Montecito Journal Glossy Edition Summer Fall 2016 - page 94

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fall
PROFILES
I
t was just a year ago that Conan O’Brien bought an ocean-front
home on Padaro Lane, not far from fellow Hollywood heroes
Kevin Costner and George Lucas. The Harvard graduate who
was plucked out of a job writing for
Saturday Night Live
to follow
David Letterman as the host of NBC’s
Late Night
talk show was
famously fired from his dream gig hosting “The Tonight Show” just
months into the job, but landed on his feet shortly afterward with a
new late night show
Conan
on TBS. Now he’s landed a choice locale
on the Carpinteria beach, just down the road from Montecito.
While O’Brien still spends the vast majority of his time in
Burbank writing, taping, and reviewing the show, he made his official
Santa Barbara debut recently at the Arlington Theatre in an afternoon
discussion for UCSB Arts & Lectures hosted by longtime Montecito
resident Dick Wolf, the impresario of TV’s
Law & Order
franchise. It
was in conjunction with that appearance that O’Brien talked over the
phone about his new digs, his old and new jobs, and philosophy on
comedy and work.
Q
. Do you spend most of your evenings in Carpinteria after the show?
A
. I’ve been working too much. I’ve been getting up only here and
there, but I need to come more often. My grandfather was a retired
policeman and he had a small house near the ocean in Rhode Island.
He used to refer it as Morphine Beach, because he said he’d just relax
and even sleep better. I feel the same way when I’m up anywhere near
Montecito or Santa Barbara. So I’m hoping that I’ll be able to find
better ways to sneak away and get there.
What do you do to relax when you’re in Santa Barbara?
I love just getting on my bike and riding around. That’s one of
my passions. Last time I was there, I just walked the beach with my
CATCHING UP WITH CONAN O’BRIEN
BY STEVEN LIBOWITZ
PHOTOS COURTESY
OF TEAM COCO
daughter for about an hour back and forth. That’s when kids tell you
what’s really on their mind – when you get to just relax and there’s no
one really around, and you’re walking near the water.
Do people come up to you and try to engage you in conversation when
they recognize you?
They say “Hi.” But that’s about it. Everyone couldn’t be nicer.
People in Montecito see everybody. I’m no Oprah, so they’re not going
to get that excited about seeing me. What’s nice in Carpinteria is that
the surfers have this very chill, relaxed code. They’re like “Hey. How’s
it goin’ Conan?” “Um, pretty good.” Then they get on their surfboard,
and I get on my bike and that’s it.
Can we talk about the beginning of
Late Night
? When you look back
on it now, how big of a shock and surprise was it to move from writing in
the background to a very visible on-air job replacing David Letterman?
It’s been 23 years now, and I’m still recovering. What strikes me
now is how young I was. At the time, I didn’t think of myself as young.
I had already been working for a long time, I had been through a lot.
But when I think about it now I think, wait a minute, I had just had
my 30th birthday and had little to no experience (on air). I’d written
lots of comedy and been doing improv, but I hadn’t been on television.
Then I’m in the national spotlight. It was a giant shock and a period
of my life where it felt like I was fighting a dragon with a toothpick.
How am I going to do this and survive? It was unheard of. And it
could never happen today. Everybody is filming themselves from the
time that they’re three and putting it on YouTube. So there’d be about
600 hours of video available. But in 1993, there was not even a current
photograph of me. People were scrambling for anything. They’d go
“Oh I found his yearbook from Brookline High School. Here’s a
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