Conan O’Brien paid tribute to television and radio broadcast legend Larry King on his TBS show on Monday night. King, who passed away over the weekend, was a frequent guest of Conan’s, going back to his early days on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien. In his opening remarks, Conan notes that from early on, King was comfortable going on his show and letting his comedy side come out, appearing in bits like In the Year 2000, laying in a bed with Conan and Andy Richter to test King’s line of bedding and doing his own Larry King talk show from high above the studio in the rafters.
King began his career as a journalist and radio interviewer in Florida in the 1950s and 1960s. He began hosting The Larry King Show, a popular all-night nationwide call-in radio program heard on the Mutual Broadcasting System, in 1978. From 1985 to 2010, he hosted the nightly interview television program Larry King Live on CNN, which earned him his most notoriety. From 2012 to 2020, he hosted Larry King Now on Hulu and RT America. in 2013, he began hosting Politicking with Larry King, a weekly political talk show which has aired weekly on the same two channels.
On January 2, 2021, it was revealed that King had been hospitalized 10 days earlier in a Los Angeles hospital after testing positive for COVID-19.
King played himself in numerous film and television shows, including Ghostbusters, The Exorcist III, Dave, The Simpsons, The Larry Sanders Show, Murphy Brown, The Bee Movie and 30 Rock. He also voiced Doris, the ugly stepsister in Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third.
As we reported a few months ago, Conan is leaving his job as a late-night talk show host after 28 years and moving into the variety series world. Conan will be wrapping up his TBS late night show on June 2021 after ten years on the network and move over to HBO Max where he’ll be hosting a weekly variety series.
You can watch Conan’s tribute to Larry King here: