Years later, Conan O’Brien would jokingly suggest Tilda Swinton play Conan in the sequel, while Andy Richter chose Justin Bieber for himself.
But the Clooney suggestion was legit. Publicists commonly press producers to cast high-profile people to play their clients; multiple different figures associated with The Late Shift asked to be played by Richard Gere. In 1995, Clooney had appeared in almost no films, and it had been just a few years since he’d been appearing regularly in sitcoms. He’d also recently impersonated Jay on Saturday Night Live.
Sadly, HBO ended up instead going with Daniel Roebuck (you might know him as Arzt from Lost). Right up until the airdate, they kept playing around with the film, and real-life events made them rewrite the ending. Originally, they’d planned an epilogue about how much the fiasco had cost NBC, but they had to change it when Jay Leno’s show actually did well. Among the many alternate endings they proposed, back in 1996: “two anonymous NBC execs” sum up the situation before saying, “What are we going to do with this Conan guy?”
This fact came from the new One Cracked Fact newsletter. Want more like this, straight from your email inbox, without any ads or popups? Join here:
For more Jay stories, check out:
9 Major Stories Everyone Got Wrong
7 Amazing Things People Got Just by Asking: A Ride to School from Jay Leno
Follow Ryan Menezes on Twitter for more stuff no one should see.
Top image: NBC