Hey Andy! I'm excited for you guys to finally be back on the air.
Thanks, it's going to be fun.
How did your test shows go this week?
They went great. They were very loose and fun and Thursday we did one that was really great. It felt like, "Geez, we might as well be putting these on the air by now. Let's get this shit on the road."
Did TBS have any notes for you based on those test shows or do you guys pretty much have free reign over the content of Conan?
None that I have heard. I don't think so. We always sort of got the impression that they felt like we knew what we were doing. The only thing that they have had notes on is promotional things. As far as the actual content of the show goes, they don't say anything.
Since you aren't burdened now by the restrictions of a 11:35 network time slot, do you anticipate returning to some of the racier content found during your Late Night era? Did you have material that you couldn't really use for The Tonight Show that you are finally able to use now?
You have to understand that when you are doing a show like this, you don't come up with a bunch of ideas that you can't use. You know what I mean? You don't go to a lot of trouble to produce something and put something on the air that you don't think is going to be appropriate. Because it's a fairly self-regulating machine. We are not kids. We are not trying to mess with the man or anything. We know what is appropriate. So no, not really. Maybe there is some stuff that the writers had stockpiled. For some reason it did not seem funny at the time and now it seems funnier. That could be but there is no official policy.
There was a lot of legal confusion surrounding the custody battle for the Masturbating Bear and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Do you think there is any chance viewers will see either on Conan this week?
I don't know, but there is a chance that you'll see them in the future. Conan recently, in an interview, made some kind of joke like, "Well, I have to have my Masturbating Bear!" He said it as a joke and of course it came out in the press as "Conan Dares NBC to Sue Him!" The same thing happened to me. Someone asked me how I felt about Jay Leno's demographics being less than ours [at the Tonight Show] and I said, "Enh, it's kind of fun. I don't wish ill on anyone but it's kind of vindicating." And of course that translated in headlines as "Andy Richter Vindicating Revenge!" So, you can't say anything really. [Editor's note: No, apparently not.]
I will be more aware of it by osmosis just because a lot of people around here read them and I will probably read some of them but I don't seek them out. In fact I am reading Bill Carter's book [The War For Late Night] right now and I'm on the part where we were starting Late Night back in '93 and I never realized how blistering some of those reviews were! There was one from Tom Shales that I don't remember reading. I think at the time, I thought, "Enh, I think we are doing a funny show. What does some TV writer mean to me? Why should I think he knows any better than I do?"
Did you learn anything new from the book, maybe things that were happening that you weren't completely aware of?
Yeah, absolutely. There were not any great big revelations. I am only about a quarter of the way through it. It was more like there were little areas that were colored in for me that I didn't know about. The main gist of things, I was aware of.
If HBO adapts this book into a movie the way they did to The Late Shift, who would you want to play you?
I think Justin Bieber is really the only choice.
Do you think Jay Leno will acknowledge your show this week during his Tonight Show monologues?
I don't know. That would be fine with me. He can talk about us all he wants. That would be good for us.
Can you imagine a situation where you, Conan and Jay get together and put the whole Tonight Show event behind you, maybe for a Superbowl ad like the one Letterman, Leno and Oprah did last year?
Not really. I mean never say "never" to anything. Look at me. I made the big choice to leave Late Night and I came back. I won't say never but I don't really see that happening.
You've been working with Conan for so long now. When you think back on your Late Night days, how do you think that your on-air relationship has changed from then?
Gosh, I don't really feel like it's actually changed that much. When we first started, I was more of the announcer than the sidekick. When I came back to the Tonight Show, people were curious what my role would be and were asking, "Are you going to be on the couch?" And to me, it was sort of a foregone conclusion because Conan had been used to sitting up there by himself for 8 or 9 years at that point, which is longer than he sat up there with me next to him. He is a creature of habit and I knew that if he was going to make any changes, like having me sit back up there, it was going to take him a while to do it. And in a way now, I am going to be sitting next to him at the top of the show. I am going to be doing the announcing from a podium. <span
class="pullquote right">I guess I have a podium now. That's the only real difference between now and 1993.
I read that you guys have a beach-themed set now.
Rather than a cityscape, our set looks out onto the ocean. That's really how boring talk shows are that this is how they vary wildly from each other. It's a pretty stable format.
Will Conan overlap with Lopez Tonight at the bottom of your hour the way that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert do on Comedy Central?
There are no plans that I know of right now but it's not like anyone from TBS would be calling me to talk about it anyway. I am not even sure if there will be a commercial between us or if it will be a seamless transition from one show to the next.
What will you do this weekend to prepare?
Nothing. Just hang out with my kids. I have done a few thousand of these shows before so it's just another day in a different room. Not to diminish the show because I am looking forward to it but it doesn't take any extra preparation, aside from being excited, which I am.
What is your own goal for Conan?
To have fun and make money for the people that stuck their necks out for us. That's pretty much it. And to make the people watching at home happy.