Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Conan O'Brien needs a fan. Want to talk to Conan? Visit teamcoco.com slash callconan. Okay, let's get started.
All right. This is a special thing we're doing lately. Normally, I would talk to a fan somewhere around the globe during this segment. But these are different because I have my amazing Oscar writing team downstairs. These are writers that are... They're the best. They really are the best. And I... We hang out with them all the time.
We try and think of fun things we could do at the Oscars this year. And since I have this room downstairs, I'm pilfering them one by one to talk to them and just find out more about them because they're very funny, very talented. And today it is Skylar Higley's turn. Hmm. Skylar, let's hear your origin story. Where are you from?
Can I first say, this is the most respectful I've ever heard you speak to me.
Thank you, thank you. That's what I said last time.
The Colin O'Brien, yeah, I love these writers. Yes. In 20 minutes, it's going to be different.
Let me say something. Well, we should also say that anytime I enter the room where you guys are, the kind of dungeon, No, it's a nice room, but I can't just walk into the room. I kick the door open like it's a drug raid. And then I come in and I start doing cartoonish, over-the-top insults. I say, you guys are the best writers I've ever seen. This is what I was waiting for just now.
But then I realize I don't have my glasses. Oh, okay. So I go to put my glasses on and then I look at them again and I show cartoonish disappointment in what I'm seeing. And it's all theater. Yep. But I think, I know I have a good time. We have a great time. And then we wait for you to leave and then we work. Yeah, then you get back to work.
Oh, I can really tell when they're like, okay, he's done like 35 different riffs. We've got to get him out of here so we can get back to work.
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Chapter 2: What is Skyler Higley's origin story?
I don't tire myself out. Skylar, yes, tell me, I remember when you first started working for me, which would be, what year did you start working for me? 2020. Okay, 2020.
Do you remember in the middle of the pandemic and there was the BLM? Remember when we cared about BLM for a second?
Mm-hmm.
And it was right in that time. I was like going really crazy because it was Chicago and the police and everything were there. And then it was like I was having like just a lot of anxiety around that time. And then people called me up and were like, hey, do you want to meet with Conan's people? And just for like a meeting. And I was like, yeah, I guess. And then it was like, oh, yeah.
Do you want to write for a Conan O'Brien show? And I was like. Well, I think the world's ending. So sure. Like there was a virus. There was like an uprising of social, you know, it was like, fine. Yeah.
This will be the last thing I do. But what I remember most is that because everything, you still, you didn't move because it's the height of, you know, not just COVID, but so much insanity. So you would zoom in from your apartment. Yeah. And your apartment was in Chicago. And I remember the angle was... I don't know how much of it was the angle and how much of it was the apartment.
It wasn't the angle. I lived underground.
Okay. It looked like, so Skyler would, you know, okay, here's Skyler. And you would appear on the screen and it looked like your ceiling was one inch above your head. Yeah. And it looked like you were being held captive.
It looks like, I mean, in being John Malkovich, when he has to go into John Malkovich's head and the ceiling's really low, that's kind of where I live. Yeah, yeah. But it's cheap rent when you live underground. Let me tell you something.
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Chapter 3: How did Skyler Higley get into comedy?
And then a year went by and then it was in the middle of COVID and the onion. And I think that there was just like, you needed to hire again, but there were packets left over from last year.
And that's how it happened. So you can tell when you look at a packet, it's Mike Sweeney will say, oh, you got to see this packet. And you can tell almost right away in a packet when someone knows who they are and is kind of confident about their comedic voice. Oh, sure. And I think that's always what sets it apart.
Sometimes I can read a packet and I could say, yeah, there's not one idea here that we could use right now. You weren't going to use that blackface one?
No.
We did. Yeah. No one paid attention. No. Sometimes you don't even think, oh, okay, here it is. Idea number seven, we could use that. And idea number nine, we could use that. That could go into the show. So hire this person. Sometimes you'll read a whole packet and think, yeah, not one of these quite has my voice, but this is a really funny person. And that is the harder thing to find. Right.
You know what I mean? And then a funny person will come in and- they'll take the temperature of what's going on here, and very quickly we'll start just saying, oh yeah, do this, do that, do this, do that, and maybe broaden our horizons about what could be funny, because we don't always know everything. And so that's the idea. It works.
That's what I find beautiful about comedy, though, too, is that you and I are, by all metrics, very different people, I think we can say that. I don't know what you're talking about. I think we could say that.
I think you're insane.
I would say that like you can be from two very different worlds, but sort of the idiosyncrasies of, I think, comedy for comedy's sake and whatever this idea of like if there is a true like north in comedy of just like funny, that is like kind of all the same a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.
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