Conan O’Brien: 'The Simpsons saved my life'

Conan O’Brien credits The Simpsons for "saving [his] life" after leaving Saturday Night Live amid being in a "bad place".

The 63-year-old star quit the NBC sketch comedy show in 1991 after three years as a writer because he suffered burnout, and joined Fox's long-running animated sitcom as a writer and producer that year, notably penning the 1993 fan-favourite episode, Marge vs. the Monorail.

Speaking to The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening, 72, on a recent episode of the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, the comedian said: "You are a big part of my life changing in this amazing way.

"My origin story for people that don’t know is I was working on Saturday Night Live. I was in a funk. I loved that job, and I loved everyone there, but I thought, 'I need to go. I’m just in a bad place in my life.'"

Conan continued: "So I walked away from SNL with no job, and two of your writers, I think it was [Mike] Reiss and [Al] Jean, heard that Conan O’Brien might be loose and available.

"So the next thing I knew, I was submitting, I don’t know, some of the sketches I had written on SNL, and then I was told, 'You’ve got a job on The Simpsons, and you need to be here in four days.'

He recalled being surrounded by "just such a fantastic, legendary writer room" during his time on the show.

Conan added: "I was so intimidated when I showed up. I had never written that form before.

"I had only written sketch, and suddenly they’re saying, 'This has to happen in this act, but then in that act...' I’m like, 'What are you talking about?'

The entertainer quit The Simpsons in 1993, going on to become a talk show host on NBC, with Late Night with Conan O’Brien, which ended in 2009 after 16 years, then The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien from 2009 until 2010, followed by TBS' Conan from 2010 until 2021.

And 33 years after his time on The Simpsons, Conan was delighted to finally have the opportunity to formally “thank” Matt for letting him work on the series.

He said: "God, do I thank you. I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t gone there."

Matt quipped: "I want you to know that your old office has been preserved. It is used for storage."