David Letterman‘s Late Night successor Conan O’Brien went on Charlie Rose on Thursday night to talk about the late night talk show behemoth’s final days on the air. Among other things, Rose asked O’Brien point blank about Jimmy Kimmel’s highly publicized decision not to air a new episode during Letterman’s final broadcast on Wednesday, May 20th.
O’Brien: That’s just a lazy excuse. Anything to get a night off.
Rose: I thought this was homage and reverence.
O’Brien: Oh no, no, no, no. He’s constantly looking for a way not to do a show.
Conan is joking, of course, and goes on to briefly explain his and his fellow comedians’ competitive instincts. At the same time, there is a great shared feeling of love and respect for Letterman, and it shows when O’Brien self-deprecatingly describes why he’s not worried about airing a new episode the same night: “My nature is, that night, I think just to assume no one’s going to be watching any of us anyway.”
Cheers, Coco. Cheers.
(Via Charlie Rose)
