Conan O’Brien is trending right now because the 2026 Oscars start in a matter of hours and he is about to host Hollywood’s biggest night for the second year in a row.
The ceremony begins tonight at 7 p.m. ET on ABC and Hulu. Here is everything O’Brien has said in the past week about what he has planned, and why this might be the best-prepared Oscars host in years.
Conan Has Been Testing Jokes In Secret Comedy Club Appearances For Three Months
O’Brien did not sit in a writers room and hope for the best. For the past three months, he has been showing up unannounced at comedy clubs across Southern California, far-flung venues where nobody would expect him.
O’Brien admitted to performing chunks of his Oscars monologue in front of real audiences to see what lands and what dies.
“Probably one of the best things to do, which I’ve been doing now for about two months, is I go to clubs and I show up as a surprise and I go to far-flung clubs,” he told the New Heights podcast hosted by Jason and Travis Kelce.
“You go out and you try jokes out, and over time you get a sense of — these ones seem to consistently do well, this one doesn’t seem to land right.”
There was one complication. He is not the only award show host doing this. Head writer Mike Sweeney described arriving at a club only to discover another awards host had just finished workshopping their own monologue.
The overlap created a quiet comedy arms race across Los Angeles clubs for weeks.
The bigger risk was someone recording the material and posting it online. O’Brien addressed it directly each time.
“I would say, ‘Please don’t record this,'” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “And they wouldn’t. Which was really nice, because all someone would have to do is put that online, and you’re completely screwed.”
He described one joke he has been protecting with particular care. He won’t say what it is.
“It’s like this little baby bird that I’m cradling,” he said, cupping his hands as if protecting words from his own edits. It has survived three months of rewrites. Whether it makes the final cut tonight is still not confirmed.
The Johnny Carson Inspiration And The Iran War Parallel
O’Brien has a specific model for how a great Oscars host handles a world in crisis. He grew up watching Johnny Carson host the Academy Awards, and one moment in particular has stayed with him his entire career.
Carson was hosting during the Iran hostage crisis in 1981. The country was in the middle of an agonizing international standoff and the Oscars were proceeding nonetheless, with everyone in the room aware of exactly how strange that felt.
Carson walked out and said: “Well, it is Day 444 of these Oscars.”
“It was such a funny topical joke that touched on something everyone was thinking about and at the same time got a big laugh and was unifying,” O’Brien told Gold Derby. “And that was meaningful to me.”
He added a personal dimension to the memory.
“He used to watch Johnny Carson,” O’Brien explained of his father. “My dad loved comedy, so I would sometimes get to stay up and watch Johnny with him. And I very clearly remember Johnny Carson hosting the Oscars and watching my father watch Johnny, and watching my father laugh, and thinking, ‘Wow, that’s cool, that man is making my father laugh.’ And so to think that maybe now I’m part of that equation somehow, and in a cosmic way it links me to my dad, is pretty amazing.”
The reason this matters tonight is that the Oscars are once again happening against a geopolitical backdrop that cannot be ignored. The United States and Israel are engaged in ongoing military action against Iran.
O’Brien addressed this tension directly at his Wednesday press conference. “My job is to always try and hit this very, very thin line between entertaining people and also acknowledging some of the realities,” he said.
He described the task as “always a running battle up until the moment the Oscars begins” and said his team would be making surgical adjustments to the material right up to showtime.
What Has Conan Teased For Tonight?
O’Brien has not revealed his jokes, he has been careful about that, but he has dropped specific hints about what the night will include.
He will sing and dance. “I think America demands to see Conan’s body in motion,” he told ABC7. “You just have to tune in.”
He is hoping Timothée Chalamet wears something brightly colored again. Last year, O’Brien’s best-received early joke was about Chalamet’s butter-yellow tuxedo.
“Love that suit. You will not get hit on your bike tonight” — a reference to a much-mocked incident in which Chalamet was fined for riding a rideshare bike to a London premiere.
“And everyone laughed,” O’Brien recalled. “I remember at that moment thinking, ‘OK, that’s all this is. Finding those little moments and stringing them together.’ I’m praying Timmy Chalamet wears something really brightly colored.”
He is also thinking beyond laughs. “It’s not just about being funny moment to moment,” he told Gold Derby.
“It’s also about acknowledging what this is about in a larger sense. And as the host, I’m sort of the human avatar. I’m the entryway for the person watching at home — who the person watching at home can relate to.”
Why Conan Is The Right Host For This Moment
O’Brien’s first Oscars in 2025 generated a five-year ratings high for the ceremony. That number reflects something real about his particular value as a host. He is not a current late night host, he left Conan in 2021, but he is arguably more culturally present now than at any point in his career.
His podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend landed him a $150 million deal at SiriusXM. His Emmy-winning travel show has introduced him to audiences who never watched late night television.
His promotional approach for this year’s ceremony, skipping traditional TV press and going directly to New Heights, Michelle Obama’s IMO podcast, Chicken Shop Date, and The New Yorker’s podcast, reflects a deep understanding of where audiences actually live now.
At his press conference this week he was asked about the experience of hosting the Oscars relative to everything else he has done.
He reached for a car metaphor. “Working on the Oscars is like driving a Maserati. So responsive, so fast, fuel-efficient,” he said. “I’m just trying to make a pitch to Maserati that I don’t have one. I think it’s an amazing car and I’d like to have one in lime green, if that’s possible, and I’d like it shipped to my home.”
On the films themselves he was genuine. “I got to watch the whole year in film rollout in real time,” he said of signing on early to host again.
“It is a spectacular year for movies. All the movies are so different. They’re all so vibrant. There’s so many different voices. So much artistry went into them. And I think it’s one of the best film years that we’ve had in memory.”
O’Brien is 62 years old, has been writing comedy for over thirty years, and has spent three months workshopping the specific jokes he will tell tonight.
“I’m obsessive,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “I want to turn it off, but I can’t. That’s not always a fun ride, but that’s the deal.”
The Oscars start tonight at 7 p.m. ET on ABC and Hulu
