
CBS’ 60 Minutes just posted some more excerpts of their Conan O’Brien interview, which airs Sunday at 7 pm EST. As you’ve probably surmised, this is Conan’s first interview since he left NBC; he chose to speak to the show’s Steve Kroft. Upon his exit, he signed a contract with the network that gave him a hefty payout but came with restrictions– one of which prevented him from speaking to the press until May 1.
Below are the newest portions of the interview as they appear on the CBS site. Enjoy!
Regrets?
“I don’t regret anything. I don’t regret one decision I made in that week and a half period,” says the late night television comedian. “I wish it had ended differently. But, I’m fine. I do believe, and this might be my Catholic upbringing or Irish magical thinking, but I think things happen for a reason. I really do. And I think that this all happened for a reason,” he tells Kroft.
Was He Screwed?
“The biggest thing people come up and say to me in gas stations and restaurants, I have so many people say this to me. ‘Hey partner, you got screwed.’ I don’t, and I always tell them, ‘No, I didn’t. I didn’t get screwed. I’m fine. It just didn’t work out.’ But I don’t want people thinking, you know, that I got screwed. Because it just didn’t work out.”
Resolved His Issues?
“No, I have not resolved all my issues. I am mostly very happy. I love this tour it’s the most thrilling thing I’ve done in my career. And so I’m in a really great place in a lot of ways. But I’d be lying if I said I don’t have my moments of everything, you know, anger, disappointment, frustration and just confusion.”
Speaking to Kroft about Jay Leno and his exit from the network, O’Brien says he would have left NBC rather than do what Leno did to him.
“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,” O’Brien says. “If I had surrendered The Tonight Show and handed it over to somebody publicly and wished them well and then…six months later. But that’s me, you know. Everyone’s got their own, you know, way of doing things,” he tells Kroft.
Asked by Kroft what he would have done, O’Brien says, “Done something else, go someplace else. I mean, that’s just me.”
O’Brien eventually left NBC, deciding not to play second-fiddle to Leno. He says he didn’t see the point in giving his all in a relationship that seemed to have no future. “I think this relationship is going be toxic and maybe we just need to go our separate ways,” he says. “That’s really how it felt to me…and I started to feel that I’m not sure these- people even really want me here….I can’t do it [anymore].”