“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’.
“And it really saved my life.”
He recalled being surrounded by “just such a fantastic, legendary writers’ room” during his time on the show.
O’Brien added: “I was so intimidated when I showed up. I had never written that form before.
“I had only written sketches 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?’
“It was a magical part of my life.”
The entertainer left The Simpsons in 1993 and went on to become a talk show host on NBC, with the Late Night with Conan O’Brien, which ended in 2009 after 16 years, followed by The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien from 2009 until 2010 and TBS’ Conan from 2010 until 2021.
And 33 years after his time on The Simpsons, O’Brien was delighted to finally have the opportunity to formally “thank” Groening 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.”
Groening quipped: “I want you to know that your old office has been preserved. It is used for storage.”
– BANG Showbiz