"We always have this crazy bond," Conan O'Brien said while welcoming Liam Neeson to his "Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend" podcast.
"I don't know if it's a genetic thing because I've found out since I met you that I'm 100% Irish after my people have been in this country since 1875."
Neeson remarked that in the "history of the planet," 1875 was "a nanosecond ago."
The two recounted how they first met at a fight at Madison Square Garden. Neeson walked up to O'Brien and said, "Hello Conan, let's go get a pint," an invite that O'Brien thought was "fantastic."
"This is living," O'Brien recalled thinking at the time, "having a pint with Liam Neeson, this is as cool as it gets."
Neither could remember who was in the fight. "I remember there was Guinness," O'Brien said on the podcast. "What I remember is, Liam Neeson and the Guinness made more of an impression on me than the fight."
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While Neeson is from Ballymena in Co Antrim, his mother was "born and bred" in Co Waterford, which delighted O'Brien as it's where his father's side of the family was from.
O'Brien said that "there's something in the blood" where he still feels at home when he visits Ireland.
Neeson then remarked: "When I came out to the States - I'm an American citizen, a very proud one too, and an Irish citizen - but everybody I'd meet wanted to tell me they had a connection with either Ireland or Scotland.
"I was dying for someone to say 'I'm an American.' You know what I mean? They always wanted to make a connection."
Neeson, however, said he soon understood the Irish connection in America in relation to the Irish Famine, when more than one million people left Ireland in the mid-19th century.
"Of course, 1845, that was a nanosecond ago," he again said.
However, reflecting on his own Irish American experience, Boston native O'Brien said: "I always got embarrassed on St. Patrick's Day here in the States because people that were 1/18th Irish paint the flag on their face, get s--faced, throw up on Fifth Avenue, and kiss everyone they see after throwing up."
Later in the podcast episode, Neeson recounted how he used to work at a Guinness bottling plant in his hometown.
"The Guinness would be brought up in these huge tankers from the Guinness breweries in Dublin to our establishment where the Guinness would be bottled.
"The Guinness would then come down in crates - 24 bottles per crate - to be stacked on pallets.
"I drove a forklift truck so once the pallets were filled, I'd go in, lift the pallet of Guinness and it would be stored at 54 degrees Fahrenheit for ten days and then it would be distributed to various pubs and stuff.
"It was a great job, I loved it."
O'Brien, who joked that working at a Guinness factory "sounds like the Irish version of Willy Wonka," said he feels Guinness needs no advertising in Ireland since it speaks for itself as "the touchstone of this whole country is Guinness."
While on the topic of Guinness, O'Brien said: "I know that for years - I don't think they do anymore - but they encouraged, they said 'oh it's fine, if you're pregnant, it's good for the baby, it's good for the breast milk.'"
Neeson replied: “My first son was born in Holles Street, a very famous maternity hospital in Dublin and my wife, God love her, she gave birth to our son Micheál.
"But she was very, very anemic, we didn’t realize this. And she needed something like 12 units of blood.
"I was about to start shooting 'Michael Collins,' I’d cycle back home once the baby was born and all that, everything was ok.
"But suddenly there was this emergency. Five, six nurses apparently come in and my wife is saying, ‘call my husband, please call my husband.’
"And they’re going, ‘Ah it’s alright, don’t worry, it’s alright.’
“And it was alright, but they started giving her a bottle of Guinness every day.”
"I'm picturing it hanging up like an IV," O'Brien said amongst laughter, "That's what they do in Ireland."
Neeson went on to tell O'Brien that after "Schindler's List," he started to get calls about being the next James Bond. However, his then-girlfriend, British actress Natasha Richardson, wasn't thrilled.
"Natasha and I weren't married at the time," Neeson said, "and she says 'If you are offered James Bond, we are not getting married.'"
Earlier this year, he told The Times of London that Richardson was wary about "gorgeous girls in various countries getting in and out of [Bond’s] bed.”
Richardson and Neeson married in 1994 and had two sons together, whom Neeson described to O'Brien as "Irish twins." Sadly, Richardson died in 2009 after a tragic skiing accident, but Neeson told O'Brien that he and her "still talk every day."
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