Born in Massachusetts and educated at Harvard, this self-consciously geeky redhead began his career off-screen as a comedy writer for Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons. When he was tapped to replace David Letterman as the host of Late Night in 1993, he was virtually unknown to audiences, with only a handful of on-camera SNL bits under his belt. Although it took a while for his talk show to pick up steam, eventually it became a juggernaut. Based on his success, NBC announced in 2004 that O'Brien would succeed Jay Leno as the host of The Tonight Show in 2009. However, when 2009 rolled around and Jay Leno moved to a prime-time comedy-variety show that quickly tanked, Conan wound up being the odd man out. Leno ultimately got his Tonight Show hosting duties back, and O'Brien parted ways with NBC after more than 20 years. As part of his settlement with the network, he was prohibited from taking another hosting job until September of 2010. It was actually November of that year when O'Brien premiered his next late-night talk show, titled simply Conan, on TBS.