Denis Leary Hilariously Recalls Learning He’s Related To Conan O’Brien: “We Look Like Two Irish Aunts.”
Stopping by The Tonight Show he confirmed it’s “true” that he’s related to the fellow comedian.
Denise spilled the following: “We look like two Irish aunts. Look at us, the two of us. Oh my God, we literally look like sisters. That’s what we look like, two old sisters.”
“My parents are Irish immigrants. They come from the same town, Killarney in Ireland, and they came over [to the U.S.] in like 1950 by boat, but very few of their brothers and sisters came, so the bulk of the family was still in Killarney.”
He continued: “Well, my uncle Patrick, who was the oldest brother in the Leary family, we got him a satellite dish so that he could see the [Late Night with Conan O’Brien] shows that I was on. One night he’s watching me on Conan and he calls up one of my other cousins and says, ‘Listen, this guy that Denis is talking to, he’s one of our cousins.’”
He added that his uncle wrote down “what he thinks is going on” and it turned out he was right.
“He said, ‘I think this guy is a Reardon.’ Reardon was the name of Conan’s mom. And he said, ‘I think there was a Reardon woman in Worcester, Massachusetts, who lived in a three-decker when your father and his brother Jerry got off in New York. They couldn’t find solid work here, so they went up to Boston, to Worcester, because that’s where this Reardon woman lived and she put him in the basement and got him real jobs, like paying jobs under the table.’”
Continuing further by saying, “So when I brought this paper to Conan and I said Reardon, he went, ‘Oh my God, my family was originally from Worcester and then went to Brooklyn.’ So we’re like, ‘Oh my God, now look at us.’ First of all, we’re all legs, right? … And look at my hair and look at Conan’s hair and look at our skin. It’s the same.”
Serendipitously Leary and O’Brien both got their start in comedy, as stand-ups and Saturday Night Live writer.
