Conan O’Brien and Matt Groening
Conan O’Brien fans not only relish in his amazingly witty and outrageous “off-the-cuff” comedy from his past talk shows and Conan O’Brien Must Go, but fans of the TV personality also remember his beginnings as a writer for both Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons. Simpsons fans often cite O’Brien’s “Marge vs the Monorail” as one of the best episodes in the still-running series.
The Simpsons saved Conan
O’Brien recently had Simpsons creator Matt Groening on his podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, and at the beginning of the interview, Conan provided some context for his time on The Simpsons. According to People Magazine, the host revealed to listeners,
My origin story for people that don’t know is I was working on Saturday Night Live. I was in a funk. I loved that job and I loved everyone there, but I thought, ‘I need to go. I’m just in a bad place in my life.’ “sponsored content
He would then continue to say,
I walked away from SNL with no job, and two of your writers, I think it was [Mike] Reiss and [Al] Jean, heard that Conan O’Brien might be loose and available. So the next thing I knew, I was submitting, I don’t know, some of the sketches I had written on SNL, and then I was told, ‘You’ve got a job on The Simpsons, and you need to be here in 4 days.’ And it really saved my life,”
The writer’s room
Additionally, The Simpsons was already well established when O’Brien joined the writers in 1991. He revered the staff and said he was surrounded by “just such a fantastic, legendary writer room” at the series. He, then, confessed, “I was so intimidated when I showed up. I had never written that form before. I had only written sketch and suddenly they’re saying, ‘This has to happen in this act, but then in that act…’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ It was a magical part of my life.”
He would conclude his thoughts by telling Groening, “God, do I thank you. I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t gone there.”
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