Conan O’Brien hosted The Tonight Show for less than eight months before he was ultimately replaced with – yet again – Jay Leno. While we don’t have the space to get into everything that went down behind the scenes, it was Leno who came out looking like the villain while fans and many within the industry threw their support behind Conan. One such name was Robin Williams, who had appeared on The Tonight Show under Conan’s short tenure a couple of times but made a gesture in a way that only a genuine good-hearted man would.
Speaking on his Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast (via EW), the comedian remembered that Robin Williams reached out in the aftermath of The Tonight Show debacle. “Finally, the show is done, and I don’t know if I have a career anymore. What am I gonna do next? I’m lying on the floor in the living room of my house, and my phone rings, and I pick it up, and it’s Robin Williams…I don’t even know how he got my phone number. ‘How are you holding up, chief?’ And he said, you know, ‘You’re gonna be fine, you’re gonna be great.’”
But Robin Williams didn’t limit his support for Conan O’Brien with just a phone call: he gifted him a bike to help clear his head. “‘Ride around, you’ll feel better.’ And I went down and it was a Colnago, which is a very nice bike. And he said, ‘I told him to paint it in all these crazy Irish colors.’ I get down there and it’s the most ugliest— I mean, it was just greens and shamrocks and everything. And he was like, ‘You’re going to like that bike, chief. Don’t worry about it.’ I thanked him many, many times. I just couldn’t believe that he was thinking about me.”
These are just the sort of stories about celebrities we love hearing, especially from someone so beloved as Robin Williams, who passed away a decade ago. But it’s really not surprising at all, as Williams was known to be about as good of a friend as you could be, always looking out for you when you’re at your lowest. One of the most famous friendships he had was with Christopher Reeve, taking much of his time to cheer him up after his 1995 horse riding accident which left him paralyzed, even making him crack up by posing as a Russian doctor there to deliver a rectal exam. Williams has stuck up for his pals in less colorful ways, too, as Sally Field once remembered him ensuring she got to see her father after he suffered a stroke while she was making Mrs. Doubtfire.
And Robin Williams was right in that Conan O’Brien would rebound, as he has turned himself into a full-on brand, with numerous podcasts, a travel show, a spot hosting next year’s Oscars, and more.