Conan O’Brien hosts the Academy Awards for his second time on Sunday, but it’s something that might never have happened if he had stuck to a proposed bit for David Letterman back in the early 1990s.
O’Brien revealed the bizarre bit on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Wednesday night while the former talk show host extolled the joys of being a talk show guest.
“I really love being a guest, because when you’re the host, you need to worry about, ‘How do I get [a bit of crucial info] into the conversation; I gotta get to this question; we’re running tight on time; I gotta get out of the story,’” he explained.
“When you’re the guest, you don’t care,” O’Brien noted and pointed to Kimmel. “It’s your problem.”
A short time later, Kimmel asked O’Brien his thoughts about being a guest on Letterman’s show, saying he found it “the scariest thing” he’s ever done.
