Welcome back, Coco.
Conan O’Brien will return to NBC’s “The Tonight Show” for the first time since he was fired as host in 2010.
O’Brien, 60, will be a guest on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on April 9 to promote his new travel series, “Conan O’Brien Must Go,” premiering April 18 on Max . He will be on Fallon’s show with Nicole Richie and musical guest Benson Boone.
O’Brien, who started at NBC hosting “Late Night” after David Letterman moved to CBS, took over for Jay Leno’s “The Tonight Show” in June 2009 – while Leno moved to a show at the prime time called “The Jay Leno Show.”
But O’Brien’s “Tonight Show” ratings plummeted after Leno left, and Leno’s prime-time ratings also took a big hit.
NBC proposed starting Leno’s show at 11:35 p.m. and moving O’Brien’s “Tonight Show” to 12:05 a.m. — something O’Brien didn’t like.
Then, in an unprecedented move that left O’Brien stunned and bitter — and Leno insulted by some — NBC brought Leno back to “The Tonight Show” in 2010 and fired O’Brien, who went on to host the show. end of the night. Conan” on TBS from 2010 to 2021.
O’Brien hosted his last “Tonight Show” in January 2010, and Leno took over two months later.
“I can’t express in words how much I love hosting this show and what a huge personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it,” O’Brien said when he was kicked off “The Tonight Show “.
“My team and I have worked incredibly hard and are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of the ‘Tonight Show.’ But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will say that with DVRs and the Internet, the time slot doesn’t matter. But with the “Tonight Show,” I don’t think anything could matter more.
O’Brien made a guest appearance of sorts on Fallon’s “Tonight Show” in 2018, when he appeared in a pre-recorded sketch that Fallon did with “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert.
Leno then hosted “The Tonight Show” until 2014, when Fallon, 49, took over from him.
He spoke about O’Brien’s boondoggle on Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast in 2022 — and denied “deliberately sabotaging” O’Brien’s tenure on “The Tonight Show.”
“It doesn’t work,” Leno said. “It doesn’t work like that. You try to do your best and it doesn’t work.
In O’Brien’s new Max series, “Conan O’Brien Must Go,” he will visit new friends in Norway, Thailand, Argentina and Ireland who he met through his podcast “Conan O ‘Brien Needs a Fan.’
New York Post
