Conan O’Brien says watching ‘Hacks’ tackle late night TV gives him PTSD

Hacks is bringing TV veteran Conan O’Brien back to the trenches of his late night era.

In the latest episode of SiriusXM’s Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, the comedian and former late night host welcomed Hacks co-creator Paul W. Downs to chat about stand-up diva Deborah Vance’s (Jean Smart) big return to the late night circuit on the latest season of the HBO hit. O’Brien admitted that he’s experienced PTSD from watching the storyline unfold given his own history with late night.

“The show delves into late night this year, which was fascinating for me because there are things that you cite in the show that I’ve lived through,” O’Brien said. “And so I’ll get a little bit of PTSD from watching it, but it’s also really funny and apt. Like getting notes or, ‘This is what we heard about,’ you know, in the early days of my late night show research, and what are people saying and what do we need to try and adjust?”

“It was all stuff that just felt impossible,” he recounted of that period. “I’m kind of reliving it a little bit through your show, but you guys are doing a very good job of hitting a bunch of the nerves, which means you’re getting it right.”

O’Brien made his late night debut with Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 1993, taking over David Letterman‘s post and holding it down until 2009. That led to his infamous and short-lived tenure on The Tonight Show, which was followed by the 2010 cult favorite Conan on TBS, which ran for 11 seasons up until 2021.

Downs called writing a show about making a late night show “so stressful and hard,” noting, “I didn’t do five shows a week and have to do monologue jokes. And yet, viscerally, I felt the pressure of that.”

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Naturally, O’Brien has been namedropped in the show. Jimmy Kimmel, playing a version of himself, confronts Smart’s Deborah Vance in episode 5, “Clickable Face,” after she poaches Kristen Bell to be a guest on her show. An angry Kimmel informs her that he’s been entitled to “custody” of Bell since “Conan died.”

O’Brien told Downs that the scene “killed” him. “It’s a very funny joke and nonsensical,” he said. “What I loved about it is that it’s said [and] no one questions it,” he said, “It’s just like . . . I get her after Conan died. And it’s just like, that’s understood. And I’m laughing because no one questions it.” (Don’t fret: co-creator Lucia Aniello has already assured that O’Brien is not dead in the Hacks universe, leaving the door open for a potential future cameo.)

“We definitely want you on the show,” Downs reiterated to O’Brien on the podcast, also sharing that Kimmel improvised the line in question. “I did not write that line.”

“Let me write that down,” O’Brien quipped. “He will be repaid in kind.”

Watch the rest of Downs’ conversation with O’Brien above.