Conan O’Brien on his Cuban jaunt: ‘I felt really strongly about this’

[Judi Lynn]

Conan O’Brien on his Cuban jaunt: ‘I felt really strongly about this’
By Andrea Morabito
March 4, 2015 | 12:01am



No late-night talk show host had filmed in Cuba since Jack Paar in 1959 — so when President Obama announced plans to thaw relations with the country last December, Conan O’Brien jumped on the opportunity.

His resulting four-day, clandestine trip to Havana over President’s Day weekend is documented on Wednesday’s episode of “Conan” (11 p.m. on TBS) — which finds the 6-foot-4, red-haired host in a country where the locals don’t recognize him (and he has only an eighth-grade knowledge of Spanish with which to communicate).

“I felt really strongly about this — I don’t want this to be a snarky American comedy take. I don’t want this to be political,” O’Brien told a group of reporters over lunch in New York last week. “A lot of my [on-location sketches] are me as a fish-out-of-water … I want to go as a comedian who’s making fun of himself and I want to try and make the Cuban people laugh. In that regard, I think we were successful.”

Plans for the Cuba trip were made quickly and under the radar — O’Brien didn’t even tip off his bosses at Time Warner. Instead, executive producer Jeff Ross contacted a production company in Havana, which got a staff of 10 an invitation from the Cuban government to visit as part of a cultural exchange.

More:
http://nypost.com/2015/03/04/conan-obrien-on-his-cuban-jaunt-i-felt-really-strongly-about-this/

[valerief]

1. Looks cool. nt

[mainstreetonce]

2. I hadn't thought about

that the people wouldn't know English. I'm used to travel in every Caribbean islands the people are all used to English speaking tourists and English is a second language.