It’s Homecoming Week for Conan O’Brien: The man who hosted Late Night from 1993 to 2009 in New York returns tonight to the Big Apple to host five nights of his TBS talk show, Conan. O’Brien recently chatted with EW about the New York shows, the difference between audiences in New York and Los Angeles, and the painful regret of the jeggings incident.

On the vibe of his New York shows:

“When we travel with the show, we like the DNA of the show to change. It’s really important to me that these feel like New York shows, so one of the key components was to make sure that I’m out amongst the people, and that it’s not something where it’s just, ‘Okay, he’s in the Beacon Theatre, but he’s doing the same old crap.’ This will be me going outside and doing the same old crap, which will be a whole new way of looking at it. In the four days that I was shooting [pre-taped segments] there, I got to just about every part of New York City, which was really fun. I could not pass a street corner where the ghost of an old remote that I had shot in the 90s would [appear]… I would pass a corner and look out the window and see Riverside Park and think, “Oh right, I was dressed as a woman on a unicycle.” We’ll be down in the Garment District and I’ll look out the window and be like, “Yeah, I remember wearing an antelope head, riding on Andy Richter’s back in ’98.” It’s all these old war stories coming back.

“This is my first time back in New York as a tourist. So it’s that cliché where I’ve never gone to the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty when I lived in New York, so now we’re actually taking the show to New York as guests, which is a fascinating new experience. I’m going to be terrified of Central Park. I’m going to be complaining about the urine smell. I’m going to be horrified that my half a bagel with cream cheese costs $35. And I’m going to walk around with a cardboard suitcase and look up at the skyscrapers and marvel at ‘them moving boxes’ that take you from one floor to the next. I’m going to look at New York with a fresh eye.” READ FULL STORY »