Well, we’ve got some sad news and some amazing news. The sad news is that longtime Conan writer Brian Stack announced on Twitter that today is his final show with O’Brien after eighteen years. But don’t worry, because the amazing news is super amazing: Stack is leaving his post at Conan to move back to New York, where he’s accepted a writing staff position at Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Stack and Colbert both got their start at Second City in Chicago, so while it’s sad to see Stack move on from Conan, this news guarantees that the new Late Show will be full of the wonderful weirdness Stack’s been known for since he started at Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 1997. Here’s what he had to say last year when we asked him about his favorite kind of late night comedy:
My favorite kind of comedy on late night has always been the non-topical silly stuff where it’s not really at anybody’s expense. My least favorite kind of joke is a celebrity joke, because it tends to be very familiar or sometimes very mean, and if it’s not mean it doesn’t even work, usually. [laughs] But that’s just part of the landscape, and some people definitely have it coming. But my favorite kind of comedy on late night is at no one’s expense but the character that’s involved in the sketch where you’re not really going after anybody. There may be less emphasis on silly character bits than there used to be in general, but we still do it occasionally, and you’ll see some wonderful silliness on Colbert or Seth Meyers’s show that tells me it’ll never really go away completely; there’s still an appetite among comedy writers and fans to see some of that. And I’m very grateful for that, because that’s always been my favorite.
For more on Stack’s work, check out our interview with him about his many late night characters, and be sure to watch his final Conan appearance tonight on TBS.
