it for me?

• 3:41Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, sure.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  But just think of the crazy shit that probably went down here because this is right in front of the Arroyo, the Pasadena Arroyo, which is famous for being the place where Jack Parsons, Aleister Crowley, and L. Ron Hubbard used to go and jerk off into the dirt for their sex magic rituals.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  What are you talking about? What are you talking about?

• 4:05Speaker 03

  I said what I said and that's what happened.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  How do you know that? How does anybody know that?

• 4:10Speaker 03

  It's famous, famous lore, famous Pasadena lore. We have festivals celebrating it.

• 4:14Conan O'Brien?

  You know what I love? There's a lot of trust involved when you say, hey, Conan, I've got the intro. And I think like, okay, Gourley says he's got it. Gourley, what's up? And you say, well, first of all, I want to use a podcast to show photos of some real estate. Nothing famous happened in this house. It was in, it was in, it was in one exterior shot that was used again and again and again for Batman. Then you start showing interior photos, which has nothing to do with Batman. And then you use that as a segue into a couple of guys orgasming into the dirt. And so, no, I gave you this mighty craft. I was the pilot and the guy who sleeps and sits facing the other way said, can I take over? And I said, yes. And now we've slammed into the Himalayas.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Was it a circle jerk? Or were they jerking themselves?

• 5:03Speaker 03

  But they were jerking into a circle in the dirt.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Is the dirt?

• 5:07Speaker 03

  Their second, you know, Aleister Crowley was the Satanist.

• 5:10Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, maybe explain who people are. Cause you also toss these names. I mean, I know who Aleister Crowley is, but a lot of people don't.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  I don't know. I know who L. Ron Hubbard is.

• 5:17Conan O'Brien?

  When you say like, and I'll tell you something, Baz Skalloway, Jim Mumford, and Stabus McNulty used to get together. Who cares? So was Aleister Crowley, who else?

• 5:28Speaker 03

  It was.

• 5:28Conan O'Brien?

  Who was, who was a, not a Satanist, but a?

• 5:32Speaker 03

  Well, he was, he had like, didn't he have the Satan Bible and all that stuff? Like he, he believed, well, he had a ritual called sex magic with a?

• 5:39Conan O'Brien?

  Satan had a Bible? Satan just went through it and wrote not in front of everything?

• 5:45Speaker 01

  It would be better if it was after everything, like a not joke, right?

• 5:49Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, exactly.

• 5:50Speaker 03

  Or in my pants.

• 5:51Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thou shalt not kill in my pants.

• 5:56Conan O'Brien?

  Thou shalt honor thy neighbors. Thou shalt not cover thy neighbors in my pants.

• 6:02Conan O'Brien?

  So Aleister Crowley, who else?

• 6:03Speaker 03

  L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology.

• 6:05Conan O'Brien?

  Of course.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  Jack Parsons, who, you know.

• 6:07Conan O'Brien?

  They all lived at the same time? I thought Aleister Crowley.

• 6:10Speaker 03

  I thought Aleister Crowley was, lived before those guys. He might have been older. I think he was around.

• 6:14Conan O'Brien?

  And he's still able to get it up and into the dirt? That's pretty impressive.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  I don't know if it was three for three. I don't know how it worked.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  He founded J, was it Jack Parsons Laboratory? And then they changed it to Jet Propulsion Laboratory?

• 6:26Speaker 03

  Uh, oh, good question. Isn't that funny?

• 6:28Speaker 01

  You just know they jerked off in dirt? You don't know about like the dirt, the name stuff?

• 6:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:33Conan O'Brien?

  What's that? Go ahead, Eduardo.

• 6:35Speaker 04

  It seems like Sona's right.

• 6:36Conan O'Brien?

  Did you?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Well, well, well.

• 6:38Conan O'Brien?

  Did you just go on dirtjerkoff.net?

• 6:40Speaker 04

  I didn't look up any of that. Yeah, it says Jack Parsons, co-founder of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  But it wasn't the Jack Parsons Laboratory. I get it.

• 6:49Conan O'Brien?

  That JPL is, stands for Jack Parsons and not Jet Propulsion. But it's called Jet Propulsion. That's really funny. I'm sorry. It just is. It's not that funny. You know what? It's not funny at all.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  I think it's funny that these three men were just like, all realized they had the same kink and then did it together. That's friendship.

• 7:07Conan O'Brien?

  If you're aroused by dirt and you live in an agrarian area, you're hard all the time. Do you know what I mean?

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Roused by dirt. They went in to do this ritual apparently. It was called sex magic. It was some kind of like conjuring of their energy. Look, I'm not condoning this and that's as far as I know about it.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Have you tried it?

• 7:26Conan O'Brien?

  That's as far as you know about it. That's as far as he knows about it. Oh, please.

• 7:32Speaker 03

  This whole area, the Arroyo, you know, there's this big green and green, beautiful craftsman mansion that's featured in season two of True Detective and there's a huge sex orgy there.

• 7:44Conan O'Brien?

  I'm sorry.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  Wait.

• 7:45Conan O'Brien?

  What?

• 7:46Speaker 01

  What other kind of orgies are there other than a sex orgy?

• 7:49Conan O'Brien?

  I'm confused because I'm trying to figure out, are you primarily interested in real estate and it leads to sex? Or are you interested in kinky sex?

• 7:57Speaker 03

  Why can't it be both?

• 7:58Conan O'Brien?

  And then it's attached to real estate. Because I would love it if you were, I would love it if you were my Realtor. And, and I was like, you know, Liza and I, we sold our house. We're kind of looking for something new. You want to, I want to show you a place. It's beautiful. It's, it's sort of a, it's a modernist design. It's got a little of a Bauhaus influence. And hobos used to live in the basement and shove, shove corn cobs up each other's asses.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  You know what I'm talking about.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  That's the kind of real estate agent I want though.

• 8:28Conan O'Brien?

  And then my questions would all be things like, uh, now is it permitted? Could we, could we take that? Is that a load-bearing wall? Cause we want, want to have a much bigger kitchen. And how big were the corn cobs?

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Yes. That's the stuff I want to know. I didn't know about this piece of Pasadena lore.

• 8:43Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. So do you know a lot of creepy things about Pasadena? You should give a Crepo tour.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:49Speaker 03

  I'd love to.

• 8:50Conan O'Brien?

  Where you get a bus and you saw off the roof and you drive around and you?

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Well, there's also that, that famous Lamb family mortuary where they were.

• 8:58Conan O'Brien?

  So stop saying famous when it's stuff nobody knows.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  There's a Netflix documentary that just came out about it.

• 9:03Conan O'Brien?

  Well, they'll do a documentary on anything. Anyway, what is the Lamb family mortuary?

• 9:06Speaker 03

  Well, they were, they were.

• 9:07Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, they were scamming people?

• 9:09Speaker 03

  Over cremating people and just throwing their ashes around and like stuff like that, but.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Well, what were they doing? What were they doing with that? Like licking them?

• 9:17Speaker 04

  They were combining people in the, in the crematorium and then not really giving people the, like their real, the real ashes of their.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  And taking their valuables and stuff like that. And their house is right on Orange Grove, which is also where another house was where Jack Parsons blew up his garage doing a rocket test and everything. But there's this green and green mansion from season two of True Detective.

• 9:38Conan O'Brien?

  So should I watch season two of True Detective and wait and see the mansion at some point?

• 9:42Speaker 03

  Well, it's this gorgeous, gorgeous house. I wanted, and so when Amanda and I were getting married, we were curious if we could rent this place.

• 9:49Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  And then I wanted the invitation to say, Mr. And Mrs. Amanda Lund cordially invite you to the wedding of their daughter Amanda to Matthew Gourley at the Pasadena Fuck Mansion from season two of True Detective.

• 10:04Conan O'Brien?

  That, you know what? I was very dubious about where you were going when you took control of this podcast. And you did. The wings came off. We lost a lot of passengers.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:14Conan O'Brien?

  I'm horribly burned now.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:16Conan O'Brien?

  But then you made a nice landing.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  I sullied it.

• 10:18Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, you sullied it.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  I would be able to look at like the Mars Rover the same way again. Cause like.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  Jack Parsons was, was a nutball. He was a genius nutball.

• 10:27Conan O'Brien?

  Let's just make sure that we're educating people. Property, you're talking about, say the name again.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  Jack Parsons who ran.

• 10:32Conan O'Brien?

  Jack Parsons who invented JPL, the big jet propulsion lab.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Is that also what the building, the building is named after?

• 10:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:39Conan O'Brien?

  And, yeah. And so you're saying that he had some, he was a crazy guy, an eccentric guy, and he was into erotic adventures? Is that what you're saying?

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  And he was bros with like L. Ron and what the fuck Crowley fucking Crowley?

• 10:52Speaker 03

  Aleister Crowley.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Aleister Crowley. Aleister. No one names their kids Aleister anymore, but it's a cool name.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Give me half a chance if I would have had a boy.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  That's a cool name.

• 11:00Conan O'Brien?

  I believe Aleister Crowley was a big influence on Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, and he's on, he's on Sergeant Pepper's cover too. One of the heads is Aleister Crowley, I believe.

• 11:09Conan O'Brien?

  Wow. Okay.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Jerking off into the dirt. Are you guys gonna try it?

• 11:13Conan O'Brien?

  What's that?

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Are you gonna try it?

• 11:14Conan O'Brien?

  Are we going to try it? You mean, what are you talking about? Yeah. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? There's not a square inch of my yard.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 11:25Speaker 03

  Oh, God.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Ew.

• 11:27Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I'm sorry, but you know what? It's good for the grass.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Is it?

• 11:31Conan O'Brien?

  People come, and my gardener is always like, "How do you do it, Mr. O'Brien?" And I said, now, what I didn't realize, what I didn't realize is we, uh, we have a security camera back there.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Ew. Do you have a crew?

• 11:46Conan O'Brien?

  What's that?

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Do you have, like, a couple pals that come with you?

• 11:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, who's, what's, what's your-

• 11:50Conan O'Brien?

  What, my whack pack, my crew?

• 11:52Speaker 03

  What's your dirt jerk?

• 11:53Conan O'Brien?

  No, no. Uh, no, no, it, sometimes, uh, they rent me out at golf courses to put new holes in.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 12:01Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, we're gonna take a break.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  What, you mean, end the show? And I mean, fully and completely.

• 12:08Conan O'Brien?

  When I say take a break, I mean, let's just stop talking. This is awful, and you, you did this. You did, Adam, did he do this?

• 12:16Speaker 05

  He did, yeah.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't do this. For the first time, I didn't do this.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  What did I do? I think, I think what I brought enriched, it changed the tenor.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  You brought up a cool house, and we started talking about him jizzing in his yard.

• 12:28Conan O'Brien?

  The idea, when you have a, when you have a big podcast like this, is to cast a wide net, let everyone in.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:33Conan O'Brien?

  You pretty much said, if you're into kinky sex and you love Pasadena lore, and, uh, you wanna hear some names you've never heard before, and some fun facts about someone behind the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, you narrowed it down so I think the only person who's gonna happily listen to this is you.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  Well, I do edit it, so I gotta put something in there for me.

• 12:54Conan O'Brien?

  If you make yourself happy. I guess today is the most decorated wrestler in WWE history. He has every award you can win, and outside of wrestling as well. He's got a Nobel Peace Prize.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 13:04Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, he's got it all. He's also, uh, has an impressive acting resume. You can see him in such films and TV series as Peacemaker, Barbie, and the Suicide Squad. Now you can see him in the new movie Coyote Versus Acme. I've been waiting for this.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  I saw it, it's so fun.

• 13:19Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, okay, I'm thrilled to talk to him today.

• 13:26Conan O'Brien?

  John Cena, welcome.

• 13:32Conan O'Brien?

  You've done the show before, but this is a new experience for us, one-on-one.

• 13:34Speaker 05

  I'm just trying to be here. Normally, it's like, hey, you have four minutes a break and three minutes, and a live audience to entertain, so it is, it's a different conversation.

• 13:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, I was in that world, as you know, for a long time. I like this world because I really get to plumb the depths of someone's soul. And that's what we're gonna do right now.

• 13:54Speaker 05

  Fair, fair play.

• 13:56Conan O'Brien?

  John, I'm gonna start with-

• 13:58Speaker 05

  Quick Rorschach test?

• 14:02Speaker 05

  My dad, my dad, my dad.

• 14:05Conan O'Brien?

  Every blot is your dad? I'm just showing you photographs of your dad.

• 14:10Conan O'Brien?

  John, I'm gonna tell you something. You and I, I think, are very similar in one way. We both came to, listen to me, listen to me. Not just physique, not just physique. We both came to a fork in the, in the road, and we took very different paths. I've done some research on you, I'm a fan, I know a lot about you. When you were 13 years old, you were bullied. And your response was to go and build up your body by lifting weights.

• 14:38Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 14:39Conan O'Brien?

  When I was 13, I was bullied. My response was to comb my hair up into a pompadour.

• 14:46Speaker 05

  Essentially, we kinda did the same thing, though.

• 14:50Speaker 05

  You, we both appeared larger.

• 14:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 14:54Speaker 05

  To stave off harassment.

• 14:56Conan O'Brien?

  It's so crazy, we both, yes, we, and you actually physically made yourself, uh, more imposing and stronger.

• 15:03Speaker 05

  So did you.

• 15:04Conan O'Brien?

  No, what I did was, you know those animals that are really scrawny and in the wild, but they can go, "Brrr!"

• 15:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:10Conan O'Brien?

  And they fill themselves up with air?

• 15:11Speaker 03

  A peacock.

• 15:12Conan O'Brien?

  And, and people get like, "Oh, my God, I'm gonna back away from this." And, but it turns out they're just still this little piece of shit animal.

• 15:20Conan O'Brien?

  Um, that's me.

• 15:22Speaker 05

  There's, there's a piece of shit inside me.

• 15:25Speaker 05

  It's waiting to come out. I'm gonna give it another eight hours, but there's one inside me, too.

• 15:32Conan O'Brien?

  We also are both from Massachusetts.

• 15:34Speaker 05

  Where are you from?

• 15:34Conan O'Brien?

  I'm from Brookline, Massachusetts, outside Boston. And you're from, is it-

• 15:38Speaker 05

  West Newbury.

• 15:39Conan O'Brien?

  West New, where is West Newbury?

• 15:40Speaker 05

  So, as you follow the coastline north of Boston, it is literally one town in, from Newburyport, which is like a border town. And then you can just walk into New Hampshire.

• 15:50Conan O'Brien?

  Now, it's funny because, uh, I'm from Massachusetts, but I don't know that I seem like a guy from Massachusetts. You don't seem like a guy. We don't have, did you ever have a strong Boston accent?

• 16:02Speaker 05

  Of course I did.

• 16:02Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I did. When I look at old footage of me, I have a Boston accent, and I didn't even try to make it go away. Did you try?

• 16:10Speaker 05

  That's how people talk. You don't know that there's any difference.

• 16:12Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 16:13Speaker 05

  I'm from a small town. When I was there, the town population was 1,200, maybe?

• 16:17Conan O'Brien?

  Wow.

• 16:17Speaker 05

  Uh, three towns were the municipality to go to high school, and still the graduating class is 200 kids. Like, it was small, no stoplights. And everyone just talked like that.

• 16:27Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 16:28Speaker 05

  And then you get put in a pool of people who have, uh, varying accents, and you realize, oh, my God, I sound a certain way, and that might get misunderstood later on in life.

• 16:38Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:39Speaker 05

  So, I went to, um, dormitory school as a 15, 16-year-old, and they kinda nudged me in the right direction of like, "Hey, you can also learn to speak a different way, if you'd like." So, that's when I kinda lost it.

• 16:51Conan O'Brien?

  You'd like to get the cod out of your mouth.

• 16:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:54Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. I remember it not even being a conscious choice. I think it was just erosion.

• 16:59Speaker 05

  Oddly enough, though, when I go back to Massachusetts, and I, you know, my brothers and I hang out, I got four brothers, we're all still very close. We open a few beers, and honestly, get me around them, and like, six beers deep, it comes back instantaneously.

• 17:14Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 17:14Speaker 05

  And I can't shut it off.

• 17:16Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 17:16Speaker 05

  The first time my wife heard it, she's like, "What the fuck happened?" "I don't understand what they're saying, now I don't understand what you're saying."

• 17:22Conan O'Brien?

  This is not the man I married? I didn't marry this guy from every other Ben Affleck movie.

• 17:31Conan O'Brien?

  You, you got at this great story. It's, uh, it's a classic story of someone who feels insecure, feels, uh, is being bullied, and why were, first of all, why are you, were you being bullied? Because you seem to me, I know why I was bullied, and anyone who meets me today or looks at any of my contents, like, I would bully that guy now. You, I don't see it. What was it about you that were-

• 17:53Speaker 05

  I was bullied because I did what you did. I put my hair up in like a high-top fade. I, I really fell in love with then rap music before it became hip-hop.

• 18:04Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 18:04Speaker 05

  Uh, in like, the mid-'80s is kinda when rap became public and mainstream, with like Run DMC and Aerosmith, and rapping, Roddy Dangerfield had a rap album. Like, it was just very commercialized. And with that became more exposure. Television and all that stuff.

• 18:21Conan O'Brien?

  It was a big thing on, it, it broke through on MTV, and suddenly-

• 18:24Speaker 05

  MTV, Yo' Rap.

• 18:25Conan O'Brien?

  Kids, yeah, everybody wanted to-

• 18:26Speaker 05

  So, in West Newbury, I'm, you know, 12, 13 years old, and going through a stage of rebellion in my life, and this music definitely spoke to me. I didn't, I, I certainly couldn't put myself in the shoes of the artists, but what I got from it was like, the voice of rebellion. And I embraced it, like, airbrushed overalls, MC Hammer pants. I mean, and in my town, West Newbury is either 100% or 99.9 repeating, all white. It's a farm town, it's a rock and roll town, it's four chords, ACDC, and that's it. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I was way different than everyone else. And I completely embraced, you know, I can't believe how many times I watched House Party

• 19:09Speaker 05

  and tried to emulate the tag-team dance of Kid 'N Play.

• 19:12Conan O'Brien?

  A, a dance I do every time Chris Hayes and I see each other.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:16Conan O'Brien?

  Chris Hayes does all our IT stuff, and he knows it cold, and whenever we see each other, we just start to do it.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  Are you saying you guys both know this tag-team dance?

• 19:24Speaker 05

  No, I know.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  Potentially?

• 19:25Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 19:25Speaker 05

  It, it had a parking space for a while, it's gone.

• 19:28Speaker 03

  Cause I thought we were in for a real moment here.

• 19:30Conan O'Brien?

  And, yes, I do know it.

• 19:31Speaker 05

  Because I put my hair up high, I was bullied.

• 19:34Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, okay.

• 19:35Speaker 05

  And it's just, I didn't, I just didn't look like everyone else. And it was an easy target, I was skinny and scrawny. I had grown, uh, in height, but not in stature.

• 19:42Conan O'Brien?

  Sure.

• 19:43Speaker 05

  And I just hadn't filled out my frame yet, and, uh, I was an easy target.

• 19:46Conan O'Brien?

  You know, it's so funny, I had I responded differently. Had I gone the John Cena route and hit the gym, I don't think muscles would have formed, I really don't. It took me so, and I'm not even doing a joke. I think when I was, you know, 13, 14, 15, you could've put me in a gym, and I could've been lifting weights, but I had no testosterone at that point. I didn't get testosterone until, well, I like to say this, but it's true, late in Obama's first term.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  And you had it imported, too.

• 20:14Conan O'Brien?

  I did.

• 20:15Speaker 05

  You laid that foundation until then, when you hit that.

• 20:18Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 20:18Speaker 05

  You're fine.

• 20:19Conan O'Brien?

  I just don't know if, uh, if that would've happened for me, but, uh, who was supervising you? Who was telling you, "This is how you do the weights, this is-"

• 20:26Speaker 05

  Nobody, just figured it out.

• 20:28Conan O'Brien?

  Wow.

• 20:28Speaker 05

  Uh, my, my grandfather convinced my dad to get me a weight bench for Christmas, and it was like one of those home weeder gyms with every attachment. To my dad's credit, he, he went in. I self-assembled it, and as soon as I got it done, I just worked out, and it came with a little pamphlet to be like, "These are the exercises that this machine's capable of." And I just did the whole thing, every day, of like, four sets of 12. So, I used every possible combination on the machine, every single day. Uh, by the time I was age 15, I'd begun to fill out my frame, and that's when you go from junior high to high school, and like, the football coach was like, "You, come here." And that was the first time I got sort of mentored as a ways of like, "Do this, and do this."

• 21:11Speaker 05

  But I just looked at the Joe Weeder pamphlet and did all the exercises.

• 21:14Conan O'Brien?

  Wow, that's so cool. The football coach looked at me and said, "You, come here," but he just wanted to kiss me.

• 21:20Speaker 05

  Fair.

• 21:21Conan O'Brien?

  We went out for three years.

• 21:24Conan O'Brien?

  So, you keep covering your face when you laugh. Let those laughs go.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  I'm sorry.

• 21:27Conan O'Brien?

  They're the mama's milk of this podcast.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  I'm just, I'm embarrassed for you.

• 21:31Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, please.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  And so, I think that's my problem.

• 21:33Speaker 05

  It's a great relationship.

• 21:35Conan O'Brien?

  I love that, man. I love that, man.

• 21:38Speaker 05

  They're still together today.

• 21:48Conan O'Brien?

  We all have those pieces in our closet we can count on. So now I imagine for you it's that leather jacket I got you.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Are you gonna do a bit?

• 21:55Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, it's a really nice leather jacket I got you once.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  I had that and then I replaced it and yes, I use it all the time.

• 22:00Conan O'Brien?

  We all have that versatile jacket, the perfect T-shirt, and those are the pieces that make getting dressed easy. And you know what I was thinking about this morning?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  What?

• 22:10Conan O'Brien?

  Quince. They do it best. They really do. I was really thinking about this.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  What a coincidence that we're doing an ad for them.

• 22:15Conan O'Brien?

  No, a co- coincidence.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 22:20Conan O'Brien?

  That's why I get the big money.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  I gotta go.

• 22:22Conan O'Brien?

  Cut to a very small amount of money. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials and designs that are timeless, thoughtful, crafted, and made to be worn again and again. And when the temperature starts to drop, Quince makes it easy to build on those everyday staples with versatile layers. Layer up. That's the key. Now, Blay, you're using some Quince.

• 22:41Speaker 06

  That's right. I'm spending a lot of time back east in Michigan. It's getting a little colder, so I got a featherless quilted jacket, an Atlas Navy, and I just feel like a different guy. I feel classy.

• 22:52Conan O'Brien?

  You look like a different guy because you're well dressed.

• 22:54Speaker 06

  That's right. Exactly.

• 22:55Conan O'Brien?

  No, I'm serious. He looks like a hobo half the time.

• 22:57Speaker 06

  That's true. He's right. That's true.

• 22:58Conan O'Brien?

  No, they really do great stuff. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK as well.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  All right.

• 23:12Conan O'Brien?

  And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. Please do that. Say, by the way, I heard about this on Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.

• 23:21Speaker 06

  Oh, I didn't really ask.

• 23:23Conan O'Brien?

  I just want you to know. It's the best way to support the show.

• 23:30Conan O'Brien?

  Hey, that's me, Teddy Swims. You hear that? That's life. So go grab it. Grab your old friends, grab new friends, grab a White Claw. Grab flavor for everyone in your group. Grab music, laughter, and moments you'll never forget. You'll never regret it. Oh, hey, man.

• 23:50Speaker 07

  Grab new friends, grab old friends, grab life by the glow. White Claw. Please drink responsibly. White Claw cell to work, Chicago, Illinois.

• 23:58Speaker 05

  The Hulu original series, Phony, is coming to Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus, October 20.

• 24:03Speaker 07

  My name is Sonny Cook. Ever since the accident, my mom looks different. You think your mom has been swapped out with a different woman? I know something, okay? Something's wrong. I don't know what's going on with you, but I know that I'm your mother. If that's not your mom, why do you think she is? I don't know, but I need to find her.

• 24:21Speaker 05

  Watch the Hulu original series, Phony, on October 20. Streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 24:34Conan O'Brien?

  You come out to Los Angeles. I think I came out here for the first time in 1985. I know I did. You came out here, and I don't know if you felt the same way, but when I came out here, it felt like I was going to the moon. I came from Massachusetts. I go to Los Angeles, and I had a really crappy car. I didn't have any money. I was just... I think I would have felt exactly the same if you would drop me onto Mars and said, "You have a very limited food supply." That's how strange it felt to me. And you came out here... Did you have a job when you came out?

• 25:09Speaker 05

  No, but... No, and I felt it was strange, but I felt it was strange, like, this is Mars. And if you'd been like, "You have three days." I have three days of food? This is gonna be great.

• 25:23Conan O'Brien?

  Attitude is everything. Yeah.

• 25:25Speaker 05

  I made a choice to come out here, even my first trip, when all the... I'd saved up some money for like my senior year of college spring break, and everyone was going to Cancun to have fun. And at the time, I didn't drink, so I came to Los Angeles to check out places to do an internship. And as soon as I got off the plane, I'm like, "Man, I'm coming back here. I'm finding a way." And the rest is kind of just finding a way.

• 25:51Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 25:51Speaker 05

  You know?

• 25:51Conan O'Brien?

  I know you worked at Gold's Gym for a while.

• 25:54Speaker 05

  I started at a warehouse assembling and disassembling old fitness equipment, and I thought that would be a way to use my degree. I thought I would end up getting into the sales branch. But I was so good in the warehouse that it kind of chained me there for life, so I had to quit that. I worked security at bars. I worked at a place called Sharky's over in Hermosa Beach. I was there like five days a week from happy hour till close. That allowed me to work out at Gold's during the day, and then I actually got a job at Gold's. That was very advantageous because I had to switch living situations. I had no place to live, so I just kind of lived in the parking lot and showered in the locker room and then just worked all day and then slept in my car. That was for a few months,

• 26:36Speaker 05

  and then I moved into a garage in Venice. And then, again, I just got into wrestling by accident, and now we're here.

• 26:42Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. And you made it. Yeah. It's simple. It's really simple. This is an interesting thing I've been thinking about, which is, to me, it makes perfect sense that you would be in professional wrestling and then be so adept at comedy. Because I think there's some... I've always said there's a relationship between comedy and musicians, and I think there's a relationship between comedians and what really good wrestlers are doing in professional wrestling, which is, you need to figure out who you are, and then you need to attack that 100% with an attitude. And there's all these disciplines that go beyond the actual physical part of it.

• 27:25Conan O'Brien?

  Obviously, you had the physical part of it, but you're a... I just look at... I was thinking about all the different characters you inhabited. As a wrestler, you keep coming up with new ways to come at this thing. And some of the... Was it the professor of thuganomics? Doctor of thuganomics. And when I hear a doctor of thuganomics, I'm like, that's great comedy writing. That's really good comedy writing, and that's a great comedy character. And the fact that you have to keep changing it up, you can do something for a year or two, and then you have to switch it and come out a different way, it's almost a really good school for comedy if you approach it the right way. Do you think that's true?

• 28:05Speaker 05

  I think that's a great perspective, and you said, "Good comedians and good professional wrestlers." I think comedy and live sports entertainment, professional wrestling, run parallels. So bad stand-ups are in that phase of trying to find themselves. So we're bad wrestlers. And they're working at shit clubs, and they're mostly like working for free, and they're losing money. But they are trying to hone their craft. All they need is reps and the ability to be coachable, a little bit of magic. But they do find themselves. And once comedians do find their voice, you know, they do. They attack it. And the ones who have stood the test of time as storytellers can't just lean on successful material. They

• 28:48Speaker 05

  have to continue to bring the personality that the audience identifies with, but in a new presentation.

• 28:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:54Speaker 05

  And we in sports entertainment have to do the same thing. After 23 years of tenure there, and now this is my sports entertainment uniform, because I need to let the audience know, like, I don't want to confuse the audience of like, "He's gonna do something physical" because I've been the first wrestler ever to retire. And I've said, "I'm not going back to falling down." I'm just not. It's not conducive to the goals I've set for myself.

• 29:16Conan O'Brien?

  We were gonna hit you with an orange crate.

• 29:18Speaker 05

  Now, that's here. That's here.

• 29:22Conan O'Brien?

  Ed Warner, were you ready with the crate? I was ready. Yeah, yeah, okay, just...

• 29:25Speaker 05

  But again, I'm kind of still doing that. I'm still curating what the personality is.

• 29:30Conan O'Brien?

  It's never over.

• 29:31Speaker 05

  It's never. And it's over when you walk away from it.

• 29:33Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 29:33Speaker 05

  You know, so as long as I'm still involved, and I'm, you know, WWE is my family, I'll never leave until they throw me out.

• 29:39Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 29:39Speaker 05

  So I have to continue to evolve. And in doing that, my first rule was, don't confuse the consumer. Show up in a different outfit so they know you're not getting your hands dirty.

• 29:48Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 29:49Speaker 05

  And now I'm far more of a promoter and a spokesperson.

• 29:52Conan O'Brien?

  Sure, sure.

• 29:53Speaker 05

  So...

• 29:53Conan O'Brien?

  The... I guess what I was like, obviously, seeing you over the years and in preparation for this talk, I was looking at a lot of your iconic performances in the ring, and what I see is 100% commitment to whatever you're doing. You go in there, and there is no fucking around, and there's no lapses. There's not a moment where you drop who it is that you want to be out there. That's really impressive, and that's really hard to do. Because you're doing... You're coming in as an athlete and doing this really incredible... These incredible moves and displaying these great gifts in your physicality.

• 30:32Conan O'Brien?

  But also just you as this persona, you don't drop it for a second. It is life or death. And then to me, it's perfectly natural that you've had all this success in film and in television. You're just because that is 90% of the game is going in with that kind of, this is life or death. I'm going to commit to this.

• 30:56Speaker 05

  I, I, I think that's also a good perspective and I agree. I, I learned that the hard way. I thought just doing moves was important and almost lost my job.

• 31:06Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 31:06Speaker 05

  And then they were like, oh, you can rap? Would you mind being a character on TV?

• 31:11Conan O'Brien?

  That's right.

• 31:11Speaker 05

  Well, they. Fuck, yes, I can. And that's when it was like, you couldn't.

• 31:16Conan O'Brien?

  Didn't someone hear you? You were like on a plane.

• 31:18Speaker 05

  Bro, I'm, I'm here by accident, like absolute.

• 31:20Conan O'Brien?

  Well, all of us are here by accident, except for Gourley, who seems to know what he's doing. But, but. What am I doing? Oh, I don't know. I mean, what am I doing here? Yeah. I don't know what you're doing here, but, uh, no, um, I, I've always heard the story that they're like, yeah, okay. Maybe this is over for this guy. We get rid of him.

• 31:38Speaker 05

  No, it wasn't. Maybe this is over. It was like, hey, we're doing December cuts and your name's on the list.

• 31:43Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 31:43Speaker 05

  They used to at least back in, back when I broke into the business around 2000, 2001, they would make cuts in every April and every December. But there would also be a list of people on the bubble. So at least they would make you aware of like, and I think that was to light a fire under you of like, hey, three months, show me something, kid. But I, I had nothing and I had little understanding of how I could find myself. But because I had nothing, I had nothing to lose. And I went into a professional environment with the advice of mouth shut, ears open, which was great. I learned a lot, but I never spoke up for myself.

• 32:17Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 32:18Speaker 05

  When I knew the ship was sinking and the guys were rapping in the back, I was like, fuck this. I'm just going back there. And the head of creative happened to be sitting at the front of the bus. And they were like, can you do that on TV? I said, I sure can. And, and it, it wasn't like, uh, the kid's a star. They started putting me in forgettable matches on their Saturday night broadcast that aired on Nowhere.

• 32:40Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 32:40Speaker 05

  But in a hundred percent commitment, I was like, called myself Mr. Saturday Night. Like the, the show was my show. You give me an inch, I'm going to take a mile. But it, it was just the direction of, hey, you're the white kid from West Newbury who's the rapper.

• 32:54Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 32:55Speaker 05

  I get that. I can, I can work with that. Let's, let's go armor.

• 32:58Conan O'Brien?

  The idea to only wear cutoff jeans.

• 33:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:02Conan O'Brien?

  That to me, that to me, anyone, if you told me that ahead of time, like, here's my thing. I wear cutoff jeans in the ring. I'd be like, that's terrible. That's absolutely terrible.

• 33:14Speaker 05

  Believe it or not, that was a process in itself. I was wearing everything. I was wearing like yellow corduroys. I wear like blue sheepskin pants. I was really leaning into like urban wear. I would literally, you know, one, when.

• 33:27Conan O'Brien?

  I never wrestle in corduroy. That is a deal breaker for me.

• 33:30Speaker 05

  Win over one audience member at a time. And I would literally go to the city we're in and shop in the hood for my gear that night. And while I'm paying, I'm like, yo, I'm going to wear this tonight and the jersey I'm going to throw out to the crowd. People like, oh man, I'll go check that out. But just the fact that I'm, I'm going to these places. You know, I, for all the media, I would freestyle, everybody had freestyle kids in the parking lot. I have an album for God's sakes.

• 33:55Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 33:56Speaker 05

  Like, um, I went in, I went in and the jean shorts became a necessity because that was kind of the style in oh four. But the jean shorts are super long and super baggy. But in the evolution of the character outside of rapping, like the next chapter of this patriotic, uh, aspirational figure that admires members of service, all, all core values within me, just like hip hop and rap music. Just one lane.

• 34:22Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 34:23Speaker 05

  The transition became, what is the material I can wear and wrestle in that won't, my crotch won't split? And denim, time over time.

• 34:31Conan O'Brien?

  I see you're working backwards from something. Yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 05

  Time over time, denim stands, stands up to any test. I've worn like regular cargo shorts and I've blown my crotch open a bunch. So.

• 34:41Conan O'Brien?

  I blow my crotch open, I think, once a week.

• 34:44Speaker 05

  Shorts.

• 34:45Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 34:45Speaker 05

  Jorts just were more durable and, and they also fit the evolution of the character. So that was the thing that could kind of like, you know, they started going above knee height. And by the time I finished, it was like the, the John Stockton jorts.

• 34:58Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:59Speaker 05

  If you looked really close, you could see everything that was going on.

• 35:01Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:02Speaker 05

  But they would, I knew they would never tear.

• 35:05Conan O'Brien?

  It's fantastic. I mean, it just, I love, uh, the, the best part of any story is the beginning to me. Because you understand, I mean, like the Beatles is an example. It's still interesting later on, but nothing's more fascinating than when they're figuring this out in Hamburg, Germany. That's always the most fascinating part to me. How did these people come together? What are they doing in Germany? They're not supposed to be there. And how did they become these guys? And understanding, you know, a million things went into you getting from North Shore, Massachusetts, to being in the ring, wearing.

• 35:42Speaker 05

  Shorts.

• 35:42Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, exactly. All, all I wish is that you sold shorts on TV and you always open with tired of your crotch blowing open.

• 35:53Conan O'Brien?

  That'd be such a great ad, you know? Are you tired of your crotch? And then just a series of shots of crotches just exploding.

• 36:00Conan O'Brien?

  Like they put a grenade in a mannequin's, where a mannequin's dick should be and it just explodes. And then you're like, I've got just the, just the pants for you. Hi, I'm John Cena. You'd, you'd be, I mean, I'm sure you're doing well now, but you'd be a billionaire.

• 36:14Speaker 05

  If, if I could have sold jorts like that to prevent, to rent, uh, crotches from blowing open. Yeah.

• 36:21Conan O'Brien?

  You start to make this transition into film. And you have this interesting story, which is true for so many people, but your first foray is not a commercial success.

• 36:31Speaker 05

  No, not at all.

• 36:32Conan O'Brien?

  And.

• 36:33Speaker 05

  Neither is the next one or the next one or the next one or the next one.

• 36:35Conan O'Brien?

  Certain people, Judd Apatow, Tina Fey, they're like.

• 36:40Speaker 05

  Amy Schumer.

• 36:40Conan O'Brien?

  Amy Schumer, like, no, no, no, there's something, there's something good here. And we're going to stick with this, we're going to, we're going to work with this guy. And you start working in these and doing a really good job in these great movies.

• 36:53Speaker 05

  I, I appreciate that. So you had said like a million things have to happen.

• 36:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 36:57Speaker 05

  Take it from the North Shore to wearing shorts. 900,000 of those aren't strictly me. Like it's all a collective work.

• 37:04Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:05Speaker 05

  It, what can I control and what can I learn from my experiences? The reason those movies or the reason I can control that those movies sucked. I wasn't wholeheartedly invested.

• 37:16Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 37:17Speaker 05

  I wanted to be in the ring.

• 37:19Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 37:19Speaker 05

  Because as a 27 year old, spending 15 hours a day to watch one thing blow up in a library quiet set is not near as cool as being in an arena in Lexington with 22,000 people going ape shit to be like, this is the fucking best thing I've ever seen in my life.

• 37:34Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 37:35Speaker 05

  And then you drive to the next town and do it again. And you need, like, I wanted to be there. My focus was elsewhere. And again, I, I think I've had at least a bit of control over knowing when something is happening. Like, do you want to rap? I do. It's going to be ridiculous. I'll do it. Like, I'll be ridiculous instead of putting roadblocks.

• 37:55Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 37:56Speaker 05

  By the time I auditioned for Trainwreck, I was like, hey, you've already been run out of the movie business once. And you're also doing okay. You have other things going on. I was, I was hosting the Today Show, I was reading the news, doing live programming. I, I was having fun. So if you're going to get back into this, I just told myself, put the same amount of passion you do in wrestling into this.

• 38:17Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 05

  And at the very least, you won't regret your choices. And that's exactly what I did in that audition. I'm sitting with very funny people. I have no business being there, but I didn't give a fuck and just let it go. And realize that like I was the joke in many cases. So I didn't put the roadblock in front of myself.

• 38:34Conan O'Brien?

  No, yeah.

• 38:35Speaker 05

  I can't laugh at myself because I'm cool and fuck that. Like, let's go, let's make the funniest, coolest thing. And in being on set in New York, man, Judd called Tina, who was filming just up the road and be like, hey, I'm done with John. If you have a small part for him, which they did, they needed a, a drug dealer. And they were like, yeah, sure. It's, he's not going to sink the movie. If he sucks, sure, we'll, we'll give him a chance. And then I got like within a, a small period, I got to work with and watch very funny people, not only on screen, but also how they see comedy. It was, it was like how I learned from my mentors in wrestling.

• 39:13Speaker 05

  Like the people, when I started my character and got some speed, the experienced folks that I got to work with every night was like fucking college. And just those instances, I got to go from Judd and Amy and everybody they brought in to Paul Appel, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and everybody they brought in. And then like Will Ferrell and his whole crew with Mark Wahlberg. It, it was just a storm of very funny, very successful comedians. I got to work with Seth Rogen's group, like every single time. I, I wasn't the smartest guy in the room and all these smart people were like, we want you to be funny because if you're funny, it helps us.

• 39:49Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 39:50Speaker 05

  So I was also in an environment where it was okay to fail. They're only going to show the funny stuff. Don't be afraid to tell a joke that bombs because it doesn't fucking matter. Like I really got nurtured and combine that with, hey, don't fuck this up this time. Go wholeheartedly, like be in it. Know that every day is going to be 14 hours and don't complain to try to get it done faster. Just show up and go. And that's, that's been a system that's, you know, it worked in wrestling. And I, I, I look back on those decisions about what the fuck was I doing? But I'm just so grateful that I did get another chance. And I didn't hold out for like, I have to be the star. No, I'll be a fucking merman. I don't care. Like, it's a chance to be creative and do something.

• 40:30Conan O'Brien?

  I'm holding out for merman.

• 40:32Speaker 05

  Again, like putting, putting that, putting a door in front of a window.

• 40:35Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 40:35Speaker 05

  See the opportunity. I, I'm not saying say yes to everything because you know, it's impossible to do that. But a lot, a lot of times we have, we might have something going or there might be potential there. And the biggest obstacle is self sabotage.

• 40:48Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 40:48Speaker 05

  So I just try to minimize self sabotage.

• 40:51Conan O'Brien?

  I get the impression talking to you that you've done a lot of work. Meaning you've read a lot about strategies. You think a lot about strategies to succeed. You've done a lot of work. I don't know if it's a self, self-help books or something, but I get that impression that you take, you, you are very honest with yourself about what could I have done better?

• 41:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:11Conan O'Brien?

  How could I? Uh, and, and not a lot of people are, a lot of people, you know, it, it takes a lot of discipline to constantly look at yourself and say, okay, I'm, I'm doing well.

• 41:23Speaker 03

  This went okay, but how could it have gone better? That takes a methodology that you had when you were 13 years old and you decided I'm gonna lift weights every day. And read this booklet. It's all the same thing over and over and over again. That's the part that I respond to viscerally when I'm talking to you is I know that I screwed up a million times in a million different ways. But my methodology when I was 13 was, well, I would like to be better than I am. Or I'd like to take this, yeah, little bit of thing that interests me that I think I have some ability in and I wanna see how far I can push it. And then here I am, all these years, decades and decades later, and I'm still doing the same thing.

• 42:05Speaker 03

  It's just, it's not that romantic or cool. It's just this, I'm gonna go back at it again today.

• 42:11Speaker 05

  And I think that's what is romantic and cool. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna lean into those two words for a second.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:18Speaker 05

  Romantic and cool.

• 42:21Speaker 05

  New romance. That's, you know, passionate and fiery. What really tugs at my heartstrings is when I see a 50th anniversary.

• 42:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:32Speaker 05

  And that's beautiful. When I see an old couple walking hand in hand, that's romance. That's cool.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 05

  You know what that takes? The same fucking thing every day. And it's not easy. There's sensitivities. You fucking brush your teeth too loud, or there's, there's so much to coexist.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 42:52Speaker 05

  You know, to, to coexist with somebody.

• 42:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:56Speaker 05

  To build a, a team to be successful for that long.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:00Speaker 05

  That's romance. That's cool.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  What's interesting is that we're in this immediate satisfaction culture. And when you talk about these things, like, no, you gotta, you gotta commit to this over this many decades. You can see people's eyes kinda glaze over.

• 43:16Speaker 05

  See.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, cuz we live in a culture where, wow, that looks cool. Amazon will bring it to you by 5:00 PM today.

• 43:22Speaker 05

  5:00 PM? I need it by 1:00.

• 43:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:24Speaker 05

  God damn it!

• 43:25Speaker 03

  Or if it's 5:05, you're in front of your house. Why have I been lied to? My life sucks.

• 43:32Speaker 05

  I think, I think that's what helped with physical fitness.

• 43:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:35Speaker 05

  I didn't blow up the second I did all those exercises.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:39Speaker 05

  Nor three months later, nor a year later, nor two years later.

• 43:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:43Speaker 05

  Like, it was a very long-term thing and right as in that, you know, adaptable period where you're, you're learning about life and self. I found that like, oh, nothing is gained tomorrow. It's trench warfare. It's an inch at a time and eventually the inches make a mile.

• 44:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:01Speaker 05

  And I kinda use that as a template of like, oh, I, I, man, I mess around piano. Like strictly for me, not to monetize it, not as a skill to show. It's a hobby. It's like my, a safe space for me. I'll hear.

• 44:15Speaker 03

  Is that something you were interested in even as a kid? Or is this something that came much later?

• 44:18Speaker 05

  I wanted to play music so bad as a young kid. And I look at my hands and I'm like, oh, I try to pick up a guitar. I have like a.

• 44:26Speaker 03

  Crush it.

• 44:26Speaker 05

  I have a catcher's mitt with small sausages attached to it.

• 44:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:30Speaker 05

  So it was very easy.

• 44:31Speaker 03

  I feel like it's like Hulk. Hulk wanna play oboe. Crush. Hulk sad.

• 44:37Speaker 05

  It was, it was just easy for me to say, I'm not built for this.

• 44:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:40Speaker 05

  And for the longest time I did that. And on my 40th birthday, I'm like, fuck it. You're gonna learn music. You're just gonna learn. So I got a shitty keyboard and just started mashing keys. And I did mash keys. And I was like, man, I'll be good at this in five years. And in five years, I was better than I was when I was mashing keys, but compared to someone who's a musician, I still sucked. I've been playing for almost 10 years.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:04Speaker 05

  And I'm better than I was yesterday, but I still suck.

• 45:06Speaker 03

  What kind of stuff do you like to play?

• 45:07Speaker 05

  Uh, right now, man, I wanna just play jazz. I wanna sit down with like a Scotch and just jazz it up. Like that's, that's, that's my goal. And I know I'll be there in five years.

• 45:17Speaker 03

  Wow, so cool.

• 45:18Speaker 05

  So like, that's, I'm just learning like fundamental, um, 12-bar blues and cocktail jazz and stuff like that. And I try to put in an hour a day and I know like fluency takes eight hours a day or four hours a day. I don't have that, so I'm on my own speed. But because it doesn't sound right, right now, I don't care. I'm like, hey, what's it gonna sound like in 2035?

• 45:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:40Speaker 05

  And if I'm not there, then I gotta pivot. And each year I kinda take an assessment of, alright, I'm not where I wanna be, but dude, you didn't know how to play this last year.

• 45:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:49Speaker 05

  And I'll, I'll work on a piece for a year, or I'll work on fundamentals of just the same.

• 45:56Speaker 05

  For a fucking year, 18 months. My wife's like, you gonna learn something new?

• 46:01Speaker 03

  And you're like, you try and brush your teeth a little more.

• 46:05Speaker 05

  It's 5:05, where's my Amazon package?

• 46:09Speaker 03

  Do you, seriously, cuz I have a similar thing with guitar. I, I don't think I'm a natural musician, but I was just really interested in it. And, you know, went and got a guitar when I first came out to LA and got a booklet, just, you know, like you did with the weights. And sat in my, I didn't have a girlfriend when I first came out to LA, so I just sat in my room and played. Forced myself to do these scales and, and try chords. And I know that if I sit with musicians, they're like, oh, he's a comedian. But I also know that I just enjoy it. It's, it's, it's something that's for me. Yeah.

• 46:48Speaker 05

  Like you also don't, I was never gonna be Mr. Olympia. I lifted weights like it was my job. It's never gonna be Mr. Olympia. I committed to football as if it was the last thing I'd ever do. I played Division III football. I was never going farther than that.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 47:03Speaker 05

  And I was never gonna play football in front of more than maybe 1,500 people.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 47:08Speaker 05

  Uh, I started wrestling not because I knew I would make it, because it was a way to justify staying in California and proving my dad right, that I could make it. Working my shitty job as long as they gave me the weekends off. And I would dress up as a fucking superhero and, and do kinda be athletic. And you could justify like, why do you spend so much time at the gym? Cuz I'm a wrestler and it works and that's fine. Like I never.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:32Speaker 05

  It's okay to have something, you want to be, you don't have to be a gold medalist.

• 47:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:37Speaker 05

  You might still like to go out for a run. You know what I'm saying?

• 47:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 05

  Like piano for me is, that's for me. It's not for somebody to be like, oh, you can't play. Yeah, I can't play like you, but you should've seen me when I started. I fucking couldn't play and now I can kinda play. So that's all.

• 47:52Speaker 03

  And also I can't play like you, but I can rip your head off.

• 47:55Conan O'Brien?

  Thelonious Monk.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  You just go to jazz clubs and beat, I love you going to different jazz clubs and beat the shit out of all these like old amazing players. You can't do this, can you? John Cena killed 11 jazz greats today in a, uh, berserk. Yeah.

• 48:15Speaker 05

  It's, it's weird now. Like I, I also am very grateful for when I grew up because I don't think I would've had the perseverance.

• 48:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:22Speaker 05

  Like when I grew up, you'd look at a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger in a magazine or, or you, you might be able to, if you're, um, if you're an aspiring musician, get a, a dubbed tape of some like live performance. Now you go on your phone and you see the 1% of everything. And there are so many, let's, let's say you're, you're into lifting weights, right? And, and, and you wanna be Mr. Olympia. Uh, 8 billion people in the world, there's probably, you know, I'm making low estimations. 100 million people that train dedicated every day, that have profiles, that post shit. You're gonna be flooded with people who you know, if I work the fucking hardest I can, I'm never gonna look like that. I'll be the best me.

• 49:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:03Speaker 05

  But that shit's out of reach. I, I think if I, if I was 13 now, it would be very tough for me to be like.

• 49:10Speaker 03

  Would kill your initiative. Yeah.

• 49:12Speaker 05

  Man, I remember when I was young and I saw my, like my first Corvette. I was like, man, that's fucking aspirational. Now, it's just supercars everywhere. It's like, how the fuck am I ever gonna get a 12 million dollar car? Cuz that seems to be what everybody's driving. But it's not. It's what a small percentage of people are driving, but you're flooded with all this information of, yo, if you're not like this, don't even fucking try.

• 49:33Speaker 03

  Don't try.

• 49:34Speaker 05

  And that, that's difficult. And I really have a lot of empathy for young folks out there. And that may, a short attention span and all that, but even being flooded with that information might really stop people from like, I'm just gonna fail anyway.

• 49:47Speaker 03

  That's why you need to block some of the apps sometimes and just get into your garage and work on what you're gonna work on.

• 49:52Speaker 05

  That's also like saying like, hey, yeah, stop doing crack and hanging out. Like it's so addictive, you know? And blocking the apps is so easy to say. Oh, we just need to be on our phone list. That's the easy fix. Dude, it's addicting, you know? I, I.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  No, I know.

• 50:06Speaker 05

  It's just tough. It's tough, you know? So again, I, I, I don't know. I'm just very grateful for the time of life I grew up in and, and the fact that everything is, is gone the way it's gone. But I, I just think it was like, I didn't know any better.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:20Speaker 05

  So even when it came to telling jokes, I didn't know any better. I knew I was sitting with, you know, comedians and in, in, important people in that field, but I didn't overthink it. And I didn't know that like, if I tell a shitty joke, I'm gonna feel less than. I just got in and went.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  This is an interesting thing too. Like I'm a fan of Peacemaker, you know? Uh, I think you're really funny. It's a really funny character. I think that's a great role for you. And one.

• 50:47Conan O'Brien?

  One of the things that makes it work is you're not telling jokes. You're just, you're saying everything with complete sincerity and you're very earnest. And your character's outrageous, you know, he's, he's

• 51:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:01Conan O'Brien?

  A total asshole. He's going, you know, he's got a cruel nickname for everyone.

• 51:06Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 51:06Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, he's self-absorbed. He doesn't always, he doesn't see himself properly. So what your, your approach to it is you could be Laurence Olivier. What you're saying is very important to you and it's real. It just happens to be completely wrong-headed and insane. But it's what, what, it's what makes it so funny, you know? That a lot of being funny is not saying a joke. People, because I've been in comedy for so long. Sometimes older people, younger people never say this, but older people are like, oh yeah, you're that funny guy. Tell me a joke. I'm like, I don't know a joke. I've never said a joke in my life and when I do hear a funny joke, I can't remember it for more than five minutes. But it's about committing to something absolutely absurd with incredible intensity. You do that so well.

• 51:48Speaker 05

  Well, we're, we're all storytellers.

• 51:50Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 51:50Speaker 05

  And again, that's just something from wrestling.

• 51:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 51:53Speaker 05

  Don't drop the act.

• 51:55Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:55Speaker 05

  Because if you do, people notice.

• 51:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 51:57Speaker 05

  And I got to see it every night. Like I did the Beatles thing. I performed five nights a week for 23 years, non-stop.

• 52:07Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 52:07Speaker 05

  But we don't have an off-season. We don't stop ever. So like, I had my time in Germany and by the time I got to my Ed Sullivan show, trying to play different characters other than John. Oh, you just never break the bit.

• 52:21Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 52:21Speaker 05

  And, and swing big and go for it.

• 52:23Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 52:23Speaker 05

  You know, like.

• 52:24Conan O'Brien?

  And that's what you're, I mean, that's what you're doing. Uh, and I want to make sure I, I get to because, uh, we were talking to Eric Andre. We were talking about your new project together.

• 52:34Speaker 05

  By the way, tremendously talented too. He's, he's got so much talent and skill that he kind of keeps for him.

• 52:41Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 52:42Speaker 05

  Uh, it's, he's a, he's a really.

• 52:43Conan O'Brien?

  Well, this is interesting too. I'm realizing he's a jazz guy.

• 52:46Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 52:46Conan O'Brien?

  He's a serious jazz guy. Do you guys ever, have you ever played together?

• 52:49Speaker 05

  So that I don't want to like have my dreams crushed. Because he is very good.

• 52:56Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Well, he's Berklee School of Music.

• 52:58Speaker 05

  He is very.

• 52:59Conan O'Brien?

  Upright bass playing.

• 53:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:01Conan O'Brien?

  Multi-instrumentalist.

• 53:02Speaker 05

  Brother. Like, man, you know, you're all over the place. What are you doing? He's like, after this, I'm rapping, I'm going to Budapest to do some classical jazz album. We're gonna score it and everything. I'm like, wait, what?

• 53:12Conan O'Brien?

  I want to come too. I'll bring my piano.

• 53:14Speaker 05

  And it's just one of those things that like, in, everybody's got a story, you know? We know nothing about and to hear his, and he does it, it's pure passion for him. It's not, he's not trying to blow it out of the water. He just wants to be around good musicians. He wants to compose. He wants to create. You know, he's, he's known to me and I think a lot of the people who know him for outrageous physical comedy and commitment to concept. And that's why I love Eric and I was so happy to work with him and allow a project that I thought was written for him with outrageous physical comedy and commitment to concept. And in learning who he is, like, man, he's a real, he's a talented director. Like, he's got so much stuff going on.

• 53:50Conan O'Brien?

  He knows, it's one of the things is knowing how you're funny. And Eric knows, I could just see him knowing exactly, this is how I'm funny in this situation. What makes, um, Little Brother, uh, I think the, the core of it is you two are a funny comedy duo. Because you present as so different, you know, you're, you're complete opposites. You're, uh, and your character also is incredibly uptight, you know?

• 54:22Speaker 05

  And then again, committing to the bit. I got this guy going crazy around me.

• 54:27Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 54:27Speaker 05

  But you're supposed to be type A.

• 54:28Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. And you're not laughing. You're not thinking it's funny. You're not winking at the camera. You're incredibly irritated by the fact that Eric Andre has shown up in your life.

• 54:39Speaker 05

  And it's just wreaking havoc.

• 54:40Conan O'Brien?

  Is wreaking havoc and you are trying to hold it all together.

• 54:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:50Conan O'Brien?

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

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:55Conan O'Brien?

  You fell for it.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  I fell for a scam.

• 54:57Conan O'Brien?

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

• 54:59Speaker 01

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

• 55:05Conan O'Brien?

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

• 55:09Conan 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.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:26Conan O'Brien?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Maybe I should start scamming.

• 55:28Conan O'Brien?

  No, that's not the point.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  That's not the point of this.

• 55:30Conan O'Brien?

  That's not the point. One accidental click, Sona, 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.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right, right.

• 55:42Conan 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?

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:54Conan 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. 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.

• 56:13Conan O'Brien?

  This fall, I want to try something different.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  What?

• 56:15Conan O'Brien?

  I like to change it up. I like to learn things. So I'm going to try and make apple cider.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 56:19Conan O'Brien?

  Every morning.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 56:21Conan O'Brien?

  This fall, just to see if I can do it.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:23Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Fall's the perfect season to try something new, like joining T-Mobile.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  Oh, that's good.

• 56:28Conan O'Brien?

  See what I did?

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:29Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. There are 250 reasons to join T-Mobile right now. You want to hear what they are?

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:33Conan O'Brien?

  They're America's best network.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 56:35Conan O'Brien?

  True story. Plus, T-Mobile has got off-grid satellite coverage. That comes in really handy. I like to just wander in the woods sometimes.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Oh, that's weird.

• 56:42Conan O'Brien?

  When I'm thinking about like making apple cider and, uh, that's when it comes in handy. Here's another reason. High-speed data in over 215 countries and destinations. I travel a lot for the

• 56:52Speaker 01

  You travel a lot.

• 56:52Conan O'Brien?

  Travel show that I do.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:54Conan O'Brien?

  Stream this podcast while ignoring local landmarks. That's always fun to do. Like, oh, look, there's the Mona Lisa. Yeah, check it out. I'm in the Louvre. I should, but I'm listening to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  That doesn't seem like a good idea.

• 57:05Conan O'Brien?

  It's a great idea.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:07Conan O'Brien?

  You know, uh, you can see art anytime. But how often can you listen to this podcast?

• 57:12Speaker 01

  My God.

• 57:13Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Now, all these reasons make T-Mobile a great choice.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 57:17Conan O'Brien?

  T-Mobile is stacking up reasons to join. Go to tmobile.com and find yours. Best based on analysis by Ookla of speed test intelligence data first half of 2026. Can't believe I read that. T-Satellite with capable devices in most outdoor areas in the US where you can see the sky. High-speed international data with qualifying plan. Visit tmobile.com. Consult a physician. I just threw that in there.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 57:44Conan O'Brien?

  Technology can generate salary recommendations in seconds. But building an offer that lands skilled talent, that takes more than just an estimate you came up with.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:53Conan O'Brien?

  You know?

• 57:53Speaker 01

  You're right.

• 57:54Conan O'Brien?

  That's where Robert Half's new 2027 Salary Guide can help.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 57:58Conan O'Brien?

  Did we use a salary guide with you, Sona?

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Uh, no, but maybe.

• 58:01Conan O'Brien?

  For several years, I just gave you groceries. Remember?

• 58:04Speaker 01

  I know. Yeah, I remember that. That was not good.

• 58:06Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, well, anyway, now you got Robert Half's new 2027 Salary Guide. As a staffing firm placing talent every day, Robert Half combines compensation data with the experience of local recruiters. You can hire with the confidence that comes from experience. The new Robert Half Salary Guide is here. Visit roberthalf.com/salaryguide.

• 58:31Conan O'Brien?

  The thing I wanted to mention that I got to see last night, Coyote v. Acme, which is something I've been waiting for. It's such a funny, and, and I, they gave me a chance to watch it. And I was thinking, okay, it's such a funny idea and I'm a fan of yours and, uh, I love Will Forte. I think this is, I like all the ingredients, but are they going to do this correctly? And the nice surprise for me was, yes, they did it correctly.

• 59:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, man.

• 59:02Conan O'Brien?

  It's really funny.

• 59:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:04Conan O'Brien?

  It's really funny and, um, you're of course the head lawyer, head chief counsel for Acme, uh, which is really funny. And, um, the coyote's really good for. T is great and they did a really nice job of blending the Warner, that sort of classic Warner Brothers animation with real life characters and having them all come together.

• 59:28Speaker 05

  No, Dave Green, and that's all for him. Like that, it's one and lost in prep when you do, when essentially you're acting with a tennis ball.

• 59:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 59:36Speaker 05

  It is one and lost in the prep. And I have, I've done a lot of digital stuff before. Dave had so much realism on set to allow us to get lost, so we don't drop the bit, so we're not winking at the camera, because it is just a tennis ball. Man, he was, he really directed his ass off for that thing and it shows. I'm very glad that his movie is gonna be seen by people because, man, I would, I would love to get him another chance to do something.

• 1:00:04Conan O'Brien?

  This is a crazy, crazy story, because I remember being very excited about this movie and then hearing that Warner Brothers isn't gonna release it for tax purposes. You're like, wait, what? And they were gonna take a loss because they do that now. The business has changed and they can, sometimes they, they think they can make more money if they, if they write it off as a, as a, as a business expense. And you're like, wait a minute. No, I wanna see this movie. And what's nice is that there was this explosion online of people saying, no, no, no, no, no. You can do this with a lot of crappy movies. You can't do that with this movie. We wanna see it. And so that won the day. And the movie's coming out and I just watched it and I really loved it.

• 1:00:43Speaker 05

  I appreciate you saying that. Thank you. And, and I guess, you know, when we do creative work, we, it's for an audience. Very, very few things we do creatively. I mean, I'm not saying, I know I play piano, for me, but like, very few things is for an audience. It's storytelling, it's to entertain, especially when you have that many people involved. I completely understand someone who pays for the thing, getting the thing and be like, I just wanna put it over here. And even though I'm upset, I didn't pay for the thing. You did. It's yours.

• 1:01:13Conan O'Brien?

  It is technically yours.

• 1:01:14Speaker 05

  I've been compensated. Everybody's been fairly compensated. The only thing we're missing is the approval or disapproval of, you know, the, the loud voices out there. So if you buy it and you're like, I'm just gonna put it in the baggie. You know, I'm a, I'm a car guy. There are some car guys who just buy nice stuff and put it in a bag and don't drive it. I think everything should hit the road and be, be out there. Cause that's, that's just my philosophy.

• 1:01:37Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I'm not way about instruments. A lot of times people say, oh man, this guitar is really great, but, you know, I guess gonna keep it in, in storage, because it's really worth a lot of money. It's like, no, guitars have to be.

• 1:01:46Speaker 05

  Man, you gotta get out there and play it, you know? So I, but that's only my perspective. I respect somebody who's like, it serves us better here, as long as everyone's fairly taken care of. If they didn't pay anybody, or if like, they tanked it or whatever, that's a different story. And then even, even when it got a chance, the fans, you know, voiced their opinion of, I wanna see it. It's still had to go through a lot of loopholes. It had to get purchased to be seen. So you have to have another company be like, it's worth the risk and not a cheap buy-in for, for another place.

• 1:02:16Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:17Speaker 05

  So the people who bought it originally get their money's worth and the people who inherit it now can hopefully give something that the audience enjoys.

• 1:02:24Conan O'Brien?

  You mentioned you're a car guy. What, what are your go-to cars? What are your?

• 1:02:28Speaker 05

  Man, I love everything. I'm not as eclectic as like Leno, but I mean, I love, I, I grew up off American muscle, so that's the stuff I saw as a.

• 1:02:38Conan O'Brien?

  What is your iconic American muscle car?

• 1:02:40Speaker 05

  1970 Pontiac GTO.

• 1:02:42Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Speaker 05

  The Judge package. Like, I think that is the toughest looking car, period. And, and the thing is, they're all the same, like GMA bodies, I believe, like the Chevelle, the 442, the Buick GSX and the Pontiac GTO, they're all the same. It's just, they did a little bit of things different for some reason, that, that mixture of the seventies psychedelics and the stupid colors and all the stripings. Pontiac just got it right, man. I think that's.

• 1:03:08Conan O'Brien?

  Do you have, do you have many of those then?

• 1:03:10Speaker 05

  No, no, I, I had a phase where I had those cars and drove them. They're, they're rewarding, but they're also like enormous. I would also put the Plymouth Superbird, the one with the nose and the huge wing.

• 1:03:26Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:03:26Speaker 05

  Joe Dirt's kick-around car before he got his awesome car at the end. I think, I think that's a, a, a nice thing, because like, racing was so big and you had to sell a certain amount of them at the dealers to be able to race them on Sundays. So they actually sold these cars. And that's a pretty cool connection. I like, like, first of all, I'm a Honda man, and my daily driver is a Honda Civic Type R, and I beat the shit out of that thing. I love that car. Like, it's, it is the best of all worlds.

• 1:03:52Conan O'Brien?

  You see, you beat the shit out of it. You just attack it with a bat? Or you drive it rough?

• 1:03:56Speaker 05

  I.

• 1:03:57Conan O'Brien?

  With you, I don't know.

• 1:03:58Speaker 05

  Sorry. I, I drive it like I'm, I'm testing it to withstand anything.

• 1:04:02Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, great, great.

• 1:04:03Speaker 05

  It's a manual shift car. It's a.

• 1:04:05Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, I love that.

• 1:04:06Speaker 05

  True four-door. It's got just enough horsepower. It's like 330 horsepower, so it's not one of those thousand horsepower deals where if you do mash your foot, you get thrown back so far you can't steer, like you're always on it. The, the interface is great. It's got everything that I want in, in a ride.

• 1:04:24Speaker 05

  But I, I, and I also like a lot of the old British stuff for the reason of.

• 1:04:29Conan O'Brien?

  You just have to maintain it.

• 1:04:31Speaker 05

  Sure, they all break.

• 1:04:32Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:32Speaker 05

  But that's the fun part. That's also kind of the fun part of like.

• 1:04:35Conan O'Brien?

  I never got that being the fun part. When, when a car doesn't start, I just lose it. And I start murdering people.

• 1:04:41Speaker 05

  But if, if you're, if you're, if you're essentially driving for another reason than to get to point A to point B. That's why I love the Honda, because I know when I put the keys in that, I don't care where I'm going and I don't care if I shift everything at 6,500 RPM, I'm going to get to my destination.

• 1:04:55Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Speaker 05

  That's why I love that car. The other stuff, leaks, breaks, and it's tough to get parts, tough to find a skilled mechanic. But I like it because it looks sleek, they're very small, and you're not going at a death-defying speed when you're ripping through the gears.

• 1:05:10Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:10Speaker 05

  An old Austin Healey, you can club through the gears and you're third going to fourth and you're like, man, this is great. I'm going 40 miles an hour. Okay, I'm also safe. This is gonna be fantastic.

• 1:05:21Conan O'Brien?

  But I like someone shouting in a car, I'm also safe.

• 1:05:23Speaker 05

  Well, there's no, there's no roof on it. You know, so it's, it's, it's, to me, that experience of, I, I love to drive and I don't love to track drive, although it's the same experience here on the track. I never listen to the radio. I look at the car like a pilot of like an old prop plane. I'm always clocking the gauges, my rearview mirror. I'm trying to, I'm listening to the motor. My wife thinks I'm nuts.

• 1:05:49Speaker 05

  It's literally like we have permission to jam out on some of the cars that have audio systems. She's like, can I connect? And yeah, go ahead, go for it. I'm okay.

• 1:05:56Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 1:05:56Speaker 05

  But there are some times she knows that like, oh man, you just need to listen to the thing. Okay, it's all right. I'll, I'll be over here. You just, you just do your thing. And I just, I love.

• 1:06:04Conan O'Brien?

  Be happy and I'll be over here.

• 1:06:05Speaker 05

  I love, yeah, I'll be over here miserable.

• 1:06:07Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. I'm gonna brush my teeth.

• 1:06:09Speaker 05

  There you go. There you go. My man, right there. I just love that, that experience of being connected.

• 1:06:15Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 1:06:16Speaker 05

  To, to take it back to the old muscle cars, they're so big and wobbly. Sometimes you lose a little bit of that connection.

• 1:06:22Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Speaker 05

  You know? But like, man, I, I just love stuff that you're, that you're on.

• 1:06:26Conan O'Brien?

  I was just in, we were shooting something, and Sona was there too. We were in Morocco and we were at the foothills of the Sahara and we were driving around in this, I think it was a, not a Land Rover, it was a, I think it was a Land Rover. It was a Land Rover.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  It was, yeah.

• 1:06:41Conan O'Brien?

  It was a Land Rover, but it was manual. And I realized how much I miss manual, because I used to have, I still have it actually, but it needs to get fixed up, a Ford Taurus SHO.

• 1:06:50Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Yamaha V6?

• 1:06:52Conan O'Brien?

  Thank you.

• 1:06:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:06:54Conan O'Brien?

  Thank you.

• 1:06:55Speaker 05

  Is it British racing green?

• 1:06:56Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, it's British racing green. It's, it's the wolf. You know what? People have been laughing at me and I finally met the guy who's giving me fucking respect.

• 1:07:05Speaker 05

  That car fucks. That thing is awesome.

• 1:07:07Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:07:08Conan O'Brien?

  Do your kid and play dance. Come on. Yeah. A dude, tap, tap. The, the, so that car, I had it for years and I would always talk about it on the show and it became this thing that all my fans knew, that I have a Ford Taurus, a 1992 Ford Taurus SHO and with the Yamaha engine.

• 1:07:28Speaker 05

  Tan leather interior, gray.

• 1:07:30Conan O'Brien?

  Yes. Wow. Damn it. I wanna marry you. Anyway, we left, we left it at Warner Brothers and they still don't know. We like hid it in a parking garage. It's covered in dust. And recently, we heard from Ford that they might rehab it for me, because it is beat to shit. It doesn't even run. But I wanna get that thing rehabbed and I wanna tool around in my, in my Ford, my green Ford Taurus SHO.

• 1:07:56Speaker 05

  That's a.

• 1:07:56Conan O'Brien?

  But I miss, I miss shifting and I wanna get that back into my life.

• 1:08:01Speaker 05

  Keeps you off the phone. If you're worried about driving, meet on the phone. Like, having a, having to work both your feet and, and your hands, like.

• 1:08:07Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 1:08:08Speaker 05

  It's like riding a motorcycle.

• 1:08:09Conan O'Brien?

  I also fondle myself while driving.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  Jesus.

• 1:08:12Conan O'Brien?

  And.

• 1:08:13Speaker 05

  Can't do that much.

• 1:08:14Conan O'Brien?

  I know, I can't.

• 1:08:15Speaker 05

  You can, who's gonna be quick?

• 1:08:16Conan O'Brien?

  I'll be like, shit, in a second.

• 1:08:23Conan O'Brien?

  I just heard from, from Ford, they're out.

• 1:08:26Speaker 05

  Way down.

• 1:08:26Conan O'Brien?

  Ford's out.

• 1:08:27Speaker 05

  Ford's out.

• 1:08:27Conan O'Brien?

  Ford's out. God damn it. All right, I've kept you.

• 1:08:30Speaker 03

  But Chevy's in.

• 1:08:36Conan O'Brien?

  The all-new Chevy masturbator.

• 1:08:42Speaker 03

  Calvin pissing on it, but no stream.

• 1:08:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, exactly. Okay, take it easy. Let's all settle down and I apologize. To all car companies everywhere.

• 1:08:54Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, I've kept you too long, but it's because I just love talking to you. You're fantastic. Uh, Coyote V Acme is, uh, is dropping and it's really funny.

• 1:09:06Speaker 05

  And it's, it's, it's a theater movie, something you gotta go see in big screens.

• 1:09:09Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. And you know what? It looks great. It looks great. It's really fun. And also I grew up on those Roadrunner cartoons. And I love all the callbacks to the classic moments in those cartoons. So very cool. And, um, I'm just, I'm, I'm very happy for you because you seem like a really good guy who just keeps applying himself and doing the work. And it's leading to all these amazing things. And I hope that it's gonna just keep happening for you.

• 1:09:38Speaker 05

  Uh, so I, I like your, your vision of prediction. I realize that it won't. Uh, I, and I think that allows me to invest wholeheartedly in these moments.

• 1:09:47Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. I mean, within reason, you will die.

• 1:09:50Speaker 05

  Of course. And, and

• 1:09:52Conan O'Brien?

  And this is how we end all podcasts now. By the way, guest, you will die.

• 1:09:56Speaker 05

  Also, uh, there's a high likelihood that before that, the town stops calling.

• 1:10:01Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 1:10:01Speaker 05

  And like

• 1:10:02Conan O'Brien?

  We all, we all know that's

• 1:10:03Speaker 05

  This does, it's weird though, and I'm gonna, I'm just gonna take some more time. Fuck it.

• 1:10:07Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:07Speaker 05

  Cause I'm having a great time.

• 1:10:09Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, good.

• 1:10:10Speaker 05

  You get into this thing and you're awarded a few opportunities and you think it'll last forever. I think it's really important to lean into the fact that it doesn't. And it makes me sitting here with you extra special.

• 1:10:20Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:10:21Speaker 05

  Goddamn, I'm sitting here with you. Like this is fantastic. We get to talk. Who would've ever thought we'd been talking about a Ford S H O? Taurus. Like that's the way, that was, that was kinda how we ended it. So I fucked it all up.

• 1:10:31Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:31Speaker 05

  But like

• 1:10:34Speaker 05

  Maybe it, maybe it doesn't continue.

• 1:10:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:37Speaker 05

  And I think the way to look back on it, and we'd spoke off camera and you came in, you're like, man, I, I do this because I love it.

• 1:10:43Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:44Speaker 05

  And in a nutshell, you were like, because I love it, that doesn't mean it's easy, which I, there's a whole nother podcast there.

• 1:10:49Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 1:10:50Speaker 05

  But man, uh, this is gonna end and all like opportunities are beyond my control. I don't, I'm not a studio head. I don't green light movies. I don't know what the future holds. Like, I don't know what's gonna happen. So when I get a chance to talk to you, I'm gonna pump it a few minutes because this is fucking great and I don't want it to end, but it is gonna end.

• 1:11:08Conan O'Brien?

  But I think that's refreshing to hear because I think about that all the time.

• 1:11:12Speaker 05

  It is.

• 1:11:12Conan O'Brien?

  I've had a lot, I've had a lot of nice things happen in my career and I've had some, some low times. I've had some high times and I'm very aware. I've built a life where, you know, without getting too sentimental, but I, I love my wife. I love my kids. I really like my friends. There's a bunch of things that I'm interested in doing and getting involved in. So I always have this reserve idea in the back of my brain, which is they can take all this stuff away and I don't even know who they are anymore. But that can all go away and I think I'd still have a lot of fun. And then you're, then you feel bulletproof.

• 1:11:47Speaker 05

  And that's the most important thing. I just retired from in-ring performance last year and everybody was like, are you gonna be okay? Uh, in many interviews, I was like, that was heard athletes die twice. I never just labeled myself the pro wrestler. There might've been a period in, in the, the beginning of that windfall. But I'm more than that.

• 1:12:07Conan O'Brien?

  Sure.

• 1:12:07Speaker 05

  And when it gets taken away, it doesn't, it doesn't take all of me with it.

• 1:12:11Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Speaker 05

  I love doing this.

• 1:12:13Conan O'Brien?

  Also, you still have that. You'll always have, I mean, there's huge tracts of the internet that are devoted to all of your work and all your iconic performances. But what's nice is that that's out there. It's just, that hasn't, that's not been deleted. Now you can go on.

• 1:12:27Speaker 05

  If I wanna relive those moments, fine, but I, I didn't, I didn't wholeheartedly invest. So people would build statues and talk about me forever. I wholeheartedly invested because people paid that night.

• 1:12:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:37Speaker 05

  You know what I'm saying? And that's it. And, and after that, the experience is over and any ancillary stuff we get, that's great. It will end. And, and when it does, I hope I have a long run afterwards because that's, it's not what defines me. I find a whole other shit interesting in life. And that, that's the fun ride. I like figuring out what's next and what's going on. So I, with that in mind, I, I thank you guys for the time today. This has been awesome.

• 1:13:01Conan O'Brien?

  Is there a more delightful person than Don Cheadle? Do you do, uh, life coaching at all?

• 1:13:09Conan O'Brien?

  I have some questions. Well, listen, you are welcome here anytime, uh, you wanna shoot the shit about anything because, uh, you're also that very rare person. You're incredibly, so well mannered.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:13:21Conan O'Brien?

  Um, and you are not Sona.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  I'm not. No, I'm agreeing with you.

• 1:13:24Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah. She's a monster. But John, um, continued success to you and such a joy having you here today. Seriously.

• 1:13:32Speaker 05

  I can't wait to talk again.

• 1:13:33Conan O'Brien?

  All right.

• 1:13:33Speaker 05

  Thank you, guys.

• 1:13:34Conan O'Brien?

  This won't air. It's unairable. It's unairable.

• 1:13:40Speaker 03

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

• 1:14:01Speaker 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 Sirius XM 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.

• 1:14:52Speaker 03

  Oh, look. You just got added to a meeting about coordinating another meeting to prepare for the pre-meeting. Ahead of the follow-up meeting, which will, of course, require a recap meeting. And then another meeting. Hit your booking point. Book with Southwest and enter airplane mode.