On Tuesday night, Conan O’Brien took over the Avalon Hollywood theater to premiere his new travel series, “Conan O’Brien Must Go.” The Max series premiere drew critics, TV Academy members, and almost the entire crew from the show to celebrate with O’Brien. The famously tall star came out to great applause following the premiere, participating in a post screening Q&A with moderator and Nick Offerman (“Parks & Rec,” “The Last of Us”).
The discussion started off with a reasonable amount of focus, as O’Brien discussed the origins of this series from emerged from his immensely popular podcast, “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.” That story, as it turns out, has ties to his evolution from his decades of hosting late night television.
“I’m talking to people that I’ve talked to over the years, for six minutes, commercial, and then four minutes, commercial,” O’Brien said, alluding to the limitations of the late-night talk-show format. “Now I’m really getting to talk to people and I’m having some of the best conversations of my life.”
From there, it was his wife Liza who pointed out that he doesn’t just like talking to celebrities, but he really seems to have a pathological need to converse with strangers he’s just met, which in turn led O’Brien to add an extra podcast session a week in which he talked to fans around the world. Some of them responded to his interviews with an invitation to meet up if O’Brien ever happened to visit their country — which, of course, he then took them up on to hilarious results.
“Conan O’Brien Must Go” is obviously borne out of his podcast interviews, as well as the occasional travel segments he shot for his previous talk shows (such as one memorable bit in which he visited Finland because its then president, Tarja Halonen, was noted as bearing a surprising similarity to the red-headed jester). But O’Brien also revealed a more personal reason for his wanderlust: accompanying his father on work trips.
“When I was a little kid, he was a microbiologist and he traveled extensively to different countries to try and help them set up laboratories that could track antibiotic resistance,” O’Brien explained. “And we would go from city to city to city, not that luxurious at all, and visiting hospitals. But I remember thinking, I love this. I love going to different countries, I love seeing how other people live. I love trying to become a different person for a second.“ (O’Brien also joked about how his father is still alive at 95 despite his attempts to hire ninjas to kill him.)
Conan regained his composure to thank a number of collaborators who were in the audience, including his longtime producer Jeff Ross (who’s been working with O’Brien since he took over Late Night in 1993), and Mike Sweeney, who directed and co-wrote all four episodes of this season of “Conan O’Brien Must Go.”
Offerman, in turn, thanked Conan for his support over the years. “You were my first talk show,” Offerman enthused. “And that was true of so many up-and-comers. You generously would treat us as though we were worth a shit, when we were actually just on Comedy Central.”
From there, their banter became increasingly surreal, with O’Brien praising his moderator’s gravitas and saying, “I feel like I’m sitting here talking to President Grant,” which led to a riff session about how they need to cast Nick Offerman in a biopic of Theodore Roosevelt.
The two men also made fun of the decision to rename the HBO app as Max, a branding decision that has been widely mocked across social media. “It’s not TV. It’s also not HBO. It’s Max,” Offerman deadpanned. “HBO is a catchy name that everyone seemed love, but we went with Max,” O’Brien added. “When something’s really working, fix it!”
O’Brien also discussed the fact that his comedic adventures in other countries sometimes produce unlikely mementos that live on after his return. The crowd laughed and O’Brien joked, “In Star Trek, the mission was for the Enterprise to not interfere with the culture… we go the other way. I leave behind murals, songs, statues, things that then end up in the culture, and I’m littering the earth with nonsensical bullshittery that then shows up on people’s Instagrams.”
Offerman asked a technical question about the show he had been wondering for a while: since O’Brien’s fans seem genuinely shocked that they’re receiving a visit from him, how is the show able to coordinate things so his appearance is a surprise and yet he isn’t showing up when their lives are busy.
“It’s very tricky,” O’Brien admitted, “Because you cannot fly 15,000 miles in the hopes that someone’s home. Right? That doesn’t work.” He thanked his production team for figuring out the logistics, singling out for particular praise his field producer Jason Chillemi. Interestingly, the crowd exploded with applause at the mention of Chillemi’s name. O’Brien quipped, “I shouted out like nine other people, not a word. But suddenly, Spartacus is here!”
“He does all of this advance reconnaissance,” O’Brien said of Chillemi. “He says, you know, the show needs some B-roll of your apartment. Obviously Conan’s not coming, because that would be stupid. And that allows us to know he’s going to be there, and then I show up and surprise him.”
O’Brien then went on a hilarious rant about how this level of secrecy is essential for someone like him. “A person of my stature, when they hit a country, you know, it’s all over the place. You know what I mean? It’s like the Rolling Stones are on the stage… People notice like, wow, the air is different, there’s an electricity. And then suddenly they read in the paper that one of the greatest comedians is here. And then they say, oh no, Gallagher’s dead.”
O’Brien and Offerman then traded incredible but true stories about their fame impacting them during their travels abroad. O’Brien mentioned the sheer weirdness of people meeting him in real life while they’re listening to one of his podcasts, admitting that “being an egotist, I’m trapped thinking this is weird because I don’t want to interrupt myself.” Based on O’Brien’s prompting, Offerman shared a story about being in a restaurant in India and realizing that the men’s room there was using a photo of him from Parks and Recreation as a sort of universal symbol for masculinity. “I appreciate it, and I’d like to thank the people of India,” Offerman said.
The conversation wrapped up with a discussion of how O’Brien picked where to visit, saying it was a mix of wanting places that looked different geographically and choosing fans who seemed interesting. “The woman I talked to who’s a fan from Bangkok, she has a complaint about her mother,” he said. “So I show up, I surprise her, and then I try and mend this rift with the mother.”
“And the mother turned out to be just one of the best characters, unbelievable. Like, we won the lottery, this woman is fantastic. So you never know. I think one of the secrets of this show is stay light on your feet… It’s improvisation as you know, you’ve got to just stay loose, stay open to who’s here, what can I work with, take your best shot, but then be prepared to move in another direction.”
“Conan O’Brien Must Go” is now streaming on Max and is eligible in all voting categories.