Conan O’Brien Offers Update on His HBO Max Show

Conan O’Brien is giving another update on his upcoming HBO Max variety show. The comedian, who ended his late-night reign in TBS’ Conan in June, revealed Thursday in his Conan Needs A Friend podcast that he is working on his new show but doesn’t have an exact timeline for its premiere, joking, “Have you ever had a term paper when you were in high school and it was due on a Thursday and Thursday came by and you didn’t have it?”

O’Brien reiterated the show won’t be a nightly one but will feature more travel segments like those from Conan Without Borders. “What I’d like to focus on is the stuff that I think I’m particularly useful at or adept at. I want to double down on that… remotes and when I’m with real people in real situations, that’s exactly the kind of stuff I’m thinking about and want to do,” he said. 

“When I travel, people say they just saw the one where I went to Korean spa and they saw my whole body and now can’t unsee it. It’s really nice… I would like to add more foolishness to that mountain,” he continued. O’Brien noted how difficult COVID-19 made those kinds of segments but said he was optimistic “things are turning a corner and I can’t wait to get back out there.”

Back in October, O’Brien gave a similar update on his podcast, saying, “I hope there’s some appetite for it. I must keep going places and making nothing happen of any consequence that benefits humanity in no way.” WarnerMedia first announced O’Brien’s weekly variety show would be coming to HBO Max back when he announced in November 2020 he would be stepping back from the late-night world, but the former Simpsons writer assured fans there would be no juggling or gongs involved. 

“Someone in the machinery somewhere at the network threw the word variety in there because we’re in the variety comedy category, which is an old term. A lawyer in the bowels called it a variety show,” he said. “That is completely not what’s going to happen. What I’d like to do is something that does not come on every night. We have this world now, in this streaming universe, where people can make fewer of something, and I was thinking I’d really like to double down on the things I love, which involves getting out of the studio, which combines a lot of the elements that make me a little different.”