Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon during ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’ on April 9, 2024. Todd Owyoung/NBC
Conan O’Brien made his triumphant return to NBC late night.
The comedian, 60, appeared on the Tuesday, April 9, episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, more than a decade after his stint as the show’s host.
“It’s weird to come back,” O’Brien told Fallon, 49. “I haven’t been in this building for such a long time, and I haven’t been on this floor in forever.”
He added, “I was here for 16 years doing the Late Night show before we went out to L.A. and right across the hall — all these memories came flooding back to me.”
O’Brien took helm of The Tonight Show for seven months from 2009 to 2010 before Jay Leno, the show’s original host, returned to his post. Leno, 73, remained on staff until 2014, when he was succeeded by Fallon. O’Brien went on to host TBS’ Conan from 2010 to 2021.
Over the years, there’s been some speculation as to whether Leno unfairly snagged the role back from his predecessor, something the comedian denies.
Conan O’Brien appears on ‘The Tonight Show with Jay Leno’ on September 5, 2003 in Burbank, California. Kevin Winter/Getty Images
“It doesn’t work that way. You try and do the best you can, and it didn’t work,” Leno said during a 2022 appearance on Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast. He told Maher, 66, that he never did anything to “deliberately sabotage” his successor.
O’Brien, meanwhile, has often taken the high road when it comes to the Leno drama. During a May 2017 episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, the Harvard alum was asked what he’d do if he ran into Leno on a plane.
“I’m watching a movie and my headphones are on and I don’t think we ever actually talk,” he responded. “I’m so happy that I don’t see who’s next to me, and I miss a glorious chance to talk to that wonderful fellow.”
Still, the Conan Must Go host has admitted that it was difficult to lose his job, telling 60 Minutes in a 2010 post-show interview that he “went through some stuff” as a result of the NBC switch-up.
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“I got very depressed at times,” he explained. “It was like a marriage breaking up suddenly, violently, quickly. And I was just trying to figure out what happened.”
O’Brien received a roughly $32 million settlement from NBC and began planning a nationwide comedy tour after leaving the show.
“When we started putting this tour together, I started to feel better almost immediately,” he said. “And then there is almost no better antidote to what I’ve just been through than to do this every night.”