Lisa Kudrow Told Ex Conan O'Brien 'You're No One' Ahead of His Late-Night Debut — and Meant It as a Compliment

When Conan O'Brien introduced himself to late night viewers in September 1993, he was, as he puts it, a "complete unknown" — a fact Lisa Kudrow also pointed out at the time.

In Vanity Fair's new oral history chronicling Late Night with Conan O’Brien’s first year, several key players in O’Brien’s life then, including his now-ex-girlfriend Kudrow, recalled that special period, which proved to be a mix of heavy uncertainty and on-air magic.

“I don’t know how much we talked about it. I just knew, ‘You’re trying to replace David Letterman. No one replaces David Letterman. You’re no one,” Kudrow, 60, explained. “It can’t be anybody that an audience would know.”

Kudrow meant her comment in the best possible way. To go head-to-head with a late night heavyweight like David Letterman, who ultimately hosted late night talk shows from 1982 through 2015, the Friends alum contended that choosing a new face like O’Brien, a scribe on The Simpsons, was the best way to go. (According to Vanity Fair, NBC was considering Garry Shandling at the time.)

The network seemed to agree with Kudrow. But O’Brien, 60, says his hosting audition felt like “linguine meeting marinara sauce for the first time," his debut season was riddled with negative reviews and disappointing ratings.

“We were very naïve. I just had to go through the spanking machine. I had to develop from a fetal pig to a full-size pig in front of America,” O’Brien told Vanity Fair. “And that just had to happen. There was no way around it.”

The show was on the verge of cancellation several times, but one major turning point proved to be Letterman’s “gracious” appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien in February 1994. It was a moment that boosted O’Brien’s confidence and encouraged some viewers to give the show another look.

By the summer of 1994, viewership was up, driven by college students.

“Suddenly the audiences became great. I didn’t know what was happening. And then it dawned on me,” O’Brien explained. “Colleges let out. So college students started to come.”

Late Night with Conan O’Brien would run until 2009, picking up 28 nominations and one Emmy in 2007 for outstanding writing for a variety, music or comedy program.

In 2009, O'Brien was recruited to take over for Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, but he left after just one year, saying in a statement at the time that he could not "participate in what I honestly believe is [The Tonight Show's] destruction." Jimmy Fallon took over and has remained on air ever since.

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In 2010, O'Brien joined TBS with Conan, hosting more than 1,400 episodes of the show before bidding farewell to late night television in 2021.

"My advice to anyone watching right now — and it's not easy to do, it's not easy to do, but try; try and do what you love with people you love," O'Brien said during Conan’s final episode in 2021. "If you can manage that, it's the definition of heaven on Earth."