Conan O’Brien Reveals Robin Williams’ Kind Gesture After ‘Tonight Show’ Ended: “I Just Couldn’t Believe He Was Thinking Of Me”

After he was ousted from NBC’s Tonight Show in 2010, Conan O’Brien revealed the late Robin Williams was one of the people who reached out to him with support when he feared his career was in jeopardy.

O’Brien and Eric Idle were looking back on some of their favorite memories of Williams on a recent episode of his Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast when the former late night host revealed Williams surprised him with a major, yet “absurd,” gift after the “Tonight Show debacle,” as he put it.

“I was lucky enough to have some great interactions with Robin Williams before he passed,” O’Brien told Idle on the podcast.  “One of the most memorable examples to me is when I went through my whole 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.”

He added, “I don’t even know how he got my phone number.”

O’Brien recalled Williams asking him, “‘How are you holding up, chief?’ And he said, you know, ‘You’re gonna be fine, you’re gonna be great.'”

Photo: Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal

Williams then reportedly instructed O’Brien to go pick up a bike he had purchased for him at a local shop in Santa Monica, as they shared a love for biking. “And I said, ‘What?'” O’Brien recalled. “And he said, ‘No, no, no, just head on down there. Ride around, you’ll feel better.’ And I went down and it was a Colnago, which is a very nice bike.”

O’Brien shared Williams had asked them 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,” O’Brien admitted. “And he was like, ‘You’re going to like that bike, chief. Don’t worry about it.'”

He continued, “I thanked him many, many times. I just couldn’t believe that he was thinking about me.”

O’Brien had succeeded Jay Leno in taking over The Tonight Show, but NBC bumped O’Brien’s Tonight Show back to the 12:05 a.m. slot to give Leno back his old 11:35 p.m. slot. O’Brien left the show after only seven months, after which Leno took over. He later returned to late night television with his own talk show, Conan, which ran for 11 seasons on TBS.

The late night host had shared this story before while promoting a public auction of the actor’s bike collection in 2016.

“I will never forget, it was during a low moment in my life,” O’Brien said.

While noting it was “the most absurd bicycle you’ve ever seen,” he said the gift was still a symbol of Williams’ “amazing spirit of fun.”

“So often I would just look at that silly bike and think, ‘What a wonderful spirit.’ … I think it’s particularly courageous for someone to be that generous of spirit in the face of that kind of depression,” O’Brien said of his late friend.