Conan O’Brien Must Go: Season 3 Roundtable Discussion Part I

conan o'brien needs a fan want to talk to conan visit team coco.com slash call conan okay let's get started hello conan o'brien here and this is a very uh special episode that we're doing conan o'brien needs a friend because i am sitting here with the creative masterminds behind my travel show Conan O'Brien must go. By the time this drops, all four episodes will finally be out. India, Netherlands, Morocco, Philippines. I'm very proud of these shows. I think this might have been our best season yet. I think there's a lot of funny and even some heartwarming stuff in those episodes. And I'm thrilled to be here with the team that's been with me on all of my travel shows going back to the very beginning. And I'm talking about Mike Sweeney. Hello, Mike. Hello, Conan. Well, and now we're losing. We are dropping fans by the ratings drop off right there. Yeah. Jesse Gaskell. Hi, Jesse. Hi, Conan. And that was a little more sincere. And then, you know him as Dr. Arroyo. I know him as Jose Arroyo. He's an actor. He's an actual human being, sort of. Jose, how are you? Hi. Hi, Conan. And, guys, we have been working together on travel shows going back years and years and years. The 80s. The 80s. That's right. That's the 1980s when we traveled to, the Berlin Wall was still up. Yeah, that was us. We actually caused the Berlin Wall to fall. I was doing a bit with Jordan and we slammed into it. And then Putin, everyone was like, oh, what the fuck? Let it go. I almost said Putin, but that's historically inaccurate. It would have been. Jesse Elson. Conan, stop it. Anyway, let's talk about these shows. And I made this statement that this might be my favorite season. You guys can weigh in. And I'm not just saying that in the, I think this is our best yet kind of shtick. I was very proud of these. Yeah. They're all quite different. A bunch of these are countries that we always wanted to go to, and it never quite worked out. It's really the furthest flung season, I think. We've, we've traveled far to get to these places. Yes. Yes. And if you go by just mileage alone, these are our best shows. And it all starts with, I'm going to start us off on India because that was the first episode that dropped. And Mike, maybe you can speak to this, but India was on our wishlist for a long time. I think there were some bureaucratic difficulties, if I'm, if I'm correct. Self-inflicted. Probably self-inflicted. But Mike, why don't you lay the table a little bit for our long journey starting years ago to go to India? It started in 2017. We were putting India together and there is a lot of red tape, a lot of bureaucracy to shoot in India. I'm sure if you wanted to start a petrochemical plant, it's smooth sailing. But to shoot a TV. TV show, it's rough. Yeah. And, and so, and then it turned out we shot something in 2004 without any permits and that someone dug that up and dinged us for that. So on the eve of going, we pulled the plug because we still didn't have an answer. And instead in two weeks, we planned you going to Italy with Jordan. Yeah. I remember that. We were going to go to Italy, but because of a kind of weird, rogue remote, um, that we did years and years earlier, uh, Andy Blitz, very funny writer had a very funny idea, which is he's having problems with his computer. And, uh, he's talking to someone at the call center, which of course, uh, is in India and he's having a difficulty. So he wraps his computer up, puts it under his arm, gets on a plane and takes it to India, which is a very funny idea. Uh, of course we meant no offense to anybody, but none, what we didn't because we're all wet behind the ears and Andy Blitz. And I can say this. I don't think this is legally, uh, actual, uh, he's a fool. Um, Andy Blitz, no one got any, uh, permissions or anything. It was just sort of shot, uh, guerrilla style. And, um, that caused us to be put on some list, but it all worked out and our huge thanks to, uh, the government and, uh, everyone involved in letting us come to India. We had a wonderful time. Uh, it is one of my favorite places to visit. It's spectacular. Yes. India is a spectacular place. I cannot say enough good things about our experience there. And I loved, there's one fan that really, he's one of my all time favorite fans and that's rusty. Yeah. Yeah. Unbelievable. Just special guy. I mean, as, as the, as the, the way these shows work is it, it always starts kind of with a random fan calling into us and I talked to them on the podcast and well, you speak to this, Jesse, he was just electric right away. He came in really hot and funny doing a million bits. Yeah. And, um, then we, uh, which could go either way sometimes. I mean, some, sometimes people try that and it's like, ah, this didn't, this didn't work trying too hard or it comes off awkward. He just, he owned it. He owned it. He, he was, you know, he's that great quality of, he was hilarious and also sweet. And then you add to that, that, uh, you know, he's, uh, you know, been, been dealing with, uh, an ailment, uh, since birth. Um, he's been dealing with this, uh, and he's confined to a wheelchair and he is the most sunny, optimistic, hilarious, uh, forward thinking live in the moment guy. Yeah. He's inspiring. He's really inspiring. And so, uh, going and visiting him and meeting his parents, it's one of my favorite because any, if you watch this episode and I hope you do everything that happened in Rusty's house with his family, you can't invent any of that. Yeah. It is un-inventable. You cannot script that. It was just a happening, uh, uh, Jose, why don't you weigh in? I agree. But keep it very, but keep it much shorter than everyone else. First of all, everything you said is true. We couldn't have planned the, well, the, as Rusty is his own character, very dynamic, very funny. His father is off the charts, you know, incredible as well. He, he's, uh, almost as tall as you, very outspoken, has kind of a, uh, kind of a military bearing and. No filter. And no filter. And at one point he. And brought his own. Sound effects. Yeah. And then at one point the dad leaves the room to go get something and comes back carrying a giant shotgun. Yes. And I think it's loaded and I think it's pointing at me at one time. That was one of those, like, we don't have a safe word and we probably should. Yeah. When you're in these situations. Yeah. Yeah. And so, uh, that was intense. Of course, his mom was fantastic and sweet. And also her eyes were just, you could see she's lived a thousand lives with these two characters. Exactly. Um, and it was from Rusty after they watched the show and apparently his mom was grateful that we left some certain things out from the conversation. His dad was mad that we hadn't gone further. Oh, was that true? With the edit? Yeah. He, he wanted us to keep the whole thing in. Oh, oh, he wanted, oh, he wanted it to be a nine hour special about him. Exactly. Uh, yeah. One of my favorite things, you know, India is this massive place as you can, as you know, it's one of the most, you know, populous, uh, nations in the world. And, you know, India is one of the most populous, uh, nations on the globe. And one of my favorite things is we shot the thing with Rusty and his, his mom and his dad and his dad was this crazy character. And I think the next day we're out shooting in this really crowded area. And all of a sudden I hear hello, Conan. And it's him walking by it's Rusty's dad. How can you run into a person twice in, I know literally like two people or three people now in India, and I'm out in a crowded area. Far from Rusty's home. And this guy goes rushing through and he's like, hello, Conan, I'm on business. I think he had his gun with him. Uh, it's a city of 20 million people. Yeah. And um, and of course, let's talk about the other fans. There was Nikhil who wanted to be a talk show host and you gave him lessons on how to be a talk show. But this was a fun moment because we go to see Nikhil. Nikhil was someone who was interested in, in maybe having a talk show in, in India. And I said, well, I'll give you some pointers. And we thought that'll be a good segment. We go to Nikhil's house and he had talked to us about his colorful roommates. Yeah. And one of them was a huge fan of yours. Yeah. He was sort of arranging for you to come surprise. But we knock on the, and he wanted me to say hi to his, his roommate. Who's a huge fan knock on the door and Nikhil's there, but his roommate is not who we were going to surprise. And so. This all plays out in real time where I said, well, where is he? Oh, he's at the gym. Where's the gym? Oh, it's like a five minute drive from here. Let's go. And we all run into a van. Um, yeah. came my favorite thing about these shows i love the set pieces obviously where we've prepared but when we are not prepared and you just have to go with something sometimes you slip into these magic currents yes and you feel like i don't know what's happening here we are not in control but this is really fun and it and i think i don't i i don't know how it happens but somehow that stardust does come through when you look at it later on in the edit yeah you're like you can tell god works for hbo yes yeah he did work for showtime for a little bit but he was underpaid and uh he didn't think they had the same reach um then uh so that and and then i have to say uh you guys did a brilliant job we obviously wanted to do our homage to to bollywood and we did a brilliant job and we did a brilliant job and we did a brilliant job and we did a and mike maybe you can talk a little bit about how that came about we did it we did our our a bollywood number with the assistance of all these incredible actors dancers uh you know producers uh you know camera people sound people i mean on this directors assistant directors they we gave them the script and the the items elements we wanted in it like the dancing and they hired a team that was expert in bollywood productions and fast i i think inherent in bollywood is also being able to quickly produce something and they did a masterful job it was incredible i was floored i was for first of all i mean the dancers men and women um are just gorgeous beautiful and so talented and funny and you know the minute they saw me they're like okay we get it yeah we'll do our best yeah we'll do our best to help uh this idiot and then um we also got the assistance of these uh two actors who are incredible ali and uh richa they're they're married they're married and ali fazal and uh richa chandra yeah and they big bollywood stars they are big bollywood stars and i just love fans of yours apparently i think they said anything they're like sure sure we're fans um they were just lovely they were really funny and they played along uh and again one of my i i like to go inflict myself on another country and then um what we've found time and time again is uh that these people from a completely different culture are so smart and they're so funny they're so good at at playing along and also giving me a dig when i need one and trust me i'm a big piñata that needs to be whacked regularly uh and we're like please wait till we start rolling yeah yeah yeah you you that show also features one of my favorite set pieces that we went in with which went in with which uh you guys worked really hard on and i don't know when i've been happier to show up i know what you're talking about you're talking about the monkey episode yes which by the way was your idea you talked about that's why i loved it so much i guess there's a problem with monkeys stealing cell phones yes it's a big problem yeah yeah from tourists yeah yeah and you said well why don't we have a little mini at&t store and we lure the monkeys and we do a sting sting operation and so i was so outrageous i was such an outrageous my favorite thing is a completely outrageous premise that you commit to 100 so sure enough and a huge thanks again to uh chalemi and everyone involved who sure enough they they built a two working eight to scale uh well i don't know i'm gonna start with they built an at&t store it's monkey size right and then monkey scale monkey scaled and then they built you know to to lure the monkeys a robot monkey and i guess if you haven't seen the india episode if this doesn't intrigue you enough to get hbo or steal hbo or go hang out or break into a home that has hbo and watch it borrow a monkey's phone and watch it uh but i remember we were in the van and i do get very tired sometimes on these you know you're jet lagged and there's a long a lot of traffic and which were we in where were we which city were we in for this one it was in bangalore i was out of bangalore bangalore that's right north of bangalore north of bangalore long drive we get there and usually i have to we're getting closer and closer and i'm thinking okay which one is this now which and someone said this is the monkey sting operation and i flew out of that van and i was electrified and i saw a monkey robot and a monkey scaled at&t store and real monkeys up in the trees and i just felt like all of my career has been leading me to this and i'm like i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this to this moment everything else is in service of this moment so that was in some ways that was our sting operation which we set up yes to make you a monkey remote yeah at the end the monkey robot said god that guy's desperate um well that's india in a nutshell it doesn't our discussion doesn't even scratch the surface uh that it is one of my all-time uh favorite travel shows and that's really saying something because these shows mean so much to me and you guys did such an amazing job uh and top to bottom the people the cuisine um just the whole vibe india is one of the most different places that you can go on the planet earth and i i just the whole time was alive with you know everything was heightened because of the colors the the fabrics that yeah it's a feast for the senses oh yeah it's incredible and it's everything it's all the things all at once it was amazing and i'm gonna move us on now to the next travel show that drops in the order which is out now which is i mean they're all out now but the second one was the netherlands and this the highlight for me you can probably guess was um well we'll talk about that in a little bit let's talk about the fans first um yeah the fans great fans micah the model who you wanted to you want to get modeling lessons from an actual professional model micah is this uh absolutely uh beautiful uh woman's model but she's also she is brutally funny she is a sharpshooter she's so smart and funny funny and the minute i i mean you could and we could sense that in the discussion with micah when we talk on the podcast but then when i showed up and she uh i i'm waiting for her in front of her studio and then she pulls up on a bicycle and she walks up to me and i knew immediately uh this woman is going to tear me to shreds and i'm gonna and i'm going to love it and i'm going to love every second of it she was so funny she was hilarious she's lovely so she was giving me modeling lessons i've since when i look at our segment now she asked me well what are the things you're not happy about with yourself and i go on this long list of the parts of my face that i had no problem i had no problem rattling off my long list of things that i don't like about my face and at no point does she jump in and go oh come on conan at no point does she say no conan what are you talking about she's nodding as i'm shredding my own face in front of her like yeah yeah no i know what you mean i know what you mean so keep going keep going yeah keep going oh you're forgetting somewhere right right right right so uh but um she gave me lessons she's just i love that segment she's such a funny segment yes yes you learn how to how to walk on a runway there was a there was a conan sort of look-alike model who was much more handsome than you but he was right that you stand next to why would you say that i guess well younger now let's not say better looking yeah no it's yeah me back in the day no you would have been yeah all my flaws were still there but they weren't as egregious um no they were that was a really fun segment uh we showed up in in uh amsterdam on king's day and that was just kind of a happy accident we the way the schedules work you have to slot these things in and you have to make sure you accommodate oh we're doing the oscars we got to make sure we accommodate that this is when i could go and it had us showing up on this day and we realized it's king's day when everyone uh puts out every piece of junk they own on the street and people party and they wear orange it's the one day they can sell things without having to pay a tax or anything so everybody does a flea market it's a giant flea market so i'm walking around the flea market that's a happening because you can't script that mm-hmm You guys had a really funny idea, which is there's a big problem with confiscated bicycles. People park their bicycles illegally around Amsterdam. So you guys said, hey, it'd be really funny if we went to the graveyard where all the confiscated bikes are. The boneyard. Yes, the boneyard. So, and Sweens, that's what I call Mike, and you should have done that by now. Sweens, what am I, let's make sure I'm not forgetting anything else about Netherlands. Oh, there's a great fan. Joe, I think was. That was my highlight. Okay, well, we'll save that. Oh, the other fan, Lucas. Do you want to talk about the other fan, Lucas? Oh. Yes, Lucas, basketball player. He's a basketball player who wanted you to teach him how to trash talk. Yeah. So you came armed with a series of insults that you taught him. They were, some of them were horrible, some of them were funny, and the one he loved the most was Van, go fuck yourself. Yeah, Van, go fuck yourself. Yes. Netherlands' greatest contribution. They're all Netherlands. They're all Netherlands sort of based insults. But what I also loved about that segment is I like, obviously, to go in, go in with massive amounts. My favorite thing is massive amounts of attitude with no talent to back it up. So should I be playing basketball at all? Probably not. Should I be playing basketball with a professional? Absolutely not. But then he brought one. He brought one of his friends out who is much bigger than me. He makes you look slight. He makes you look shrimpy. How tall is he, do you think? He was around 6'8". 6'8". He's about five inches on me. That's one of my favorite things, because while we're shooting the first part, I'm like, how are we going to end this segment? How are we going to end this segment? And then we look over at his teammates. And there's Dave. Dave, who's 6'9". Yep. And we're just like, I think. Built like a truck. Yeah. I think Dave will be the ending. Yeah. And sure enough, I then go up and I start insulting Dave. Yes. And acting like it will be no problem for me to trash you. He, of course, immediately starts to kick my ass. And so I start karate chopping. Oh. But, of course, my personal highlight was dressing like Van Gogh. Oh, that was such a good costume. Shout out to Scott Chronic for that. Yeah, Scott Chronic, great costume. And also, I love that, you know, Van Gogh was, I think, a redhead. So there's some similar colorings there. And also, I'm a very tortured artist. Yes. Who's my nation's greatest contribution. And so that was really fun. I love the excitement of it, because we were shooting something down by the train station. And we all just got back kind of on. And later than we wanted to, back to the hotel. And you were like, let's do the Van Gogh, because we were right across from the Van Gogh Museum. But we had the rush to get you dressed and get that beard on. We had to do it all in like 10 minutes, because the museum was going to close. Yes. We were racing the clock. I quickly throw the stuff on, and then I'm running to get to the museum. And the whole idea is I want to get kicked out of the museum. These are things you want. You want to happen, but you have no control over it. So what if I had showed up, and the guards were all laughing and said, oh, Conan, come on in. Well, that's no fun. Boy, did they do us a favor. They were not amused. They asked you to clear the exit area. Yeah. And the minute I meet opposition like that, I'm so happy. But anyway, that was a thrill. Netherlands, really fun. With a lot of these shows, we— We kind of think of the facial hair first, and then plan the segments around that. Yes. Like what kind of beard or mustache could you put on? Yes. Last year when we were in Vienna for the travel show, I was Freud. And the minute I'm put in costume and any kind of makeup or fake facial hair, and I get to have a stupid accent, I'm just a pig in shit. I'm so happy. And then I start to—I just free associate. I go into some other space. You go into a trance. I go into a trance. It's like a tantric character work. Yeah. And so we got to do that with Van Gogh. I got to become Van Gogh. And I have a gripe, which is that I died in obscurity. And then all my works, which I got nothing for in my lifetime, are now being sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. They're the most prized artworks in the world. And I'm bitter about it, so I want to go and get a piece of the merch. Yes. Yeah. And the tourists I encounter were really fun. The whole thing was just spectacular. And here's what I think we're going to do. I think it's going to be a two-parter, because we've had so much fun talking about these first two episodes. These are all available now on HBO, and it's called Conan O'Brien Must Go. And I really do—these are a labor of love. That's pretty much all I can say. I absolutely love doing it. And I love— I love doing it with this team. You guys are spectacular. And— No, it is. It's just—it's something that means so much to me, and I'm so proud of these ones. They're out. This is just part one. We'll be back next week to talk about the other two episodes, which are out now. All of them, they've been coming out once a week. They're all out now, and you can see them. This is the third season. I really love the other two seasons, too, if you want to check them out. You can check those out. But let's sign off for now, unless you have anything to add on Netherlands. The Netherlands—oh, just that you were hauled into the International Criminal Court. Yes, which is in the— The Hague. The Hague is in the Netherlands, and that's where people are tried for international crimes. And I was arrested and taken to the Hague for my various comedy crimes. Exactly. Against humanity. Against humanity. Comedy crimes against humanity. And you've never seen Judges at the Hague more unified. Unified. I'm apparently the one thing everyone can agree on. That was a really funny segment. They reinstated the death penalty. Okay. Which they wanted to—they wanted sentence carried out immediately using just heavy staplers. So India, Netherlands, and next week we will talk about the other two shows, Morocco, Philippines. This is all behind-the-scenes gold. And we'll see you then. With Conan O'Brien, Sonam Ovsessian, and Matt Gourley. Produced by me, Matt Gourley. Executive produced by Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and Nick Liao. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy. Supervising producer, Aaron Blair. Associate talent producer, Jennifer Samples. Associate producers, Sean Doherty and Lisa Berm. Engineering by Eduardo Perez. Get three free months of SiriusXM when you sign up at SiriusXM.com. Please rate, review, and subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan wherever fine podcasts are down.