Conan O’Brien’s Late Night Show Announces End Date
Conan O’Brien announced that his long-running TBS talk show will officially come to an end on June 24 this year, after previously announcing that the show would be ending back in November.
Fox News reports that O’Brien is moving over to HBO Max to host a weekly variety series. Yesterday he took some time out of the top of his show to address the official end date on Conan and give an explanation on how he wants the remaining episodes to go.
“Imagine a cooking show with puppets, and you’ll have the wrong idea,” O’Brien said of what will be the fourth iteration of a television show starring him. “Anyway, we’re going to be making this switch. Now, some of you are probably wondering why am I doing this? Why end things here at TBS? And I’ll tell you because a very old Buddhist monk once told me that to pick something up, you must first put something down. I’ll be honest with you, he was drunk out of his skull and very belligerent. I maintain you can pick up two things if you use both hands. He just got mad and started swinging at me so I ended the conversation and took his advice.”
O’Brien is ending his run as the longest-serving late-night talk show host in the U.S. after starting as the host of Late Night in 1993 until 2009. He would eventually get a short-lived shot at hosting The Tonight Show for a year before famously parting ways with NBC and moving his talents over to his own TBS show 11 years ago.
O’Brien made it clear that he wants to spend his remaining weeks on TBS reflecting on the work accomplished in over a decade. “The plan is we’re going to be showing a lot of clips of our favorite moments from the last 11 years. We’re going to have some special guests, I think we’re going to create a really fun, special environment. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
58-year-old O’Brien isn’t leaving on any bad terms, it seems, saying, “I just want to point out that for 11 years, the people at Turner have been absolutely lovely to me and everyone here at the staff. They gave me a home when I needed one most, and I’m eternally grateful. I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished here.”
He concluded: “What I’d like is, I’d like these last couple weeks to be a fond look back at all the absurd madness that my team and I have concocted.”
Conan announces the final episode of #CONAN will air on June 24th. Tune in over the next two months for special guests and a look back at the past 11 years! pic.twitter.com/saOKwIRg3y
— Team Coco (@TeamCoco) May 4, 2021
Conan Without Borders specials will continue on TBS, as well as having a weekly variety show that will allow him to continue to have a creative outlet as he finally steps away from the daily late-night hosting game.
He reformatted the Conan series, reducing its runtime to a half-hour after abandoning the host’s traditional desk and chairs set and focused heavily on an opening monologue and interviews with guests. Last July, he announced that he was moving production of Conan to Los Angeles comedy club Largo at The Coronet in an effort to return production and support to the theater amid the pandemic.