Conan O’Brien recalls not being able to conjure up his Boston accent for a Saturday Night Live sketch. O’Brien was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb just a few subway stops away from the heart of the city. He grew up in the Boston area and attended Brookline High School, and from there went to Harvard University before moving to Los Angeles to start his TV and comedy career. Most recently, the Brookline native was known for his hosting stint at the 97th Annual Academy Awards.

Speaking on his own Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast, O’Brien and guest Amy Poehler discuss how difficult it was to bring back his Boston accent for a Saturday Night Live sketch. During a time when O’Brien was hosting Saturday Night Live, Rachel Dratch had written a sketch for Boston people, but he could not get the accent down. Even though Poehler though it did not “sound like Rachel Dratch,” O’Brien explained that Dratch was “getting really frustrated” with him as he failed to drop and add Rs in his voice. Check out the full quote from O’Brien below:

O’Brien: I’m terrible at it. This made Rachel Dratch crazy because she wrote a sketch for Saturday Night Live which was all these Boston people. And I was hosting that week. And I was just having trouble getting the Boston accent because I’d been away for years. And Rachel was losing her mind.

Poehler: That does not sound like Rachel Dratch.

O’Brien: No, no, she was getting really frustrated. Like ‘no no no, it’s like on the cooornah.’ And I’d be like ‘yeah, on the corner.’ And she’d be like ‘ugh.’ I was making her that upset.

Poehler: I blame Brookline for this. Because, I mean there is a way to dig into the accent that once you get into, that once you get in there, it is almost like you can never get out.

What This Meant For Saturday Night Live

O’Brien’s Accent Was Not As Thick As His Co-Stars’

The sketch in question was a version of the recurring bit “Boston Teens.” The series saw Dratch, Jimmy Fallon, and other stars playing teenagers getting into antics at iconically Boston locations. O’Brien hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live on March 10, 2001, that featured the “Boston Teens” sketch “Cumberland Farms.” In the sketch, O’Brien played Eric, a 26-year-old who still hangs out with high school students.

O’Brien had a tough act to follow, with both Dratch and Fallon doing very over-the-top accents to adopt their Boston teen personas. Dratch is from Lexington, MA, so hearing someone like O’Brien, who was born and raised even closer to Boston, fail on the accent must have been particularly challenging. Fallon is not even from Boston, but looking back at the sketch over 20 years after it aired, Fallon’s voice as Pat Sullivan is a lot more confident than O’Brien’s labored accent.

Our Take On O’Brien’s Saturday Night Live Experience

Conan’s Brookline Origin Would Have Affected His Accent

As someone who grew up in a Boston suburb myself, I think Poehler has the best point: that O’Brien’s Brookline origins may have led to his accent downfall. While Brookline is near the city, it is a wealthy suburb that is a bit more removed from the thick, intense inflections of Southie. As such, Poehler’s right that O’Brien was not from the area where he could “never get out” of the Boston accent, and instead struggled with it after all the time away on Saturday Night Live.

Source: Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend / YouTube

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