NEW YORK — Could Conan O’Brien one day go from hosting the Oscars to winning one?
The former late-night host makes a surprising career pivot in the harrowing new A24 drama “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” which marks his first time playing a fictional character in a live-action dramatic film. The movie, which screened on Thursday, Oct. 2, at the New York Film Festival, stars Rose Byrne as an overwhelmed mother, Linda, struggling to care for her sick daughter.
In a Q&A after the screening, O’Brien, who plays Linda’s stone-faced therapist and colleague, noted he felt pressure to get his performance right with an actor of Byrne’s caliber on board.
“When Rose came on, I thought, ‘Good God, I have to do this right. I have to service this movie correctly,” he said. “And I said to (director) Mary (Bronstein), ‘Please don’t hire me.'”
“She said, ‘You’re cheap. You’re available,'” he joked.
From left, Mary Bronstein, Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien, Christian Slater and Devika Girish speak onstage at the “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” screening during the 63rd New York Film Festival on Oct. 2, 2025, in New York City.
But O’Brien, whose previous acting credits have largely been cameos as himself or voiceovers in animated films, said he took preparations for the part seriously.
“The thing that saved me so many times in my life is just prepare, prepare, prepare, work hard, and really put a lot of thought into things,” the former “Tonight Show” host said. “And you can’t be in a scene with Rose and phone it in or do anything less than your best, because I believe she’s one of the best actors alive, period.”
George Clooney told ‘Jay Kelly’ director only ‘3 people on Earth’ could play his role
Byrne delivers a stunning, career-best performance in the film, which stays with Linda from start to finish as the stresses of motherhood risk driving her to madness. The actress, who earned a standing ovation from the festival crowd, said she “devoured” the script but was intimidated after reaching the end and thinking about the task ahead of her.
“I closed the script and thought, ‘Oh God, I’m going to have to do this,” the actress said. “This is terrifying. I can’t (mess) this up.”
From left, Rose Byrne, Mary Bronstein, and Conan O’Brien attend the “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” red carpet during the 63rd New York Film Festival on Oct. 2, 2025, in New York City.
Christian Slater also stars as Linda’s husband, though it’s primarily a voiceover role, as the character is absent most of the time and simply heard over the phone. “I did phone it in,” he quipped before joking, “This is definitely the first time that somebody’s not wanted to film me.”
Bronstein, who hasn’t directed a feature film since 2008’s “Yeast,” shared that the plot of “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” was inspired by a real situation where her daughter was ill at a young age and they lived in a motel room together for eight months. “I felt an existential terror,” she said. “I felt myself disappearing.”
In a unique stylistic choice, the film avoids showing the face of Linda’s daughter, even though she is so often present. Bronstein described this as a reflection of how Linda cannot “derive any joy in a normal mother-daughter relationship.”
As the film progresses, everything that can go wrong does seem to go wrong for Linda, who is constantly on the verge of a breakdown while dealing with big issues like her child’s illness to smaller problems like a nightmare pet hamster.
Before the screening, Bronstein asked the audience to think of “the worst thing that’s ever happened to you in your entire life,” then think of “the worst thing that happened to you today,” and described the movie as a collision of both kinds of things.
“When we have something so gargantuan that’s happening to us, all the little things start adding up so that they start to feel equal,” she later explained in the Q&A.
The film maintains a dream-like reality throughout and isn’t afraid to keep things ambiguous, which O’Brien argued is to its credit. “Everyone I have any relationship with who has seen this has insisted on speaking to me afterwards and has a lot of questions,” he said. Case in point: He recalled his costar A$AP Rocky, who plays the superintendent of Linda’s motel, engaging him in a conversation about what a particular scene means at another recent screening.
“We’re about to come up on stage, and A$AP Rocky is asking me what do I think about a scene, and what do I think is happening,” he recalled. “… He wants to talk about it, and he’s in the movie! So I think that’s a testament to what this is. Movies like this are a rarity.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Conan O’Brien talks first dramatic acting role at NYFF
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com ’
