{"id":326810,"date":"2026-03-13T00:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T00:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/326810\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T00:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T00:36:10","slug":"conan-obrien-has-incredible-empathy-for-immigrants-after-trip-to-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/326810\/","title":{"rendered":"Conan O&#8217;Brien Has &#8220;Incredible Empathy&#8221; for Immigrants After Trip to Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday ahead of his gig hosting the Academy Awards, <a href=\"https:\/\/consequence.net\/tag\/conan-obrien\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Conan O\u2019Brien<\/a> shared how a recent trip to Ireland and the story of his great-grandfather gave him a new perspective on immigration.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI went back to Ireland and I [saw] a great genealogist who said, \u2018I found where your great-grandfather\u2019s home was,\u2019 O\u2019Brien recalled. \u201cThe home is gone, but he found the little spot where he lived, near the Galbally Mountains. He said, \u2018I\u2019ll go there and show it to you,\u2019 and I said, \u2018We\u2019ll do it on camera.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>O\u2019Brien film the visit as part of his HBO Max travel series Conan O\u2019Brien Must Go. \u201cI was expecting to have these jokes loaded up; we had props and funny things we were going to do,\u201d he explained. \u201cBut I got there, and I did not expect this because I\u2019m not someone who wears my emotions on my sleeve, but I got emotional. It was very powerful.<\/p>\n<p>Related Video<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis was a very small plot of land,\u201d O\u2019Brien continued. \u201cHe was a tenant farmer, so it wasn\u2019t his. He didn\u2019t have money, and he needed to move on because it wasn\u2019t working; probably not enough to eat, couldn\u2019t sustain. So, he left and went to America, and here I am a couple of generations later.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Reflecting on the trip, O\u2019Brien remarked: \u201cWhat\u2019s amazing to me is when you have that experience and you stand there, I have incredible empathy for people who have immigrated to another country. It takes an entire lifetime to go to a country where, often, people don\u2019t speak the language. They have to spend their entire lives just getting things started for the next generation; it\u2019s a whole lifetime that you\u2019re feeding into this process.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was just thinking about this guy, whom I\u2019ll never meet, who had to do that,\u201d he added. \u201cI think I was overcome by the fact that there\u2019s a lot of sadness in that story, and in a lot of these stories. People leave not because they think, \u2018Hey, I just want to go have fun in America.\u2019 They leave because they have to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday ahead of his gig hosting the Academy Awards, Conan&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-326810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}