Conan O’Brien doesn’t believe that dark humor is a sign of arrested development.
In fact, the comedian embraced that whimsy to get through a tough chapter in his life. Nearly a year after his parents Dr. Thomas F. O’Brien and Ruth Reardon O’Brien died within three days of each other last December, Conan and Arrested Development alum Will Arnett joked how they blamed Jason Bateman for their sudden deaths.
“I hear that your dad passed away and I text you that day or the next day and I said, ‘Hey, listen. I’m sorry to hear about your dad’s passing, sending love from our family to yours,’” Arnett, 55, recalled in the Dec. 8 episode of O’Brien’s Needs a Friend podcast. “And you wrote, ‘Thank you, Will. To be honest, I blame Bateman.’”
He continued of their off-kilter conversation, “I wrote, ‘It’s not a terrible theory.’ And Conan texted me back, ‘He killed my dad.’”
The former late-night host, 62, then defended his grim rebuttal, noting his dad—who died at age 92—“ would have loved this” moment.
True to their years-long friendship, Arnett revealed that he later told his Arrested Development costar about the joke. And without missing a beat, Bateman, 58, also joined in.
“Bateman texts you and says, ‘Arnett tells me you’re on to me,’” Arnett continued. “Conan says, ‘Bateman, do yourself a favor. Turn yourself in.’”
The trio later revisited their banter after O’Brien’s mother died less than a week later at age 95
“[I texted,] ‘Um, Bateman is asking for your sister’s street address. Okay to give?’” the Bojack Horseman alum reflected of their conversation. “Like a day and a half later, you texted back, ‘Just seeing this now. Fantastic…tell Bateman to make it look like a robbery.’”
As for what inspired O’Brien to continue this lighthearted bit?
“You know what’s weird? I swear to God, this is how I grieve,” he explained. “It was so comforting for me to screw around with you guys at that moment. It just was. And if that makes me a madman, then so be it.”
And when the Conan O’Brien Must Go host isn’t finding solace through humor, he’s remembering his parents’ compassion for their loved ones.
“I think what my mother and father saw in each other was that they were kindred spirits,” Conan told the Boston Globe last December, weeks after his parents’ passing. “They were incredibly hard-working and disciplined.”
He added, “If anyone was unhappy around my mom in a 50-mile radius, she thought it was incumbent on her to fix the problem. It did not make her life easy, but it was very much a part of her Catholic drive — that ‘I have to be of service to people.’ And good God, she was.”