Jay Leno Denies Sabotaging Conan O'Brien As He Took Over 'Tonight Show' Hosting
During a recent episode of Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast, Jay said that he never “deliberately sabotaged” Conan over the ordeal.
“That doesn’t work,” he said, referencing any plans that he had to embarrass Conan at at all. “It doesn’t work that way. You try and do the best you can and it didn’t work.”
He also spoke of his own short-lived talk show, saying, “Sometimes the czar you have is better than the one you’re going to. Then you have your old team shooting at you as well. I just figured let’s just play this out and see what happens. This all happened fairly quickly.”
Following the debacle, Conan headed to TBS for his own talk show, and it just recently ended in 2021. Jimmy Fallon is the current host of The Tonight Show.
Here’s what Conan said about the entire thing in 2012.