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Conan O’Brien seemed a little bit worried before last night’s “Stand Up for Heroes” comedy show to benefit the Bob Woodruff Family Fund, which he was hosting. “It’s little bit different because it’s such a serious tone, and if you see my show, you see what I do,” he said. “You just do the best you can to walk the line. And my job is to sort of get to the humor and get the show started and walk that line as best I can.” If he knew what he was in for, he’d have been a lot worried. Conan’s monologue immediately followed a set of videos of Bob Woodruff interviewing injured Iraq-war veterans and a performance by the Marine band. Good thing he had a team of writers to help navigate that tricky situation! Except … he didn’t, because like everyone else in TV, his writers are on strike. It’s a situation that Conan empathizes with, since he was once a writer himself. “The first thing we did in respect is try and shut our shows down and hope it gets resolved quickly before all of us have to start laying off staff,” he said. “We’ve been able to get them about two weeks’ pay right now to buy us some time and hope that the WGA can get things resolved with producers in that time. But, you know we’re taking it day by day. Everybody in this industry is asking each other, ‘What do you think is going to happen? What do you think is going to happen?’ and nobody knows.” He noted one upside to it all, though: “It’s a pretty empty office right now so we’ve taken to running around it naked.” —Amy Odell
