Conan Is Traveling To Armenia

In his latest venture abroad, Conan O'Brien is traveling to Armenia. If you don't know Coco, he's taken his show on the road (and overseas) before, most recently becoming the first late-night host to broadcast from Cuba, and he'll be the first to do a show live from Armenia, as well. The show will air on November 10 at 11 PM ET on TBS, and it will be the first time that both Conan and his longtime assistant Sona Movsesian, who is of Armenian descent, have been to the country.

In a press release for the upcoming broadcast from TBS, Coco said jokingly, "I think it's every boss's responsibility to take their assistant back to their ancestral land. That's why I'm going to make sure my next assistant was born in a five-star resort in Tuscany." Armenia is a unique choice to say the least — 2015 marked the 100 year anniversary of the Armenian genocide, and the country still suffers from internal conflict — but hopefully Coco will show the same charm and respect to the people of that nation that he did earlier when he went to Cuba.

The reason Coco's Cuban trip was a success was that he positioned himself as the outsider, and the comedy came from the fact that nobody there really knew who he was. He indulged in the typical touristy stuff, as a talk show host is wont to do, like wearing a Panama hat, rolling cigars, and asking locals if they knew him (they didn't). But he did show a sense of awareness about the difference between American and Cuban cultures, including along with his jokey bits some commentary about the new relationship between the United States and Cuba, and what it meant for the future of the island nation.

Speaking about his trip to Cuba, Conan told reporters in March:

I felt really strongly about this — I don’t want this to be a snarky American comedy take. I don’t want this to be political,” O’Brien told a group of reporters over lunch in New York last week. “A lot of my [on-location sketches] are me as a fish-out-of-water … I want to go as a comedian who’s making fun of himself and I want to try and make the Cuban people laugh. In that regard, I think we were successful.

Conan's Cuba shows were a hit with viewers, with over 1.81 million people watching the broadcast. Conan also did an unscripted show earlier this year from San Diego Comic-Con.

Image: TBS