USA TODAY US Edition

Same Conan O’Brien, much shorter show

He returns with a half-hour format and a full plate of projects

- Gary Levin USA TODAY

Twenty-six years after starting his latenight TV career, Conan O’Brien is ditching talk-show traditions. ❚ The Harvard grad turned “Simpsons” writer turned talk show host returns to TBS Tuesday (11 p.m. EST/ PST) after a nearly 4-month break with the same “Conan,” and longtime sidekick Andy Richter, in a new half-hour format. ❚ But he has dispatched his desk (which “feels like I’m interviewi­ng people for a bank loan”); his suits (“I would like to dress a little the way I do in my everyday life, which is quite sexy, I assure you”); and all but one guest a night (Tom Hanks on tap for the opener).

“I used to have a large Victorian home that a lot of guests would come and crash in, and now I’ve moved with Andy into a small sleek condo.”

It makes sense, as he now has to shoehorn his weirdly wonderful brand of absurdist self-abasement comedy into 21 minutes, give or take.

“That’s what I’m telling the people who used to be second guests,” he says. “‘I love you, man, but no time.’ I used to have a large Victorian home that a lot of guests would come and crash in, and now I’ve moved with Andy into a small sleek condo, and we can only accommodat­e one guest.”

But look for him to get out into the world with more remote segments, interactin­g with everyday people as he does in his three annual world-travel specials (his favorites include trips to Cuba, South Korea and Armenia).

In a larger sense, “what I’m trying to do is hang on to all the things that I think we do well, and remove some of the stuff that was making me feel like, ‘Why are we still doing this?’ especially in an era... of 135 late-night talk shows.”

O’Brien, 55, has been busy with other projects. He’s just back from a tour with stand-up comics. And in November he started a podcast, “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend,” which he finds exhilarati­ng.

“I am a curious person,” he says, and with two mics and no cameras, “people get very relaxed, and we have a completely different conversati­on than you can have on an hour show.”

“There’s something about taking the cameras away that is fascinatin­g. I really enjoy it.”

He hopes to blend some of that flavor into his TV show, even just the parts that run on his Team Coco site or YouTube.

“With big-name guests, I’ll be talking to them much longer, and that’ll be what runs online,” O’Brien said. “There’s a chance to improvise and play around with the form and explore what works. I want to change things to make them fit my personalit­y more completely and be more unique to me. Especially at this stage of my career, why not? We will undoubtedl­y hit some snags here and there, but I’ll take that over being afraid to try.”

He says he has a four-year commitment from Turner, a sharp contrast from his early days at NBC’s “Late Night,” and his short-lived stint as host of “The Tonight Show.”

“I was once on seven-minute contracts with NBC,” he said (we think it’s a joke). “My agent bought an egg timer and he used to flip it, and when the sand ran out he used to call to see if I still had a job.”

The new show will feel different, but it’s not a radical shift. And “if people don’t like this, we can switch over to a game-show format, which Richter wants to do anyway,” he said. “I just hope they laugh. That’s always the job, that’s always the gig, and it will never change.”

 ?? TBS/TEAM COCO ??
TBS/TEAM COCO
 ?? TBS/TEAM COCO ?? Look for Conan O’Brien to get out with more remote segments.
TBS/TEAM COCO Look for Conan O’Brien to get out with more remote segments.

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