Transcript of Staff Review With Laurie Kilmartin

Conan O'Brien needs a fan. Want to talk to Conan? Visit teamcoco.com/callconan. Okay, let's get started.

Okay, in the past, this slot has usually been a time when I would talk to fans around the world, but today's a little different. I'm going to talk to someone who's definitely not a fan of mine. No, we've been doing this lately, and I'm really enjoying it. Oscars are coming up. Soon. As we tape this, I think it's about 3 weeks away. And we've been working very hard. I'm working with an incredible team of writers, many of them I've worked with for a long time. And I've been having them come upstairs and chat with me a little bit. And it's been really fun. And that continues today with Laurie Kilmartin. Laurie, thank you for coming on out.

Oh, I hope it continues today.

Yes, yes. That's it. Figure out. No, Laurie, he was right, it was fun. Get back down there. Um, Laurie, uh, you are an incredible stand-up comedian, and you've worked with me for a long time. Thank you. And, um, always done an incredible job, and worked with me on the Oscars last year. And Laurie has a very, uh, special, uh, role which is Laurie, because she's a great stand-up, she's the one that has become my life coach when I go out into the world and try Oscar jokes out. So Laurie's the one that says, "We're gonna get you out there now, Conan." And I say, "All right, okay." And you're very verbally abusive. And then you've been picking all these amazing spots. Some of them I've been to before, some of them I haven't. And it's really fun, but you are so dialed into these places. And then you watch me do my set, and you have great instincts about which ones work, which ones may need a tweak, which ones should probably go by the wayside. But let's go back to the beginning, which is you come to my attention. How did that happen? I'm trying to remember.

Ooh, well, I started on the TBS show. So I think— I think that's— that was my third packet. I think I'd done a packet for The Tonight Show and Late Night too. So the third one worked, I guess.

Yeah. Well, The Tonight Show, there wasn't a lot of time there.

Yeah, I don't know if I got around to reading it.

I was starting to open the envelope when that thing blew up. But— and subsequently, when you first came to work for me, I had not seen your stand-up. And then we toured together, and I got to see your stand-up every night, which is phenomenal. Just phenomenal.

Oh, thanks. I don't know. I look back, I'm like, "Oh, that bit was still— I was still working on it. It got sharper." But I'm glad you liked what you saw.

Because you have that kind of mind, you're never going to say, "Oh, yeah, thanks." You're going to say, "This was a little—" But I'm telling you, it was phenomenal. Oh, thank you. And you have such a good eye and ear that you've been just— a great help to me in terms of what stuff works, how to tweak a joke when something isn't hitting the ear quite right. And that's really helpful. And I'm just curious, when did you decide, okay, I'm going to be a stand-up? Like, this is— because that's a leap that everyone comes to differently. How did it happen for you?

Well, I would— I had sort of— I dropped out of college and I had kind of a breakdown. Due to various things all colliding at once in my head.

You know, you were a very good athlete.

I was okay. I was a swimmer. I swam for UCLA, but I was like, it was— they were in a rebuilding phase. Like, I would never make the team now. They were like low-level Division I when I was there. And, and so, so yeah. And then I had quit swimming and whatever.

So you go through this period of your life where things are rough.

Exactly. And then I started to, I don't know, I, I went and saw some standup and I, I'm not the only one that who's come to standup this way where, where you see some great standup and you're like, oh, I could never do that. That's amazing. And then you see someone who's not good and they're, they're on the bill and you're like, wait a minute. Yeah.

That person's a comic. They're the true inspirations. They are. No one ever says that. The true inspirations are people like, how did that ass get up there?

Yes, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So I saw a bunch of that. And so I started in San Francisco 'cause I'm from the Bay Area. So that's where I kind of—

And San Francisco is such a great place. It's great, yeah. For standup. Yeah, yeah, it's weird.

There's this guy named, oh my God, his name was, I forget his last name. He was a former porn star who, and Native American, and was like one of like 11 or 16 children, some crazy backstory. But he was the bartender at the Holy City Zoo, and he knew Robin Williams, and he was around when Robin had started too. And so he was sort of the mother bird of all of us newer comics and giving us stage timing tips and stuff like that. And even though— I don't know, I never had a bad situation with him, even though his backstory sounds troublesome. Yeah. But he— John Cantu. Yeah.

And he saw something in you. He was like, "Okay." He was encouraging?

Yeah, he was encouraging, but he's also running a class. So anytime someone's paying, they're always encouraging.

But they're encouraging, but also they don't think you're ready just yet. One more session. I ran the same thing in improv. Same thing in improv. Right. You're very good. I think a little more work. Really? How many levels does school have? People are really laughing hard. Yeah. There's 11 more levels. You said this was the last one. I forgot about the other 11. So just make that check out too. So you're doing that, and you— had you worked on television shows before? Had you written for other comics? Because that's a very different thing. You write for yourself and then writing for someone else's voice.

Yeah, it is a big thing. And it's weird because you can definitely separate those two voices. There's never been a joke I've written for you or anybody else that I would have done myself. So people always think that, you know, that must be so hard to give up that joke. It's like, no, no, it didn't— would not work in my act about me complaining about being a mother.

You know, it's really funny. Yeah.

Many times I've seen you do Conan's like, I'm not a single mom. Why does she keep giving me this stuff?

I tried it last night. It killed. Yeah, it's, it's fascinating to me because that's another fun thing I get to do. If I see you or Brian Kiley tell a really funny joke, I get to say, "Oh, too funny for me, huh?" Like, "Why didn't you give me that?" You'd be like, "You idiot! You never breastfed." Oh, oh, oh, oh, you're right.

Kiley did though, so he deserves to tell it. Yeah, exactly.

I breastfed Kiley. What the fuck? One gag too far. Yeah, I always go too far. I don't do the late night, my late night show anymore. And I think a while ago, Jimmy Kimmel contacted me and he was asking me about this Laurie Kilmartin. And I said, you are an absolute fool if you do not hire Laurie Kilmartin.

I can't believe that conversation happened. She is the best.

She is the best. But Jimmy was high at the time and forgot. And then I had to call him and tell him again. He was like, oh, yeah, yeah, okay. But— So you've been killing it, not just for me, but for Jimmy as well. And now we're once again working on the Oscars. And I'm curious, how do you think it's going so far? We're getting close.

I think we're way ahead of where we were this time last year. I think we have a lot more jokes than ever.

You have a lot of jokes.

We do. And it's like they could all change in the next 3 weeks too because we keep coming up with— Yeah, it's—

We keep coming up with new ones, and then— We always allow for— last year, I remember the actual show is a moving target. Yeah. You can't lock down what you're going to do a month out because in the world we live in now, things change day to day. Right. And something that's a joke we might have thought was really funny in December is now like, what were we thinking? That's not even something people think about anymore. That's out of the news. No one cares about that. The big thing I have to fight is sometimes I just start to get tired of a joke because it's been with me for a while. And that's always been a little bit my issue when we toured together and I had a, I don't know, like a 40-minute stand-up hunk. I remembered sometimes being, "I don't want to say that again. I said that last night." So I think that's one of the luxuries I've always had is just riffing foolishly about different things. And I get bored if I have to say the same thing over and over and over again.

I know. In fact, there's one joke you told last night, I'm like, "Oh, you gotta give that one a rest for a little bit because I think you are tired of it." You know? So, but I won't say it now. But yeah. Right.

That's good. We should try them all out right now. Yeah! Let's do it! And everyone's really— all the writers are really mad at me. "You just— that thing went out!" "You just burned 80 jokes!" "You just burned 80 jokes!" Yeah, that can happen where I just start to feel— it's almost like my brain becomes overly familiar with it. And it's no— when something's no longer magical and fun to me, I can't fake it.

Well, yeah. Plus, with you, every night you've told different jokes, so you aren't used to going up and doing the same jokes and then finding— like trying to take 2 months to find a tag or something like that, you know? So for you, it's got to feel really, really repetitive.

But also, I love the joking around between the jokes so much. I know, I know, I know. That sometimes I'm— getting off on some jag, and people in a club are liking it. And I'm sure you guys are watching saying, "We're trying to try out these jokes, and you're going off on 10 minutes about your brother Neil, and you're getting laughs, and so you're getting drunk off of it.

Get to the jokes." But I do think that's what's so great about doing these little sets, is you're clicking into your stage persona, which is different from podcast and bursting into the writer's room.

And I don't know that it's that different from bursting in the writers' room. Bursting in the writers' room is sort of more of my MMA persona.

Yeah. Yeah. But it gets that very unique muscle going again. And because you can't do 10 minutes about Neil at the Oscars—

Oh, I'm going to.

That would be amazing.

Yeah. I could just see Timothée Chalamet and Brad Pitt streaming out. People who are up for an Oscar leaving early. "Hey, so we bought a lot of televisions." That's me. Yeah, yeah.

But you get it out of that part of your system now. But you also get that muscle ready for when you're in the big show. And then you had some really funny riffs after the jokes last night that we all thought would work with the jokes. You did too. Oh, good.

I'm really loving it. Yeah, I enjoy going to, as I said, some of the places I've been before. But there's this ecosystem in LA of all these cool little spots. Some are way out in Covina. Some are— I mean, really, I mean, who lives in Covina? Oh, hi, Eduardo. How are you? Shut up. Shut up. No, no, it's fine. I had my passport. I changed my currency. Oh, God. No, no. And that was one of my favorite clubs. It's fantastic. Chatterbox. Yeah. And Chatterbox in Covina. It's really fun because you get to hang out with the comics outside, and it's this— it's very communal. It's really fun. I like all that young energy. People are really nice, and each club is very different. Yeah. And there are places that— I'm guessing you've played all these places. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and do you do stand-up? You do stand-up a lot. I do.

I do. I try to do it, say, 4 nights a week. That's a lot. Yeah. But here in LA, it's like 1 spot a night. It's not great. Like in New York, you can do— when I go back to New York, I can do like at least 6 a night, you know, on a Friday or Saturday. And then, you know, 1 or 2 at least on a workday.

Yeah, here it's covering the distances. Yeah. It's literally— I mean, last night I was in— Atwater Village. TG's? Yeah, TG's. TG's. I was at TG's in Atwater Village. And so, that's a long haul to get to. But once you're there, it's, again, really fun. It was great.

It was great. I mean, it was packed, and it's great to have people so close to you. You know, just your surround sound of laughter. It's also fun to be a surprise.

Yeah.

Somehow the pressure's off.

Yeah, for sure. They don't— they're there, and then suddenly I show up, and you can always see them registering how I've aged when I first get up there. Oh, no, I don't think so.

I don't think so.

No, it's funny. No, it's just funny how people are like— if there are people that have only seen you on TV, and some of them have been seeing me on TV since I was— Right. Or clips are coming up or something like that. Clips are coming up, and they just saw me last night talking to, you know, Mary Lou Retton when I'm 30. Oh my God, you know what I mean? Yeah. And I'm—

but you're also a big presence, like you're a big person and you're like stumbling—

not— I don't stumble.

I'm sorry, I know, as soon as I said it I was like, you're not stumbling.

Well, maybe I was stumbling.

A giant. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know, it's— yeah, but it's been, it's been, uh, this is going really well. It's been a good time. Now, um, it's— what's really strange, this is all behind the scenes stuff, is we're sort of We're here at the office. This is where we do the podcast. This is where we do the production and editing for the HBO travel show. We have all different kind of meetings here, different projects. It's like our little Keebler elf tree. And what's going to happen in 2 weeks is we're going to move into the Dolby Theater. And that's going to be— I remember that last year being, "Oh, wow. This is real." When we've been living here and imagining things, and then you actually see the space, And then we get into, you know, we ordered some kooky prop and it shows up, and I'm like, "We wanted a stuffed mule." And we didn't. I'm just making this up.

But— Stuffed mule would be great. Yeah. Yeah. I want one now. Get a stuffed mule. I know. Yeah.

And then you're arguing with really serious, talented people about how the mule should be. Oh, my gosh. They pictured it differently. And how is it gonna fire a rocket out of its ear? You know, all that kind of craziness. That's the part where things really level up, which is exciting.

And I remember sitting at a rehearsal last year, and a lot of the celebrities had stand-ins, or they just use stand-ins. And a stand-in for Ariana Grande started singing, and I'm like, oh my God, she sounds just like Ariana Grande. And it was her. Which I didn't think— what? Yes, she was at rehearsal singing. It was like 25 of us in the audience.

I'm like, it was a stand-in. Hey, she's not bad.

Did you tell her, you know, maybe you should try?

That's really funny if all of the A-list celebrities— because they do have actors often who look nothing like them. Yeah. And they all get up, they don't know who the winner is, but they'll say, and the winner is Timothée Chalamet, and then a You know, a Black woman will get up on stage, but she'll give a real speech as Timothée Chalamet. And it's kind of cool. And I channel that sometimes because I did that once. I did that once. I think we talked about this, but I did it years ago at a VH1 Award when I was working on Saturday Night Live. And I heard, "Hey, they need..." seat filler stand-ins for this VH1 award. So I, you know, sat in the audience. We weren't working at the time. I think I got like, I don't know what I got, like $100 or something. But I went and I sat in the crowd and then they said, and the winner is David Bowie. And I got to stand up and thank everybody. And I'm going to do that. It was fun. That sounds fun. Yeah. Yeah. You're fired. Now you can go do it. So yeah, that's going to Things are going to get real.

What else do you remember from last year?

Well, what I remember now, what we were all talking about in the mono team, is that we want to make sure we have big corkboards up and back where we are so we can keep track of jokes a little bit better. I think we were just like flipping through cards and trying to—

It looked like we were doing an illicit 3-card money game last year. And you think, this is the Oscars. I know. And I'm performing for all these people around the world. And we're like, where's that joke? I don't know. And then it's attached to someone's ass because it has gum on it. Right. I mean, we'll have them.

Monoset, but the stuff like, you know, that you'll say later in the show, if something wins or something gets on a streak, I guess we just want to have—

It's worse than that. It's almost like coding. Yes, it is. You know, if this movie wins, we have this great joke. If that movie loses, we have this great joke. Yeah.

I remember us just like going, wait, we had something, and kind of panicking and then thought of it at the last second. But it'll be nice to have that a little bit more organized. And I think we hadn't gotten backstage until in our area until the show was starting in an hour. You know, so we didn't realize, oh, that would have been nice to have had we, had we thought that. So, you know, that's the— we'll be doing that better this year, I think.

Yeah, it is fun. I have to say, it's a lot of work and it's nerve-wracking, but it is fun. Oh, and then, you know, you just— and then you're always thinking, I hope it's a good room. Last year, I was— I mean, I think last year I was thinking, "How's it gonna be a good room?" And they were good. Yeah.

I mean, we had the fires, of course, you know? And then I feel like at this time last year, we were also awash in Sofia Carla Gascón drama. Oh, that's right. Yes. We have so many shows about her.

Amelia Perez. Yes. And, you know, we were just trying to figure out, again, is that scandal— Wait. What's the trajectory now? That's the big story today. But will it still be the big story in a week? Or how do we handle it? Is she going to be there? Is she going to be there? And what's a joke that doesn't go too far this way or that way? It's a lot of trying to navigate. Yeah. You know, let's pitch the sail correctly so it catches the wind in just the right way. And boy, we get into arguments. Yeah, for sure. Which is probably happening right now just a floor below us. Yeah. My ritual is I like to come, I like to kick the door open in a very dramatic way. And you guys all go, "Whoa!" And then I come in and I think I waste time mostly. You do. But— I do all my bits. You guys are patiently—

Yeah, we watched— What did we watch yesterday for like a half hour? Sarah Jessica Parker, the sequel. And Just Like That. Just Like That. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Someone was talking about there's something on that show, so we watched that. I said, "Let's call it up." And so we're watching that, and then we all— And I said at that moment, "If someone from the Academy comes by and we're all watching It Just Like That and Just Like That, they're gonna say we're screwed." But yeah, we will pull up things on the internet. I mean, it's a typical writer's room.

Yeah, you gotta waste time.

You have to waste time. I maintain that wasting time is somehow useful if we're all laughing, but I might just be trying to justify it.

I was going to say, I think you're just telling yourself that so you can waste everybody's time. And Just Like That. You guys watched that for half an hour? I think so. It was really enjoyable. Oh, the whole episode? Yes.

There was an episode specifically. It took place in a stand-up club.

Yeah. Of a comedy concert? Yeah. I think I know what you're talking about.

So it was just, you know, it's one of those things where We start chatting, and then the next thing you know, we're all watching television. And then I can always tell that, "Oh, I should have left 10 minutes ago." What I try and do is leave on a laugh. If I get a big laugh, I try and get out the door fast. But if someone stops me on my way out the door, then I think I have to get another laugh. It's terrible.

Well, it's the version of a writer's room, what you do on stage when you're messing around with the audience up front. It kind of gets that part of your brain going, but it's not the official jokes. I think it's a good reprieve for the brain, and then we all go back to— trying to deal with the setup that Sinners has 16 Oscar nominations.

Well, that's the other thing too, is we're always looking for premises, and sometimes we look too hard, and a writer will write all these jokes about, you know, "Did you realize that the first Best Cinematography award was handed out in 1947?" And then they write 5 jokes about that. And I think, I've lost the audience with the setup to that joke.

I still get made fun of because last year we were sweating and Isabella Rossellini was nominated. So one of my setups was that she had a bed and breakfast in New York. Oh, that's right.

That's right. Hey, did you know Isabella Rossellini is nominated for an Academy Award? Did you know she has a bed and breakfast in Rye, New York? Can you imagine?

Like, that would be your top 15 jokes at the Oscars.

And I look down and one of the Skarsgårds is just like, what the fuck? Yeah, grind New York. Yeah, yeah, you can, you can take the Taconic. Conan O'Brien loses audience. After a strong start, O'Brien went on a 30-minute discourse on how hard it must be to run a bed and breakfast in upstate New York.

But Rossellini's booked for the rest of the year.

It's great advertisement. Yeah, oh, she'd be thrilled.

Yeah. Does she really, though? She does. She does. She does. Yeah.

Is she there at the bed and breakfast?

I don't think so.

Are you going to re-pitch this joke this year? I will. And this year it'll be even funnier because it's like Isabella Rossellini not nominated this year. But did you know she has a bed and breakfast in upstate New York?

Well, I did find out that Jessie Buckley's great-grandmother was key in the Irish Civil War fighting for the Irish side. Oh, there you go.

Wow. Yes. Well, that's always— bringing up the Irish Civil War always gets them laughing. Great premise. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. How about the famine? You got any good Irish famine jokes? Of course, we won't have that problem tonight because we got plenty of food at the buffet. Well, I'm just saying, I'm allowed to do it. Oh, man. Oh, my God. Well, this is really fun, and I am honored and thrilled that you're helping me out again.

Thank you for having me back. You are the best. And thank you to Jimmy Kimmel for letting me have 8 weeks off. To come here too. Wow. 8 weeks.

I'm sorry, Jimmy. But yeah, and he's mad about it too. I can tell he's mad. No, you know what? And true thanks to him, because when you were on my staff writing jokes for me, I would not have let you go for 8 weeks for anything. If you were doing a blood transfusion, I would not let you go. But so thank you very much, Jimmy. And yeah. Let's get back downstairs. Let's get back downstairs.

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