Conan Recaps the Oscars with Mike Sweeney

0:03Hey, Conan O 'Brien here. Usually in this slot we air a fan interaction episode, but we're not going to do that. We've had a lot of requests out there from people to talk about my recent experience hosting the Oscars. It has only been about a week by the time this airs, a week or so, week and a half, since I hosted the Oscars. We're taping this a bit earlier, several days after the show aired. So it's still fresh in our minds. And I am joined to go over this experience with my head writer of many, many, many years. Some say too many years. Too many. Mike Sweeney Mike Sweeney has been with me almost since the very beginning of my late night show he waited a little bit to see if it would survive or not and then when he saw that you know it was probably going to make it he came aboard so he is a coward but Mike Sweeney you should have led with the coward part yeah Mike Sweeney has been with me for a long time 30 years 30 years 11 of them quite pleasant and And we worked together on the Oscars along with Jeff Ross and Mike Sweeney led the creative team.

1:19And people seemed very happy with how it went. I had a blast doing it. And one of the reasons I think I was able to enjoy myself so much is I knew I had, we worked very hard to get material that we liked. And I think the call came in from the Oscars in late November. It was the day after we got back from Spain. Yeah, shooting a travel episode in Spain. And I got a call and I called you and I said, I'll do it, but you gotta be on board. I just laughed really hard. You laughed really hard for a long time when you said they, I just got a call. They said, would you wanna host the Oscars? Why were you laughing?

2:00Because the timing of it, we were just coming back. We were so busy. You got really sick in Spain along with a few other people. And also just the, it just seemed random out of left. Like not, it was not on our brain. It was not on our radar. Not on the radar. It was as if I had been, it was as if I had got a call that said, we want you to be the new Miss America. Right, exactly. It was that random and from left field. I would have laughed less. So I said yes. Yes, and then we quickly had to go and tape. HBO Max very kindly said, okay, you're supposed to finish this travel season. So yes, go host the Oscars, but can you knock this other travel show off very quickly?

2:45Squeeze it in quickly. So we immediately dashed to Austria and we're shooting a show in Austria when I get the call that my father had passed away. So I rush home. and then while I'm home, I see that my mom is going too and she went three days later and that was an experience that was very intense and a bunch of you were very kindly flew out for that, which blew my mind and I still thank you for that. That means the world to me. Of course. Eduardo Inosho. It was duly noted, Eduardo. Yeah. I called for you during the eulogy. We all went around. I said, and of course, Eduardo. Eduardo! Eduardo! I'm so sorry.

3:31Yeah, Eduardo, sure, sure, whatever. The funeral is not properly miked. Yeah, he didn't.

3:42Well, I'm glad you can laugh at my parents' death. Yeah? No, no, I'm kidding. I'm laughing too. And they would have wanted that. Who knows? No, I don't think so. You know, while you were gone, you left Austria, and we had to stay there another few days. Oh, I'm so sorry. That must have been tough for you. Well, yeah, we had to go on to Vienna. Yeah. One of the crown jewels. I had to go mourn my parents while you guys went to Vienna and shot B-roll and drank schnapps. Yeah. Just so you understand, it wasn't just you that had a difficult journey. Yeah, exactly. So then... The van was kind of cramped.

4:19But we shot, we were like, what do we do? So we, I don't even know if we talked to you about this. We shot something with Jordan. Yeah. that you haven't seen. Yeah, I'm cutting it without even seeing it. Yeah, yeah. So then there's a real role here because that rolled right into Christmas, felt like days after, which rolled right into January, which rolled right into the fires. I've been living in a hotel since then. Right. And so I remembered us noticing that the Oscars are getting closer and closer. And because of all this madness, we haven't been able to get together in a room and get going.

4:59And so you were instrumental in putting together. I mean, some of the names were obvious because it's people you and I had worked with for a long time. But I think we put together a murderer's row of writers. Amazing. Amazing writers. We just laughed. I missed being in a room with this crew. Oh, man. And we all stumbled downstairs in this building. It's a big conference room there. And we just would laugh all day. I would come in and it was therapy for me because I would come in and anyone who knows me knows that I'm like a fish in water, in tropical water when I'm in a writer's room. I'm just so happy to be around writers and to be joking around, usually riffing on things that could never make it into an Oscar show.

5:50And there was plenty of that. Yes. But. And that was a good shorthand to bring this crew back that had already written for you. So that. Yes. They knew. They knew my style. And also just goofing around like, you know, it was just an instant. But I mean, we should do it. Brian Kiley. Matt O 'Brien. Matt O 'Brien. Laurie Kilmartin. Dan Cronin. Dan Cronin. Jesse Gaskell and Jose Arroyo. Who also work on the travel shows. Skylar Higley. Yep. and uh did we mention brian kyle oh and by the way yeah yes twice brian kiley was also and then also brian kiley uh um kiley comma oh and uh scott gairdner came in to help shoot some of the amazing uh he's amazing and he helped give a great look to some of the things scott gairdner was a writer yeah on the tbs show josh comers josh comers fantastic we mentioned kiley brian kiley yes but also Berkeley Johnson Berkeley Johnson and you should see Berkeley's Johnson it's a joke I've been doing for 15 years and it's always better I was it's so satisfying but we have to tell this story Skylar Higley wrote the the Drake joke halftime the halftime for halfway through the Oscars halfway through the Oscars which means it's time for Kendrick Lamar to come out and call Drake a pedophile.

7:16And he wrote that joke. And today I was, I mean, this has happened to me a couple of times, but I walked to some store this morning to get a cup of coffee. And this young black gentleman came up to me and went, Conan, I got to ask you, did you write that joke about Drake? And I said, I did not. That is the handiwork of Skylar Higley. And I got to give it up. I'm not that well-versed in the rap battles, but I got major props from this gentleman. But we started working and then just generating ideas, and it's the same thing we've done back when we would do Emmy shows or any kind of Comic-Con shows, which is just generate thousands of ideas and throw most of them out.

8:08We had so many ideas that, like, you can't get too attached to any idea because you just know that things are going to get cut. For example, we had a whole big cold open that we loved. It was not the substance cold open that we ended up going with. No, it was a different one. And it was basically hammered out before the fires, the idea of it before the fires happened. And then even after that, we kind of honed it. And it would have been like three or four minutes long. And it was you starting out in Wicked. So you're in a scene from Wicked. It was the idea that I'm going to, oh, Conan's now going to goof on all the movies.

8:51Yes. And so it starts with me and I'm all green in Wicked finishing Defying Gravity or one of those songs. And I finish it. And then you see you cut to the next thing, which is Gladiator. Right. And clang, clang, clang with swords. and then you see that I'm a gladiator, but then you notice that I'm still green. And then you go on to conclave and you see people voting with their ballots and then one of the hands is still green. And then you cut to me in Dune and one of the characters, Javier Bardem is saying, I can't hear you because they all wear those masks in the sand. Take it off, take it off.

9:30And I finally take it. What's your problem, man? And I take it off and I'm green. and he's like, what the hell, man? Did you start this with Wicked? And I went, yeah, and this stuff doesn't come off. And the whole thing is that the dye wouldn't come off and we had to shoot it all in one day. And it was kind of a conceptual idea, but we thought, oh, we can carry this through the whole thing where then all the characters in every movie that I've inhabited are laughing at me and giving me a hard time because I started out as green. Including Nosferatu. They're all piling up on you. They're all piling on me like, you don't start with green.

10:03Everyone knows that stuff doesn't. Everyone knows that stuff doesn't come off. You shoot the wicked at the end. I know, but we had one day and no one told me. That's a good Bill Skarsgård. Thank you. So we thought that that was like, oh yeah, this is the idea. And then we realized this is so complicated to shoot. And it takes so many different setups and started to kind of fall out of. Well, it was more, but also then the Oscars said we're opening Because of the Fires with this big musical tribute. And that, we were like, wait, you can't go five minute musical tribute and then go into a five or four minute comedy piece.

10:49So we needed something quick. We needed something quick. And I was obsessed, always obsessed with coming out of Demi Moore's back. Right. Since I was a child. No, I just, I meant that visual of my hair coming out of my head was something I was obsessed with. And that ended up being good. But it's one of the things you learn, which is that you constantly, it's not just, it's with monologue jokes and it's also with bits. And this is just more about the process. Don't fall in love with anything because also the times change. You know, if something is eight weeks out or nine weeks out, what's funny now isn't the story four weeks later.

11:28So, so many of the narratives kept changing with the Oscars race that, and things would seem funny now, but then not later. And then we got a lot of clarity because I started going out to different clubs and doing jokes. And I could see which ones consistently work well. That was incredibly helpful. And I think also just, you know, for just confidence in that, oh, no, these jokes are good.

12:03The audiences were very nice because they would go out and say, I mean, I know Nikki Glaser does this as well. But it's a very good tool to go out and try things out with an audience. But I would say, please don't record this. And they wouldn't. Right, right. Which was really nice. because all they'd have someone have to do is put that online and you're completely screwed. Well, the other landmine, which I didn't think about, I wasn't really aware of, is like I've heard the term award season, but it never, I was like, what award season? There was a different award show. Once we were going to go to a club and they're like, oh, sure, you're going after so-and-so who's hosting the, you know, Judd Apatow's hosting the DGA Awards.

12:41He's going to do his monologue first. And you're just like, wow, there's so many award shows. We can't even be there when he does his because we don't want to hear something like we can't be influenced. We want to make sure there's no overlap. So you get into this thing where then you say, OK, that show's over. I know, but this this comics out hosting the Spirit Awards and they're doing the circuit and trying jokes about. So you have to wait till and if anyone does any joke, you can't do that joke. then obviously it's gone so we had a couple of areas where we're just like ah now we can't do we can't it's gone now because someone else did it so the whole thing was fascinating but i have to say the the real education uh the real behind the scenes education was you know the academy of motion pictures yes they are very serious about certain things and we had the this real lesson in and again i don't fault them i'm just this is what they do they the the oscar the oscar the image of oscar is very important to them and there'd be times where we'd be shooting bits to promote the oscar promos promos to run on a promos to run on abc or to go on the internet that would you know promote the oscar and i remember there was a giant oscar statue and i shot something with it was really fun and at one point i i said it would be really funny it was about Oscar and I, the Oscar and I sharing an apartment and we don't get along.

14:13Our marriage is crumbling. And, um, this was actually out there that ended up releasing it. And I ended, thought it came out pretty well, but it's just, uh, a nine foot Oscar and I bickering. And he has, of course the Oscar is not doing anything. It's just standing there like a statue. And I'm saying, what happened to our marriage? And we're fighting about things that couples fight about. But at one point I thought, oh, this would be really great if the Oscar was just on the couch. Let's lay it on a really big couch and I'll be vacuuming and say, could you at least lift your feet or could you at least get up and help load the dishwasher?

14:48And we wanted to do it and they just said, no, no, no, that can't happen. There was whispering. There was whispering in this big room and then one of the people from the academy came forward and said, Oscar can never be horizontal. And that blew my mind. Like, wow, this is like the thigh bone of St. Peter. This is a religious icon. And we tried to put an apron when it was serving you leftovers. And they're like, no clothing on Oscar. Yeah. Oscar's always naked. He's always naked, but he won't lie down. There's rules. I didn't know. Oh, no, there's just rules. There's a lot of rules with Oscar.

15:27And then you realize, oh, this award ceremony has been around since 1929. Right. There's a lot of different sort of shorthand for what can and can't happen. But they ended up being very helpful. I want to stress that. They let us. Everyone was great. They were great. And the ABC people were fantastic. And the producers we worked with, Raj and Katie, they would just make anything happen. They would just, anything we said, they would say, yes, let's, that sounds funny. Let's make it happen. The day we met them, they were so nice. I was like, oh, this is the classic. Rope-a-dope. Yeah. This is a trick.

16:04They lure you in. The first time we asked for something. You know, and they were amazing, right? Yeah. Every step of the way. But it just kept getting... My experience of it was, once I said yes, I would always wake up at three in the morning and look at the ceiling and go, what? That's a... What? I said yes to what? And then it takes about an hour and a half to get back to sleep. And that's just the deal. That's just what it's like. I talked to a few others, some of the writers, and I was waking up at 3, thinking of things that either were still up in the air or that I forgot to do that day. They came to me at 3 in the morning.

16:50I was like, and then I couldn't go back to sleep until this week. It was this week. I have been, I refuse to, I mean, we finished, it's now Friday. we did sunday night was the show and it's been my wife is just i i'm i am horizontal all the time i'm glad i know oscar can't be but i doesn't like you horizontal yeah i never has uh the um the response was really lovely and then just but the thing i keep going back to is is the lighting. The lighting is insane. It's the best lighting I've ever had. It's the best lighting I ever will have. And it's Bobby Dickinson and Noah Mintz. And they kept, they were like looking at my face and touching little dials and adjusting things during the rehearsals.

17:50And they also adjusted my face manually. But I swear to God, I looked at myself in a monitor at one point in rehearsal and I'm like, who's that guy? It's not me. Yeah. And I know online people were speculating, you know, did Conan get some work done or something? He's like, it's called lighting. It's called lighting, which by the way, if you've checked out the podcast, this is not Oscar lighting. That's pretty good. And also we do these travel shows and I'm always, my brand of comedy has always been, hey, this could be really funny, let's just go do it. And we shoot it with no thought towards lighting or I'll run into a 7-Eleven and do something.

18:33It's a documentary cruise style. It's a documentary cruise style as if it were a war zone. Right. So I always look like, you know, a toy that a dog got a hold of and shoot up. And then suddenly I step out there and hit my mark and I'm a 19-year-old girl. You looked great. and then i step and then i step out of it it's like oh oh the old pumpkin's back that's an intimidating room to be up on that stage and looking at all those people must have been i think it was you're in the audience so what was that yeah what was it like in the audience were you scared for me yeah i you know i was really um you can say it i know i was a little nervous for you and it was weird not to work it it's one of the you know those big events that i would normally have worked.

19:24I didn't work at the event. You brought Tack. I brought Tack and we were sitting next to Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn. Oh my god. Wow. Wow. What was that like? We were behind the complete unknown cast. They are so much fun. Yeah, we were in the fourth row. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo were just a few rows ahead of us. Wait, your seats were much better than I said they should. These are not the seats. I know. I think you made a mistake. I think I did. I do. I really think you made a mistake. Yeah. And I just didn't move the whole time because I was like, I can't draw attention. And also, if you leave this seat, someone's going to take it from you.

19:58Yeah, and also every time you'd come up, Tack would be like, yeah, Consey! And I'd be like, stop talking. You can't do that here. It's the Oscars. Who sat behind you? Oprah! Oprah sat! You should have worked better seats than Oprah. That is a row behind us. Better seats than Oprah. Oprah Winfrey had to look through your big hair to try and see who had won an Oscar. How did that happen? So, you know, Erica Brown was there as well, who works on the show. And I was like, we have to get you to meet Oprah. So we were following her. And we have, I've introduced Erica Brown to former First Lady Michelle Obama twice.

20:39Twice, twice. Yeah, and you know, she's from Jackson, Mississippi. That should count as an Oprah. Everybody back home is just like, oh my God. And so, you know, I was like, we'll just walk by her and I'll like push you into her, you know, like just like. Oh, that's a good idea. Shove you into her. Yeah, yeah. And you're telling Tack to be quiet. So what did you do? So what happened? So we were following Oprah and then she just disappeared. Yeah, she's. And I think she went out of like a special exit, you know. Well, she has trap doors installed. Yes. Before she goes, people show up and install trap doors.

21:11Yeah. She helped design it. But it was really exciting to just be there in the audience watching you and just like hearing the jokes for the first time, you know. I mean, it was awesome. It was really, really cool. And everybody around was talking about how great you were doing. It was fun. It was a lot of fun. It was to have an orchestra. You get spoiled between the lighting and an orchestra. That's the first time they put the orchestra that high, right? That was so cool. It was really cool. And they had a trap door, an Oculus had opened to reveal the orchestra. It was neat. Yeah. Yeah, kind of.

21:49And they had a Bond tribute for no good reason other than I assume it was for you, Matt Gourley. I have some notes. Let's hear it. No. How much of this show do you guys write? Oh, that is the joke. That is the joke. Well, no, anything I'm doing, we wrote. Yeah. Yeah, but like the rest of the Oscars have a different writing. No, they have a great, they have a very good team. Right. Headed up by John Max. Oh, okay. Who works on it. Man, he's working on every award show. He's working on one right now, I'm sure. He is, he is. The Soul Train Awards. He's working on the Mark Twain Awards. I said Soul Train.

22:24Okay, but I'm just, I'm a stickler for accuracy. The Soul Train. Yeah, and so,

22:35Zach Galifianakis did that very joke in one of the clubs I was in. Oh, sorry. It's okay, it's okay. I just want to make sure that he doesn't think we ripped him off. The, yeah, I have to say the, And that was a highlight, probably, in a long career. That was just so fun. And then, but I just was thinking, the lighting is amazing. There's this orchestra. Everyone in the crowd's wearing a tuxedo. I mean, you hosted the Emmys twice. That's true. Right. But, yes, this, so it's like, oh, well, okay, you know how to do that. But then, I don't know, it was a different level of getting scared before something.

23:20You get intense. It got very intense. It's a big gig. Because then you know people are watching, like, whatever, around the world or something. Well, I wondered, I'm like, why are you so out of your mind and waking up at 3 a.m.? And then afterwards you're like, oh, that's why, because it really is highly scrutinized. What's it like backstage? Oh, that's interesting. Is it chaos? Is it controlled? No, it is a machine. My experience of it was that the way they have it set up is the winners drift off stage right and that they're taken into a whole, it's like a digestive system. It's like they're taken through the winner's walk.

24:02Then they're taken right into a press. There's a quick, I think, glam shots. Then they're taken into the press room. Then they're taken this way. and I'm on the other side mostly. I'm either going to set, but I'm always coming off from stage left. So I'm coming out to either my mark on stage left or to the center. So there's not a lot of interaction, but every now and then you'd have this amazing moment. And the one for me was I'm backstage and I'm watching the monitor because you're just watching the monitor in between. I'll go and talk to the writers and we'll think what could be a funny idea, what could be a funny thing we could say here.

24:41We were constantly trying to think of what's something that could come up, what's happening in the show and what can we comment on. But every now and then there's not much to do. We know which the next joke is. It's not for 10 more minutes. So I'm sitting there, stage left, and I'm looking at my monitor and I'm just aware of like a presence to my left. And I kind of just look over and it's this guy and I immediately see that it's Mick Jagger and who I've never met. And Mick Jagger looks at me and he starts nudging me and in kind of a comic American voice, he's like, hey, hey, how's the crowd? How's the crowd?

25:25How's the crowd? How's the crowd out there? How's the crowd doing? How's the crowd doing? How are they? How are they? And I said, crowd's really good because they were. I said, it's a good crowd. And I said, but you don't have to worry about that because you're Mick Jagger. And he went, oh, no, no, I'm not going to try and do a Mick Jagger. But he said, I always worry about the crowd. And I said, wait a minute. So you're with the Rolling Stones and you're in Buenos Aires and you're getting ready to come out and start the show and you're going to start off with satisfaction. And you're anxious that the crowd isn't going to be good.

25:59And he said, oh, no, definitely. I wear an earpiece and I listened to the crowd and sometimes I can tell the crowd isn't quite there yet and I have to give it a little extra up front. And I was so relieved because I realized, obviously he's 35 levels beyond me, but nothing ever goes away. Meaning I've had many people give me a hard time because I'm at a small gathering and I'm supposed to get up and give a toast and Liza can tell I'm anxious and I'm getting worked up but I'm looking around the room to see, is this a good room? And she's like, it's a dinner party. What are you doing? And I'm like, it just never goes away.

26:40You're always worried about that stuff. And to hear that Mick Jagger, who's, I believe, 81, the front man for the Rolling Stones, is asking people, asking me, how's the crowd? You think I'll be all right out there? I don't know. It's going to be touch and go for you, Mick. House of lighting. Yeah. Exactly, yeah. But he, I mean, I was kind of intimidated because I didn't know what he would be like. He was incredibly nice. He said to me at one point, oh, and by the way, we've never met. And I'm like, he, how do you know you've never met me? Isn't your life just a blur of occasionally an orange person comes by?

27:24He was lovely. He was great and funny and thoughtful. And I had a great exchange with him. And then I knew I need to end this. Like, don't hang on too long. So I said, well, anyway, wonderful, lovely. It was very nice to meet you too. And I walk away and I think Ruthie has me walking away from him. And I saw that Ruthie was filming it and I just walk up and go like, okay, that just fucking blew my mind. That's pretty crazy. Back into the tent with the writers.

28:04Were you guys in a tent? We were. It's kind of a black duveteen kind of roped off area. And we had monitors and we had a, you know, we had the scroll of the script. And so we would, like after Flow 1, Brian Colley had a joke about, you know, it's the first win for Latvia. Yeah. It's your move, Estonia. Yeah. You guys are on the fly just like coming. What's the process of you doing that and then getting that into the teleprompter for him in time? How much time was there? There was this producer named Rachel was right in the room with us, and she really helped with the script along the way. She's great.