Conan O’Brien on his Cuban jaunt: ‘I felt really strongly about this’
Conan OBrien 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 OBrien jumped on the opportunity.
His resulting four-day, clandestine trip to Havana over Presidents Day weekend is documented on Wednesdays episode of Conan (11 p.m. on TBS) which finds the 6-foot-4, red-haired host in a country where the locals dont recognize him (and he has only an eighth-grade knowledge of Spanish with which to communicate).
I felt really strongly about this I dont want this to be a snarky American comedy take. I dont want this to be political, OBrien 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 whos 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 OBrien didnt 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.
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