Conan O'Brien makes debut on 'The Tonight Show'
In a photo provided by NBC Conan O'Brien makes his debut as the host of NBC's "The Tonight Show" Monday Dec. 1, 2009 in Universal City, Ca. (AP Photo/Paul Drinkwater/NBC)
Conan O'Brien used to joke that he wasn't "relatively unknown," he was a "complete unknown."
When the gangly red-haired prankster first stumbled into the spotlight in 1993, he seemed like a goof plucked from the mail room by the old geezers at NBC who thought that because he wrote scripts for "The Simpsons," he must be cool.
O'Brien had the unenviable task of replacing the popular David Letterman on NBC's "Late Night." Letterman had split for CBS after NBC passed him over and picked Jay Leno to replace Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show."
Monday night, O'Brien began a new era for "Tonight," and the pressure is on not to mess it up.
"I'm not the 30-year-old who took over 'Late Night,'" he said in a recent interview. "I was willing to try anything. I don't regret any of that, but I'm 16 years older now, and I have a wife and two kids. I am keeping some things but I want to try new bits we haven't done before. I really want this show to be funny every night."
O'Brien received some lukewarm reviews after his 1993 debut, and it took more than a year before he got any respect in the media.
I was among the naysayers. About his opening night I wrote:
"He's no David Letterman and it shows. The skinny, unknown comedy writer obviously had the jitters. But we were expecting so little. All the 30-year-old boy wonder had to do was come out and not be awful - and he wasn't. Silly comedy bits were sandwiched between the traditional confines of the late-night talk-show format. It appears that O'Brien won't break any rules or new ground yet."
O'Brien also was knocked by critics from New York to Los Angeles. NBC executives had doubts, and O'Brien was under a probationary contract that had to be renewed monthly.
"There were times when I thought we weren't going to make it," he said in February. "I wasn't new to show business, but I was new to being a talk-show host. Our biggest Achilles' heel in the beginning was me. I had to learn how to go from being this funny guy who cracked jokes with writers in a back room to doing it in front of an audience."
O'Brien grew up in a Boston suburb. His father, Thomas, was a Harvard Medical School professor who specialized in infectious diseases. His mother, Ruth, was a partner at a Boston law firm.
O'Brien went to Harvard thinking he might become a novelist. His graduate thesis was on Southern novelist Flannery O'Connor. He became editor of the Harvard Lampoon, and after college he wrote skits for improv groups, jokes for "Not Necessarily The News," gags for "Saturday Night Live" and scripts for "The Simpsons."
Eventually, O'Brien found his way on "Late Night." He and sidekick Andy Richter were like a couple of frat boy cutups having fun after the adults went to bed.
Richter, who left to pursue prime-time sitcom roles, is coming back. And drummer Max Weinberg and his band have also made the trip to new digs in Los Angeles.
O'Brien says just being in Los Angeles will give him new material. He notes, for example, that in New York, where his "Late Night" originated, you encounter life on every corner.
"But in Los Angeles, if you're not in a car, something's very wrong with you," he said in a recent telephone interview.
"If you walk on the sidewalk, people think that you're off your medication. Police cars pull over and they handcuff you and take you away."
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