Conan O’Brien revealed the job that helped him through a dark period after he exited "Saturday Night Live."
On his "Conan O' Brien Needs a Friend" podcast, the Emmy-winning comedian said he entered a "funk" around the time he left the sketch series in 1991.
"I loved that job and I loved everyone there, but I thought, 'I need to go. I’m just in a bad place in my life,'" he told his guest, animator Matt Groening
.Years before he hosted his own late-night show, O' Brien found a job as a writer and producer on "The Simpsons," which Groening created. He thanked Groening for being a major reason his life changed "in this amazing way."
"I walked away from 'SNL' with no job, and two of your writers, I think it was [Mike] Reiss and [Al] Jean, heard that
Conan O’Brien might be loose and available. So the next thing I knew, I was submitting, I don’t know, some of the sketches I had written on 'SNL,' and then I was told, 'You've got a job on 'The Simpsons' and you need to be here in 4 days,'" he said. "And it really saved my life."
The former late night talk show host worked as a writer on "Saturday Night Live" from 1988 to 1991, the same year he joined the iconic animated sitcom.
Conan O’Brien felt intimidated joining 'The Simpsons'
The comedian said joining "such a fantastic, legendary writer room" was daunting.
"I was so intimidated when I showed up. I had never written that form before," he told Groening, adding that he had only written sketch comedy at the time. "It was a magical part of my life."
He continued: "God, do I thank you. I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t gone there."
O’Brien left the "The Simpson" in 1993, the same year he pivoted his career again to join the late night talk show space. He hosted "Late Night" from 1993 to 2009 and later briefly hosted "The Tonight Show" for less than a year, from 2009 to 2010.
In August 2025, he gave a speech at the Television Academy Hall of Fame ceremony, where he predicted the current late-night television format will go away.
"Late-night television, as we have known it since around 1950, is going to disappear," O'Brien said. "But those voices are not going anywhere. People like Stephen Colbert are too talented, and too essential, to go away. It's not going to happen. He's not going anywhere. Stephen is going to evolve and shine brighter than ever in a new format that he controls completely."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Conan O’Brien reveals show that saved his life after 'Saturday Night Live'
