Conan O'Brien wanted Late Night to be renamed 'Nighty Night With Conan O'Brien'
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The season finale of the Inside Conan podcast brought the man himself onto the show. Hosts and Conan writers Mike Sweeney and Jessie Gaskell interviewed Conan O'Brien and producer Jeff Ross about the beginning of Late Night.
In the interview, O'Brien reveals that prior to his Late Night debut in 1993, he attempted to change the show's name to something that, 30 years later, feels on-brand for the comedian. O'Brien says he wanted to change the name to Nighty Night With Conan O'Brien but was not allowed to make the change.
Margret Norton/NBCU Photo Bank Conan O'Brien
O'Brien and Ross discuss not wanting to be overshadowed by David Letterman after his high-profile departure from NBC. "We really wanted to not be in Letterman's shadow," O'Brien says. "Robert [Smigel] would say a lot, 'You don't want to be compared to Letterman.' And you'd think, 'I'm replacing Letterman, there's no way to avoid that.' There was this sense that I'm going to get killed by the press and everybody because Dave is at the height of his powers and I'm like an amoeba. He's this fully formed falcon that can see 10,000 miles, an apex predator, he's a Tyrannosaurus rex; and I'm three-celled, a piece of algae that's replaced him and I'm going to need a million years to grow a couple of legs."
That feeling led to the Nighty Night concept. "It was Robert's idea. He's like, 'We should change the name of the show so it's not Late Night.' I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah," O'Brien said. "Then we came up with the name that we wanted, which was Nighty Night. Nighty Night With Conan O'Brien. Like, 'nighty night,' which we thought was just really cartoony and funny and arch. Kind of Pee-Wee's Playhouse."
In the interview, he also recalled being told that he was allowed to do Top Ten lists on the show if he wanted because "that belongs to NBC," he said. "I thought, 'What are you f---ing talking about?' As a creative person, I don't want to do Top Ten lists."
The iconic late-night host also talked about trying to understand exactly what the show was going to be from an early stage. "There could be a bible written about this is the kind of comedy we do and this is the kind of comedy we don't do. I think I felt that way, Robert felt that way," he says. "Letterman's thing, which was so brilliant… There was the talk show, which was Johnny Carson. Then there's the anti-talk show, which was more Letterman, which was more ironic. This has to be what's next. It was almost this sort of postmodern, it's going to be a mix of Pee-wee's Playhouse and SCTV. When we do false reality, I won't wink at the camera."
O'Brien wound up hosting late-night talk shows for 28 years until he concluded Conan in 2021. Though, he never got a show called Nighty Night.
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