Seconds before Conan O’Brien appears on the big screen for his dramatic acting debut, you see a close-up of his black dress shoes, toe-tapping impatiently. Although his signature physicality still comes through,

Conan O’Brien, the beloved late night show host, has officially made his acting debut in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, an oppressive drama that made waves at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival last Friday (January 24).

Bronstein, a bit of a cult figure in the film world, made her directorial debut in 2008 at the SXSW festival with “Yeast,” which featured a pre-fame Greta Gerwig and was hailed by by New Yorker critic Richard Brody as a “mumblecore classic.”

Conan O’Brien, A$AP Rocky, and Danielle Macdonald co-star in Mary Bronstein’s audacious anxiety nightmare.

What will surely go down as one the most stressful movies of the year is “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” which premiered Friday at the Sundance Film Festival.

Mary Bronstein's 'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You' wowed the Sundance Film Festival with an all-time Rose Byrne performance.

Sundance: Rose Byrne and Conan O'Brien star in Mary Bronstein's surreal freak-out of a movie about the anxieties of contemporary motherhood.

Rose Byrne plays a mother in the midst of ... Part of Linda’s story involves her therapist, played by Conan O’Brien, who joked that he didn’t realize he was in a movie.

Rose Byrne attends the premiere of "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 24, 2025, at Library Theatre in Park City, Utah. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Conan O'Brien, from left, Mary Bronstein, and Rose Byrne attend the premiere of "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 24, 2025, at Library Theatre in Park ...

Mary Bronstein's "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" is a nightmarish drama centered on a mother's internal turmoil — and it all started with the filmmaker's own experience of crisis with her daughter. "This movie started as a seed of an idea when I was going through a crisis with my own daughter,

Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald and A$AP Rocky also star in Mary Bronstein’s feverish dark comedy thriller about parenting in extremis and existential black holes.