Only a couple months after O’Brien became host of The Tonight Show, NBC announced it was giving the position back to Jay Leno. O’Brien cried when he told his staff the news and said he had no idea what he was doing next.
After a lot of time hanging out at his house, he decided to go on a nationwide comedy tour.
“I went through some stuff. And I got very depressed at times. It was like a marriage breaking up suddenly, violently, quickly. And I was just trying to figure out what happened. When we started putting this tour together, I started to feel better almost immediately. And then there is almost no better antidote to what I’ve just been through than to do this every night,” he told CBS.
The tour was super popular, and less than one year later, O’Brien became the host of Conan on TBS.