Would you believe: Artie Lange predicted Conan O’Brien’s future on 2008 “Late Night” appearance!

Strange but true in so many ways, when Artie Lange appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in 2008 to promote his book, Lange told Conan that he was making a big mistake in agreeing to move to Los Angeles and taking over the Tonight Show, suggested he let the "bobblehead" Jay Leno continue to host it instead, and take NBC's $40 million penalty fee. Conan denied it then. "No. I don't think so," O'Brien told Lange. "Forty million dollars not to work? Sweet. I've got to look into that." Roll the clip!

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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4 thoughts on “Would you believe: Artie Lange predicted Conan O’Brien’s future on 2008 “Late Night” appearance!

  1. Artie is just repeating what Howard has been talking about for a while, that The Tonight Show was going to be a bad move for Conan. Howard was on Conan, I believe in 2006, saying how Jay wouldnt give it up.

  2. The more remarkable part of the clip, as I described above, was how Conan first denied a big payout penalty, then joked about looking into it.
    Also, one of my Twitter followers suggested that Norm MacDonald also had ribbed Conan about Leno. His appearance from February 2009 was about Leno “outfoxing” Conan by getting back on TV at 10 p.m. Embedding is disabled, but you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj_N-0xdNEM

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