Conan O'Brien Appears on 'Hot Ones' & Reveals the Worst Thing a Guest Can Do
On talking to guests during commercials:
“It depends on the host…in the old days back in the days when I was doing it and it was just a couple of us. Oftentimes it wasn’t much chat…if you were talking to a Letterman, he wouldn’t say too much…I always tried to make something happen. I tried to keep the rhythm going and sometimes if I couldn’t get them interested I’d try to say something provocative like ‘I bet you live four years tops’ and you can see them get a bit rattled…”
On the worst thing a guest can do:
“…Tell the audience it’s not going well. I‘ve seen it happen many times, it’s an amateur move because the host can do a lot to let people think it’s going great even if it’s not…there are many things the host can do…audience wants to see a good show, they want to see a good interview and I was always amazed when someone would come out and they’d be doing okay…and then would just go ‘This just isn’t going well is it?’… you look out at the audience and it be 200 people sitting there and I’d see 200 souls leave 200 bodies cause they were just told they were not getting a good show.”
On encountering a water buffalo on set:
“We had someone who brought a lot of animals on and one of them was a water buffalo …massive beast and I’m standing next to it and I don’t even know what we do with it and someone, a producer said well hop up on it…and as I’m getting up on it, Andy says ‘Don’t get on that’ but of course I never listen to Andy…as my a– hits the water buffalo…it freaks, it tosses me up into the air…we had it on camera. I go up and I come down on my hip on a cement floor…so I bounce off my hip, it really f–ing hurt. Water buffalo makes this bellowing sound, charges, everyone runs away…takes out a camera; camera people are scrambling and it slips and falls then gets up and looks at me. I am lying on the floor. I jump and I run in the other direction and leap over the talk show couch. I had a hematoma on my hip that was so big I couldn’t get my jeans on or off…”
On which President he’d like to interview:
“Richard Nixon – oh my god, it’d be fantastic. He’s such a comedy figure when you think about it and we could get him to Watergate…and he would try to be funny…the voice alone I would have to say probably Lincoln.”
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