Conan O’Brien Admits He Didn’t Write the Oscars Joke About Drake: ‘I’m Not That Well Versed in Rap Battles’

Conan O’Brien is getting props for his Drake joke at the Oscars — in which he joked about the ongoing feud between the rapper and Kendrick Lamar — but admitted on Thursday that he didn’t write the joke himself.

The joke in question? “We’re halfway through the Oscars, which means it’s time for Kendrick Lamar to come out and call Drake a pedophile.” It got a rousing response from the Oscars crowd and served as a callback to Lamar dissing longtime rival Drake during his Super Bowl halftime performance of “Not Like Us.”

“That is the handiwork of Skyler Higley. I have to give it up — I’m not that well-versed in rap battles — but I got major props from this gentleman,” O’Brien shared on Thursday’s episode of his podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.”

“This has happened to me a couple of times, but I walked to a store this morning to get a cup of coffee, and this young Black gentleman came up to me and said, ‘Conan, I got to ask you, did you write that joke about Drake?'” the host recalled.

Higley is a Chicago-based comic who previously worked with O’Brien on his TBS talk show. In 2021, the writing team won a WGA award for Best Comedy-Variety Talk Series.

O’Brien praised his Oscars co-writers Jeff Ross and Mike Sweeney, saying, “People seemed very happy with how [the Oscars ceremony] went. I had a blast doing it.”

One of the gags that didn’t make it to the live show was a cold open that began with the host in green make-up like Elphaba in “Wicked.”

“The idea was that I’d be starting out in ‘Wicked,’ fully green, finishing ‘Defying Gravity’ or another song. Then, the camera cuts to ‘Gladiator’—clang, clang, clang with swords. I’m a gladiator, but you can still see that I’m green. Then, we cut to ‘Conclave’ — people are voting with their ballots — and one of the hands is still green.”

The bit would have continued into “Dune,” with O’Brien still being green underneath his desert gear and saying of the make-up, “Yeah, this stuff doesn’t come off.”

Watch O’Brien’s full Oscars break down in the podcast video above.

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