If the tables had been turned during their late-night dispute, Conan O’Brien says he knows what he would — and wouldn’t — have done to Jay Leno.
“He went and took that show back and I think in a similar situation, if roles had been reversed, I know — I know me, I wouldn’t have done that,” O’Brien, 47, says in his first post-“Tonight Show” interview, scheduled to air on “60 Minutes” Sunday.
In the interview, the new TBS late-night host tells Steve Kroft that he would not have “surrendered ‘The Tonight Show’ and handed it over to somebody publicly and wished them well — and then … six months later… But that’s me, you know.”
Adding that “Everyone’s got their own, you know, way of doing things,” O’Brien, who’s been on the road for his 30-date North American tour, says if he had been in Leno’s shoes, he would’ve “done something else, go someplace else.”
Leaving NBC, he says, was like severing a “toxic” relationship, especially one he didn’t see having a future with.
And though he may have negotiated with the network, O’Brien says he “started to feel that I’m not sure these people even really want me here.”
