The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien: Host Recalls His Final Days

Conan O’Brien is getting ready to kick off his new late night talk show on TBS, named simply Conan. Of his immediate goals, O’Brien says “I’m going for eight months on the air. All I want to do is break my Tonight Show record.” He reasons, “I’m a guy who wants to say I did more push-ups today than I did the day before, and the good news is, I did only one push-up yesterday.”

The host recently chatted with Playboy and talked about his final days at NBC as host of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.

O’Brien said, “I wanted to end on an optimistic note. I thought it could end up being the most important moment of my television career. It still could be… I have had too many good things happen in my career to end on any kind of bitter note. I’m just saying this to you; we’re alone in this office, and I don’t have to say this: I am an incredibly fortunate person… And as crazy as this sounds, my career with NBC was overwhelmingly positive until this… The entertainment business has an amazing way of turning really lucky people into bitter, angry, rage-filled, jealous, resentful wretches who can’t believe they got screwed. Some things have worked out great for me, some things haven’t. You keep going.”

He continued, “Doing those last Tonight Shows was a high. A lot of people tuned in, and I was really proud of what I was able to make in that situation. So this was good, this was bad, this was ugly, this was beautiful, this was f*cked-up, this was sublime. It was cherry, it was vanilla, it was frogurt, it was mocha chocolate chip.”

Conan debuts on Monday, November 8th on TBS.

What do you think? Are you looking forward to watching O’Brien’s new show? Do you think it will succeed?