Here's Why Lisa Kudrow Once Told Conan O'Brien 'You're No One'
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Lisa Kudrow still remembers telling Conan O’Brien in 1993 that “You’re no one.”
The “Friends” star was notably dating O’Brien at the time and meant it as a compliment, as he was about to helm his first talk show, “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” and replace David Letterman. Kudrow felt that fact alone should inspire O’Brien with confidence.
“I don’t know how much we talked about it,” she told Vanity Fair for an oral history of O’Brien’s first year. “I just knew, ’You’re trying to replace David Letterman. No one replaces David Letterman. You’re no one. It can’t be anybody that an audience would know.”
Letterman was already an industry veteran who had hosted late night shows since 1982. O’Brien was a witty “Simpsons” scribe who had yet to prove himself on camera, but brilliantly acknowledged that pressure in the hilarious opening sketch of his debut episode.
NBC reportedly considered hiring writer and comedian Garry Shandling before choosing O’Brien, which the network presumably regretted when the first season resulted in shoddy reviews and bad ratings. The fresh-faced host was nearly deemed a failure — until 1994.
“Then we hit the summer and suddenly the audiences became great,” O’Brien told Vanity Fair. “I didn’t know what was happening. And then it dawned on me. Colleges let out. So college students started to come.”
Kudrow was a guest on O'Brien's short-lived tenure as "The Tonight Show" host in 2009.
O’Brien, who recalled his hosting audition feeling like “linguine meeting marinara sauce for the first time,” said he had been naive and “had to go through the spanking machine” of network television to “develop from a fetal pig to a full-size pig in front of America.”
The rest is history. Despite “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” nearly getting canceled several times before it flourished, the show was nominated for 28 Emmys (winning one in 2007) and ran until 2009. For Kudrow, the reasons are obvious.
“He just kept showing up as him,” Kudrow said of O’Brien. “He just kept being himself, with his own kind of humor and comedy, where if you just keep doing it, then people get it: ‘Oh, that’s you. This isn’t an awkward thing. It’s you.’”
O’Brien famously took over “The Tonight Show” in 2009 but was controversially replaced only seven months later when NBC reinstated Jay Leno. O’Brien went on to launch “Conan” on TBS in 2010 and hosted over 1,400 episodes until the show’s end in 2021.
Read the full oral history at Vanity Fair.
