Marc Maron opened up about his relationships with two famous fellow comedians during a frank conversation with HuffPost Live on Thursday.
Maron told host Josh Zepps about a strange experience he had with Jay Leno when Maron appeared on “The Tonight Show.” Maron had no relationship with Leno, but the “Tonight” host visited his dressing room for a half-hour before the show and the pair had a conversation Maron described as “very odd.”
“He’s like, ‘I didn’t think you’d do the show. I thought you were a Conan guy. You know, I’m just a comedian. I’m just a comedian,'” Maron remembered Leno saying.
The way in which Leno attempted to connect with Maron stuck with him, he explained:
It was interesting. There was a loneliness to it. There was a sadness to it, in my take on it. … He was a great stand-up, and no stand-up would say differently. And now, to be in this room with a guy where, you know, what stand-ups really respect him? To know that he feels that isolated, and that he was the stand-up for a long time, the guy with the goods… He was looking to connect: ‘You know, we’re stand-ups, we get it.’ It was a little sad and a little interesting.
Maron also told HuffPost Live about his friendship with Louis C.K., with whom he had a falling out of sorts that the two comedians discussed on Maron’s “WTF” podcast in 2010.
“We were good friends, and we relied on each other a bit as a balancing board. He was always very calming to me,” Maron said. “But at some point, I got cynical and he got successful, and he got to the point where it made him feel shitty to talk to me because I was so nasty. It just got weird, and it was sad.”
Watch Maron discuss his meeting with Leno in the video above, and his relationship with Louis C.K. below. Maron’s full HuffPost Live conversation is here.