Conan O’Brien Must Go: Season 3 Roundtable Discussion Part II

Matt Gourley (0:03)

Conan O'Brien Needs A Fan. Want to talk to Conan? Visit teamcoco.com/callconan.

Okay, let's get started.

Conan O'Brien (0:12)

Hey, Conan O'Brien here, and we are back with part two, very special two-part series we're doing. Behind the scenes look at Conan O'Brien Must Go season three. And in season three, I go to India, Netherlands, Morocco, and the Philippines. And last week, we discussed India and the Netherlands, two shows that really made us happy. And today we're going to talk about Morocco and the Philippines. These are all out now.

Conan O'Brien Must Go, HBO. We're very happy with how it all came out. And I'm sitting here with three of the writer producers that have done every travel show with me.

And that is Mike Sweeney. Hello, Mike.

Jessie Gaskell (0:57)

Hello.

Conan O'Brien (0:58)

Yep, can't be real.

Jessie Gaskell (1:00)

And Jessie Gaskell.

Conan O'Brien (1:03)

Hi.

Jessie Gaskell (1:04)

Yes, very good.

Conan O'Brien (1:05)

And hello. And you know him as Dr. Arroyo, but we call him Jose Arroyo. Jose.

Jose Arroyo (1:13)

Hi, Conan.

Conan O'Brien (1:14)

And pretty good. The only one here with a soul is Jessie. But I can't stress enough how hard these talented people work to make these shows really fun. It's a lot. It's very labor intensive.

And I know that anyone watching these shows just thinks, oh, that's Conan just improvising and having fun and being funny off the cuff. And 98% of the time, that's true. But you do-

Matt Gourley (1:44)

I was gonna say, that's you commenting that.

Conan O'Brien (1:46)

Yeah, but you work very hard on that other 2%.

No, since the beginning, what's the first show we all did together? Cuba. Cuba. It was Cuba, that's right. Cuba. And how many countries have we done now, if you count Conan Without Borders, plus then we changed to Conan O'Brien Must Go for HBO. So that's 25 Yeah. Going to 25 countries. There are 25 nations where I'm no longer welcome.

Matt Gourley (2:16)

26 if you count the US.

Conan O'Brien (2:17)

Yeah, you know, when you pass a bad check, they put your picture up on the register. Yeah.

I'm at the cash register of every country that we visited.

And, you know, how it works is, and what's really happened with Conan O'Brien Must Go is it begins with a fan from another country calling into the podcast, Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend. I chat with them, and if you sense a certain kind of electricity, that resonates. It doesn't happen with everybody, but sometimes we notice, oh, I've just talked to, you know, two really funny fans from Japan, and the next thing you know, we're gonna head to Japan, or I've just talked to two really funny fans in India. Let's go. So once we know we're gonna go, Mike Sweeney, Jessie Gaskell, and Jose Arroyo drill down. They think a lot about the country. They try and figure out what are the fun places we could see Conan going, what are kind of the fun activities that are, you know, that this country is known for, that Conan could participate in. And then you guys meet with me. I throw in some ideas. We all hash it out. And then we take off. There's a whole other apparatus. There's Jeff Ross, our executive producer. There's Jason Chalemi, who's been with me since early days of Late Night. He started as an intern. Yeah.

Jose Arroyo (3:52)

Invaluable field producer gets everything done.

Conan O'Brien (3:54)

I mean-

Matt Gourley (3:54)

He knows where the bodies are buried.

Conan O'Brien (3:56)

He knows where the bodies are buried. And he's the guy. If you say, if we're on the street of Bangalore, and one of us says, it would be really funny if, in this moment, if Conan was able to hold up a cuckoo clock made of caramel.

Matt Gourley (4:14)

Yes.

Conan O'Brien (4:15)

We say to Chalemi, Jason Chalemi, cuckoo clock made of caramel. And he goes like, hold on a second. He's like, I already, I packed it. No, he, yeah.

Or he goes rushing off down an alley and comes back 20 minutes later with one. And maybe he killed somebody. I don't know.

Mike Sweeney (4:34)

But he picks all our local producers, all our fixers.

Conan O'Brien (4:38)

Oh, and that's it. We should also. I neglected to say that last time, but in all of these countries, Jason finds, and he has a perfect batting average, unerring batting average.

Mike Sweeney (4:53)

Yes.

Conan O'Brien (4:54)

Finding these people who are so good at what they do, they live in country, they're from that country, and they just know how things work. And so.