Talk show host Conan O’Brien, who returns to late night television on Tuesday with his new show, has featured in a new American Express commercial in which he is shown taking a trip to India in search of the finest materials to make curtains for his new show.
The commercial plays on O’Brien’s reputation of being meticulous about every detail of his programmes and shows him travelling across Jaipur in an auto-rickshaw as well as atop an elephant to get the right cloth for his curtains.
O’Brien travelled to Jaipur a month ago to film the two-minute commercial over three days. The talk show host is speaking in Hindi throughout the commercial.
The advertisement begins with O’Brien walking around a crowded Jaipur market asking vendors about silk cloth from Banaras. He then buys spools of thread from a vendor named “Doolichand”. O’Brien hugs Doolichand and asks him in Hindi, Aapke dada ji kaise hain (How is your grandfather).
An exhausted O’Brien uses the charkha (spinning wheel) and a loom to weave the fabric. He then stomps on berries, making red dye for the cloth. He indulges in a gossip session with local ladies as he stands waist deep in water, washing and dying the material. —PTI