Conan O’Brien ended his Conan talk show back in 2021 and, while he’s been offering fans his Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast since 2018, he’s back on TV with the all-new Max series Conan O’Brien Must Go. While O’Brien has pivoted from one format to the next since his tenure in late night began back in 1993, he has a habit of bringing his collaborators along with him for every new adventure, which includes producer Jason Chillemi. Having worked together for nearly 30 years, Chillemi played a key component in helping the comedian develop Conan O’Brien Must Go, with all four episodes of the new series now streaming on Max.
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Conan O’Brien Must Go features the Emmy-winning host visiting new friends he’s met through his podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Fan, where he dives deep with listeners from around the world. Making stops in Norway, Thailand, Argentina, and Ireland, O’Brien surprises some of his most memorable fans while also taking in local culture, cuisine, and sights.
ComicBook.com caught up with Chillemi to discuss the development of the series, collaborating with O’Brien, and what else could be in store for the concept.
ComicBook.com: For anyone who might not be familiar with what you do and what your role is, when it came to this series, what were your responsibilities? How were you involved in bringing this project to life?
Jason Chillemi: Well, I’ve been with Conan for almost 28 years. I started as an intern back at The Late Night Show, and I’ve just worked my way up. When I got hired from being an intern, I was in charge of all the location shoots, so I’ve always been producing those, anything outside of the studio. Just be it out on the sidewalk, it could be in the hallway outside the studio, it could be in Ireland, when he used to go back in those days.
Then when the idea to do Cuba came about for the Conan Without Borders show, I remember the head writer saying, “I think we should try to go to Cuba.” My basic job was to find a way in, in the beginning, because I had never done travel shows before. I got in touch with a local producer in Cuba and just began that liaison. And then our ideas came up, and he said, “All right, we can do it here, and this here.” And, “Do we need visas? Do we need permits?”
I basically facilitate between me and the local producer getting into the country, making sure we have our crew, a local crew, our transportation, our hotels, and make sure everything goes smoothly in said country. That just continued through all of Conan Without Borders. Then, finally, when this idea came out, we started talking to fans in the podcast, which I also help out on, because we film those now.
And, “Oh, we found Jarle. This is a great fan from Norway. Norway would be a fun place to go to. Let’s see if we can get more fans there.” Found Kai. “All right, Norway, let’s go.” And then I immediately just started looking for help in Norway. I tend to be really lucky. I’ve lucked out every single time. I mean, I go through a process, but I get a good feeling from someone. I’m like, “This is the person that can help us.”
As a listener of the podcast, both the celebrity interviews and the fan interactions, I feel like there’s a good chunk where Conan ends by saying, “Hey, if I’m ever here, I’ll reach out to you,” and never really thought he’ll actually do that. Now, here he’s doing that. How much of it was, “We want to do a travel show and we need a premise, or we need a formula for it,” versus Conan really did have a desire of, “I want to go out into the world,”? And, was it specifically these fans or was it destinations were chosen and then the fans were reverse-engineered?
I think it’s a little bit of both. He’s the best. You get him outside the studio, I don’t know anyone better than him. The traveling, he loves, especially doing that in different countries. But it’s funny you say that, about noticing the end of the podcast, because a bunch of us noticed the same thing. Like, “Oh, I’m going to come,” and it could be just in Connecticut. He was saying it to everybody.
Then I remember having lunch with him one day and we were talking about what’s next. And he’s like, “I want to get back out there. I want to do travel.” He mentioned the same thing, he’s like, “This is the perfect way. We have these guys. I’m making these relationships. Then if we add that piece and we just surprise them, that’s our new way in.”
And it ended up being that, it all came from that. The podcasts created this whole thing and the desire to travel.
Given how long you’ve been working with Conan, how he had his Late Night Show, his TBS show, all the stuff he’s done online, and now the podcast, he is both figuratively and, based on his height, literally is a large figure. What do you think would surprise people most to learn about him? I know it doesn’t seem like there’s much of a difference between Conan when he’s on and when he’s “off,” because I don’t think I’ve ever seen him “off,” so what do you think would surprise audiences to learn?
I think he’s funnier off-camera. Like we’re out all day filming in Argentina, and then we’re back at the hotel and we’re going to go get food, and it’s like 10 of us in the crew and we’re eating, and he’s putting a show on for everybody at the table. Waiter comes over, no matter who’s involved, he’s even funnier. Part of me wants to just film that stuff.
With these four episodes, you go to Norway, you go to Thailand, you’re going to these relatively limited locations with these episodes. So what was that selection process like? Was it a logistical matter? Was it based on the fans? How were these four countries specifically determined?
Well, we knew we were going to Norway and Thailand pretty early. We had a nice group, a bunch of fans, and we were starting up in March. The idea was, “If we want to see snow in any of these episodes, we should try to go to Norway as soon as possible.” Just on the off chance that, I mean, we’re not going to see it the later we go.
We got lucky with Norway. The one thing we learned in Norway is our fans, and again, you can’t control it, but the two fans we had were not near each other. So it ended up, there was a lot more inter-country travel, which is awesome. We got to see different parts of the country, but it’s also, load up the cameras, load up the gear, and it’s a lot of downtime and people on planes and vans. So that part’s not ideal.
We learned a little bit more going forward in Thailand. I mean, again, it depends where the fans are. But in Thailand, we stayed in Bangkok. All of our fans were in Bangkok. We know there’s more to see in Thailand, but it becomes too much. And, also in Thailand, the weather was record heat, so there’s things that are thrown at you. He did kickboxing in 108-degree weather. It was insane.
Then the strike happened, so we didn’t know. The writers’ strike, we were down for a long time, but we knew we had some fans. We knew there was one Argentina fan and we knew we had Ireland fans. There were Ireland fans he had talked to. We came back once the strike ended and we just went right back into it. It was around Thanksgiving, so we’re working about, “He’s going to be here for this.” Scheduling, in general, is hard. Especially that last end of the year with the holidays and everything.
It’s funny, though, that you mentioned Bangkok and the record heat, I just went there two weeks ago.
You went there? We were there in April. We literally were there. We left the day after his birthday, last year.
Knowing that this show was coming out, I demanded to see it, to demand, “I have to make sure if there’s something I’m missing,” and finding out that I went to two of the same temples that he went to. I went to Chinatown, also.
Oh, that’s awesome. Did you go to the floating market?
I didn’t get a chance to go to the floating market, unfortunately. But, I guess, where I’m going with that one, is understanding the miserable heat of Bangkok in April, was the fact that he did any physical activity. But also understanding why he had neckerchiefs around him to capture the sweat and stuff. I fully appreciated that.
We loved working. And I just remember coming back each day and walking into the hotel lobby where the air was pumping. It was amazing. It was the best feeling in the world. We all just sat in the lobby. It was just like no one went to their rooms.
Where I’m going with this is that, you have roughly 45-minute episodes, and he hits things relatively efficiently where we get to see a handful of locations in each city that he travels to. So in that regard, are there a lot of deleted scenes? Is there a lot of footage that didn’t make it in or was it, every place you’re hitting in person is going to end up in the show?
No, there’s some things that didn’t make it. I mean, we work hard. We’re out there at each place, we’re in there for like nine days and we hit the ground running and he shoots a lot each time. Things that we shot that you saw in the episode were probably way longer.
But as far as actual segments that didn’t make it, some man-in-the-street stuff, obviously every person we talked to didn’t make it. Segment-wise was pretty good. It may not have been as long as we thought it was going to be, but we got really lucky. We had some great fans, great people he talked to. But you’re right, we shot hours and hours and hours and hours of footage, but we like to edit it down and make it the perfect thing to see.
There was the heat in Bangkok, but when you look back at making this first season, were there any other major challenges that you had to overcome? Whether it was language barriers, cultural barriers, logistic nightmares, were there major, unexpected challenges that you faced bringing these episodes to life?
Not really. In Argentina, it was around the same time as their election, so our entire crew, I remember election day in Argentina, I think it was on a Sunday. They couldn’t work that day because the crew had to vote. It was very important that everyone had to vote, so if we were going to work, it had to be a couple of hours in the morning and then we were done for the day, because that was such an important thing to them, to vote in this major election for them, which didn’t go their way. I remember just emotions changing from our local crew as it continued on.
But besides that, no. We have such great, local help. Our team that goes is amazing. We’re very prepared. The help there on the ground is great. I can throw curveballs and they’re like, “Yes, all right, we’ll go here, we’ll go there.” We’ve been lucky. I don’t know if it’s just the comedy gods or it’s just, we’ve been doing it for a long time, but we roll with the punches. If something that happens that may not be what we planned, “Let’s go that way, then.”
Conan Without Borders started almost 10 years ago, now, and then in that time, we’ve had strikes and the pandemic. So those things caused a few complications with this. Do you think there’s any hope of a Season 2 taking shape within the next couple years or do you think this is more, “All right, we did it, we experimented, and now let’s move on to the next thing,”?
No, no. I hope so. There’s many more countries to see. There’s many more fans to see. I would love to keep going. We’ll see. I don’t know. There’s no other plans right now. Right now he’s immediately back into podcast mode. He is talking to fans, he’s talking to people. So, fingers crossed.
All four episodes of Conan O’Brien Must Go are now streaming on Max.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter.
