Now that he’s got a Tonight Show return under his built, Conan O’Brien might finally revisit his old Late Night show.
O’Brien made his long-awaited return to The Tonight Show back in April, but he still hasn’t had a proper guest spot on the NBC franchise that made him a household name in the early 1990s.
According to current Late Night host Seth Meyers, that homecoming is very likely in the works.
“I’m very hopeful,” Meyers told GoldDerby in a new interview about the possibility of a guest spot with O’Brien.
The topic was broached when Meyers was asked about his dream guests for Late Night, and mentioned his predecessor. “We’ve talked,” Meyers said. “I think it’s going to happen, but it would be just wonderful to have Conan on the show. It’s doable. I’m confident.”
“That would be the hat trick,” Meyers added, “because we’ve had Jimmy [Fallon] on and we’ve had Letterman on.”
The Late Night franchise began with Letterman, who hosted from 1982 to 1993. O’Brien took over from there, sitting behind the desk from 1993 to 2009. Next was Fallon, who had the shortest tenure at just five years beginning in 2009.
Meyers first booked Letterman on Late Night in 2018. The legendary host returned in 2022 to mark the franchise’s 40th anniversary. Fallon has guested twice as well, in 2018 and 2020.
Adding O’Brien to the upcoming guest list would mean that we “would’ve had everybody who had been such incredible custodians of this franchise before we were lucky enough to get our hands on it,” according to Meyers.
O’Brien showed up on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon twice after ending his own 16-year run on the show. He appeared in a cold open when Fallon first took over Late Night in 2009, and dropped in unexpectedly in 2011 to retrieve his Triumph the Insult Comic Dog puppet. But he never sat for a proper interview on Fallon’s Late Night, and hasn’t appeared on Meyers’ version at all.
O’Brien’s April appearance on The Tonight Show was the first time he had returned in-person to that franchise since stepping down as host in 2010. (In 2018, he took part in a pre-taped cold open that ran on both The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.)
Even so, O’Brien spent most of the interview reminiscing about his days on Late Night, not his Tonight Show run.
Meyers took over from Fallon on February 24, 2014.