Comedian and Oscars host Conan O’Brien has recently revealed that he might have earned the ire of fellow comedian Tina Fey after a certain skit years ago in SNL (Saturday Night Live). Tina Fey was apparently outraged at what Conan O’Brien did with her husband in a rather humiliating comedy sketch about a cupid in a revealing costume.
Speaking with Amy Poehler in Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, the titular comedian and talkshow host touched up on the subject. O’Brien actually ran into Tina Fey and her husband, Jeff Richmond, back in one of the Saturday Night Live events, prompting him to recall the aforementioned skit decades ago.
In the SNL skit, which took place in 2001, Jeff Richmond was wearing a glittery blond cupid wig, some wings, a bow, and a diaper– with nothing else but the hair on his chest and abdomen for his upper-body garment. Richmond’s cupid sketch character then started reciting a list of STDs, such as Syphilis and Chlamydia.
Tina Fey, however, was shocked and had to confront O’Brien on the matter, saying, “That’s my husband, you f***er. What have you done to him?” A little later, Fey surrendered to the fact that that very same diaper-wearing cupid on SNL was the very man he was going to marry. Fey and O’Brien even briefly talked about the matter back in 2001.
In Conan’s Defense…
Conan, on the other, seems like he hasn’t moved on from the mental image of Jeff Richmond as a cupid in diapers. To Conan O’Brien, that’s how he saw Richmond from thereon. In O’Brien’s defense, however, he didn’t know who Jeff Richmond was at the time.
Richmond would go on to become an Emmy award-winning composer for his work in 30 Rock. Prior to his achievements and accolades in Hollywood, however, Tina Fey joked on Conan O’Brien’s late night show that she’s the family breadwinner and that her husband was sometimes forced to look for odd work so he can have his own money, which somehow explains the skits on Conan’s show.
For O’Brien, the cupid skit was likely his most memorable moment with Jeff Richmond, even adding in his recent podcast, “I don’t care what he does. He’ll get an Oscar for scoring something, and I’ll still think, ‘Heh, you were Cupid.‘”
Thankfully, Tina Fey was a supportive partner at the time (and even now), and Conan’s embarrassing cupid sketch for Jeff Richmond didn’t affect her impression of her fiance (at the time). Richmond and Fey are still married after nearly 24 years and now have two daughters.