Conan goes to Cuba, and the joke's on him

Conan is going Cuban.

Wednesday night's special episode of O'Brien's TBS late-night series (11 ET/PT) was filmed entirely in Havana last month, in a hastily arranged four-day trip that followed President Obama's lifting of travel restrictions.

Apart from the lack of reliable cellphone or Wi-Fi, and a snafu involving visas, the trip went smoothly, O'Brien says.

The special is "a lot of me walking around talking to people. … I try to learn salsa dancing, I try to learn to play authentic Cuban music" and sing using fractured eighth-grade Spanish. "They let me into a cigar factory where they hand-make cigars, 400 people in a room. Obviously, I'm no good at it. "

For desk segments, O'Brien improvised while sidekick Andy Richter stayed home: "We borrowed a café table, put an old microphone on it, and a band of three or four women were playing (nearby), so I asked them if they'd be my house band. And then we found a guy to be Cuban Andy, who I actually have better chemistry with."

O'Brien says he wanted to avoid condescension or sarcasm. "I felt strongly that I do not want this to be a smart, snarky American comedy take," he says. "I don't want this to be political. A lot of my remotes are me as a fish out of water, the jokes are usually on me, I want to go as a comedian making fun of myself and make Cuban people laugh. In that regard, I think I was successful."

Why go? He was inspired when he learned another former Tonight Show host, Jack Paar, visited before the embargo. And after 22 years in late-night TV, "if I can still get giddy about something, it's miraculous. The fight now is to keep it interesting, try to surprise ourselves. In a weird way, maybe it isn't a bad form of diplomacy ... to send a comedian over who's not going to have a snarky take."