Denis Leary is recalling how he found out he and Conan O’Brien are third cousins.
The No Good Deed actor stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Thursday, where he confirmed it’s “true” that he’s related to the comedian and former late-night talk show host.
“We look like two Irish aunts,” he said as host Jimmy Fallon held up a photo of the pair. “Look at us, the two of us. Oh my God, we literally look like sisters. That’s what we look like, two old sisters.”
Leary went on to explain exactly how he learned they were long-lost relatives. “My parents are Irish immigrants,” he said. “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.”
“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,” he continued. O’Brien hosted the late-night talk show from 1993-2009. “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.’”
The Rescue Me actor and creator 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,” Leary recounted of their conversation. “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.’”
He continued, “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.”
Leary and O’Brien both got their start in comedy, as a stand-up comedian and Saturday Night Live writer, respectively. They both went on to amass successful Hollywood careers.
Last year, O’Brien’s parents, Dr. Thomas O’Brien and Ruth Reardon O’Brien, died three days apart from one another. Thomas was 95 and Ruth was 92.
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