By BILL CARTER
c.2010 New York Times News Service
In his first interview since walking away from NBC’s “Tonight Show,” a funny but pointed Conan O’Brien tells “60 Minutes” on Sunday night that he believes that he was not given a fair chance to prove that he could succeed and that money may have been the reason NBC decided to bring Jay Leno back to late-night television.
The CBS correspondent Steve Kroft spent most of a day at O’Brien’s home in Los Angeles exploring the turbulent – and, for O’Brien, traumatic – events that led up to his exit in January from the network he had worked for during his entire 17-year career as a television performer. O’Brien’s wife, Liza, is also interviewed in a segment that Kroft said was likely to run several minutes beyond the usual 12-minute limit for its reports.
“We just got so much from Conan,” Kroft said in a telephone interview. He added that the report, which will also include highlights from O’Brien’s current live tour, contains some “lighthearted moments,” though O’Brien speaks directly about the sting of losing a show that he had dreamed of hosting.
O’Brien granted the interview under the provision that it could not be broadcast until after May 1, because in his departure agreement with NBC he was prohibited from appearing on television or any other form of media until after that date.
In the interview Kroft presses O’Brien about his view of Leno’s move to return to late-night television, and O’Brien implicitly criticizes his former NBC colleague for reversing his previous position that he was giving up “The Tonight Show.”
“If I had surrendered ‘The Tonight Show’ and handed it over to somebody publicly and wished them well,” O’Brien says, referring to Leno’s on-the-air hand-off to O’Brien last May, “and then, six months later …” O’Brien adds, referring to Leno’s willingness to return to the series.
“But that’s me, you know,” O’Brien says. “Everyone’s got their own, you know, way of doing things.”
At times O’Brien seems to hold back, acknowledging that he signed an agreement that he not disparage either Leno or network executives. When asked if he believed that Leno might have lobbied to regain the show, O’Brien says simply, “I don’t know,” but adds: “We’re all adults. We don’t take orders from the government.”
More tellingly, he says of Leno’s decision to come back to the show: “He went and took that show back, and I think, in a similar situation, if roles had been reversed, I know – I know me, I wouldn’t have done that.”
Later in the interview, O’Brien notes, “I sleep well at night.”
When Kroft suggests that he got a raw deal, O’Brien says: “No, I didn’t. I’m fine. It just didn’t work out.”
But when Kroft points out that Leno has said that they both got a raw deal through NBC’s maneuverings, O’Brien questions that and notes that Leno wound up back on “The Tonight Show.”
Another late-night star, David Letterman, made the same point in an appearance Friday on “Live With Regis and Kelly,” saying (in a falsetto version of Leno’s voice) that it was only O’Brien who a bad break because “he got canceled,” and Leno got “The Tonight Show” back.
As he has in many recent instances on his own show on CBS, Letterman noted how much he enjoyed the conflict at NBC and poked fun at Leno, explaining that while all the comics who first hung around with Leno in the 1970s found him to be “so compelling and so good,” he said, “there was another side of Jay where he’s a bit of a knockwurst.”
In the “60 Minutes” interview O’Brien is far more serious – and careful – in his comments about Leno.
When Kroft asks if he believes that Leno did something less than honorable, O’Brien hesitates and then says, “I can’t answer that.”
That nonanswer seems to be rooted in the nondisparagement agreement, as Kroft notes. Jokingly, O’Brien says he has to be aware of that agreement and, indeed, “I have one in my wallet.”
Neither Leno nor the NBC chief executive, Jeff Zucker, has called him since the upheaval, O’Brien says. Not that he is surprised, he adds, because he would not expect them to sit around and “sing old Irish fight songs – I don’t think they know any.”
But he does try to counter one point NBC has made since his departure: that his “Tonight Show” was in line to lose money. Not only does he not believe that, O’Brien states, but also, “It’s really not possible.”