O’Brien’s agent, Ari Emanuel - brother of Rahm, and the inspiration for Jeremy Piven’s Ari Gold character on “Entourage” - was pressuring NBC to give O’Brien “The Tonight Show” back in 2003.Ĭarter notes how O’Brien’s team always held Leno in contempt for failing to “innovate,” and displayed an arrogant incredulity at how NBC wouldn’t just hand the show to O’Brien, despite Leno having been the ratings leader for almost a decade. Veteran journalist Bill Carter details the vicious recent battle over “The Tonight Show,” showing how Leno was hardly the devious schemer he was made out to be, and how O’Brien was not always the angelic innocent the media portrayed, as he and his team aggressively pursued the show at every opportunity. Whenever they wanted to discuss the situation around the office, instead of saying “The Tonight Show,” they would call it “Anderson Cooper 360.”
Jay Leno, the current “Tonight Show” host, didn’t know that O’Brien had been handed his job. On a cold February night in 2004, Conan O’Brien and his executive producer brought their publicist to Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel to share the exciting news that O’Brien had been offered a new job - host of the late night institution, “The Tonight Show.”īut there was one problem.
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