Sam Amico
Prior to becoming a late-night talk show host, Conan O’Brien was a comedy writer. Before that, he was a high school and college student, just a regular guy. And regular guys can get jumped.
So can celebrities, of course, but they usually have security. Regular guys don’t.
Anyway, O’Brien recalled the time when he was a regular guy. Simply walking the streets of Boston, when he did indeed get jumped.
“I got my nose smashed in. I got jumped by a bunch of people,” he said on his Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend Podcast. He continued with guest Jon Bernthal. “… It was after I graduated high school and before I started college. I wandered into sort of a dicey neighborhood in Boston, and I realized I was in a neighborhood I wasn’t supposed to be in,”
Making matters worse was that O’Brien was sporting an Irish flag. And he was in n Italian neighborhood. Of course, anyone who has taken one look at O’Brien knows he doesn’t need a flag to show he’s not Italian. The red hair, pasty white skin and freckles tend to be a dead giveaway.
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It is not known if O’Brien broke out the line, “I’m a writer, not a fighter,” prior to being jumped. It is known that he had a fairly awkward conversation with police afterward.
“The police were asking me, ‘Well, what did you do when you realized you were about to get hit?'” O’Brien recalled. “‘What stance did you go into?’ And I went, ‘Stance?’”
O’Brien, of course, got the last laugh, as he went on to fortune and fame and being adored by thousands upon thousands of strangers.
The guys from the old Italian neighborhood? Yeah, they’re probably sitting around telling stories of how they beat up O’Brien. And until now, no one probably believed them.
