Show me with your hands how angry you were at NBC, Mr. O'Brien. / CBS
CBS’ 60 Minutes has teased some bits of Steve Kroft’s interview with Conan O’Brien, which airs Sunday. It turns out that Coco was pretty forthcoming with what he thought about the events of the Jaypocalypse—specifically Jay Leno’s taking back The Tonight Show after handing him the keys in 2009 (and saying in 2004 that he’s had a long enough run on the show):
“He went and took that show back and I think in a similar situation, if roles had been reversed, I know– I know me, I wouldn’t have done that,” O’Brien says. “If I had surrendered The Tonight Show and handed it over to somebody publicly and wished them well– and then…six months later. But that’s me, you know. Everyone’s got their own, you know, way of doing things,” he tells Kroft.
Asked by Kroft what he would have done, O’Brien says, “Done something else, go someplace else. I mean, that’s just me.”
O’Brien eventually left NBC, deciding not to play second-fiddle to Leno. He says he didn’t see the point in giving his all in a relationship that seemed to have no future. “I think this relationship is going be toxic and maybe we just need to go our separate ways,” he says. “That’s really how it felt to me…and I started to feel that I’m not sure these people even really want me here….I can’t do it [anymore].”
As Steve Krakauer writes at Mediaite, one thing that’s as interesting as what Conan says is his choice of venue. Where Leno made his case for himself on Oprah, Conan chose an outlet with more news gravitas and a bigger audience—albeit one much more in Leno’s older demo.