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Conan O’Brien honored the late Norm Macdonald yesterday (April 11) while remembering the comedian’s bits about O.J. Simpson, who died of cancer Wednesday (April 10) at age 76. O’Brien appeared on CNN to promote his series Conan O’Brien Must Go, during which host Jake Tapper asked him about Simpson’s death.
Tapper noted that Simpson’s murder charges in the deaths of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman provided “a lot of fodder” for O’Brien and his fellow late night comics.
While O’Brien said that he never makes jokes about people right after they die, he did mention Macdonald’s material on Simpson, calling the late Saturday Night Live cast member “one of the great comedians of all time” and describing his Simpson jokes as some of “the most brilliant comedy of anybody during that whole period.”
When Tapper pointed out that Macdonald had lost his job at SNL for “making fun of O.J. Simpson for being the real killer,” O’Brien replied that Don Ohlmeyer, the head of NBC at the time, had been “tight with O.J.”
Macdonald — who died in 2021 at age 61 — worked at SNL as Weekend Update anchor from 1994 to 1997, when he was ousted from the show after making frequent jabs at Simpson. During his tenure at the Weekend Update desk, he regularly mocked Simpson.
A 1998 New York Times report states that “Mr. Ohlmeyer objected to [Macdonald’s] often vicious barbs about O. J. Simpson,” but also notes that Ohlmeyer “said that had nothing to do with the decision to remove Mr. Macdonald.”
On CNN Thursday, O’Brien said Macdonald’s dismissal from SNL was “water under the bridge,” before shifting his focus more broadly to Simpson’s infamous murder trial.
“That was a huge moment in the history of this country. It was a massive— there have been many time in this country where we’ve need to kind of stop and reassess where we are in our racial history, and where are we, what progress have we made? That was one of those moments and it was such a watershed moment,” he said.
O.J. Simpson, the sports star turned movie star turned accused murder turned convicted felon, has died at the age of 76. From the Decider archives:
“He is gone now,” O’Brien added, and declined when Tapper wondered if he’d crack a joke at Simpson’s expense.
“I never make a joke about someone the day they pass,” he replied, to which Tapper quipped, “OK, I’ll hit you up tomorrow.”
