Conan O'Brien's Oscar Opening Was Originally Much Greener

Conan O’Brien opened the Emmys in 2006 with a tour of the nominated shows. The host, clad in a tux, found himself transported across TV universes. He rode the plane from Lost, got on the phone with Jack Bauer, was examined by House and looked at the camera in The Office. It’s pretty fantastic and holds up well, especially since it feels like a nearly twenty-year-old time capsule. I expected Conan to do the same this year. But, instead of spoofing all the movies, he spoofed one.

Conan’s duties at the 2025 Oscars kicked off with a parody of The Substance, which got snubbed across the board in this writer’s opinion (I didn’t expect it to win Best Picture but I’m still mad it didn’t). It played out like a scene in the city, with Demi Moore’s back ripping open so her younger self could emerge, but instead of Margaret Qualley, Conan O’Brien’s shocking red hair popped out. It was weird and gross, and while not what I expected it opened the show with a promise that Conan would be Conan. It’s how the below video starts, so don’t be intimidated by the runtime.

While Conan only parodied one movie to start the show, it turns out my assumptions were not far off. Conan recently sat down with his longtime head writer Mike Sweeney on Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend to talk about his night hosting. It’s a fantastic episode where the pair talk about what went into getting ready for the show and how they had to prepare for it while finishing Conan’s travel show (which just got preemptively renewed for a third season). You should listen to the whole thing, but for now we’ll focus on Conan’s original plans for the opening which he revealed during his talk.

“It was the idea that, ‘Oh, Conan’s now going to goof on all the movies,’” O’Brien noted to Sweeney. “It starts with me and I’m in Wicked and I’m all green, finishing ‘Defying Gravity’ or one of those songs. And I finish it and then you cut to the next thing, which is Gladiator II and ‘clang, clang, clang’ with swords and you see that I’m a gladiator but then you notice that I’m still green. And then you go on to Conclave and you see people voting with their ballots and one of the hands is still green.” I’m already onboard, but, as Conan tells it, they wouldn’t have stopped there.

The sketch would eventually make its way to Dune 2 when Javier Bardem (who will appear in season 2 of Conan’s travel show) would ask why O’Brien was still green. Then, more characters, like Bill Skaarsgard’s Nosferatu would tease O’Brien for starting the sketch in green. It sounded hilarious and makes Conan and Sweeney crack up when describing it but it would have been a logistical nightmare, so it makes sense that they didn’t do it. But it’s fun to know I wasn’t too far off in my assumptions! And I loved the show regardless.