Conan O’Brien is preparing to host Oscars in 2025 on March 2nd with a few special people in mind: his late parents.

“I think they were very proud of the work I did and they would have had this evening,” Conan told People by his father Dr. Thomas O’Brien and mother Ruth Reardon O’Brien, who both died in December within days.

“I have a really good photograph of my parents laughing in the audience at an event that I did many years ago, [and] I realized early on the original reason why someone is coming in comedy, just trying to make our parents laugh, ”he shared.

He continued, “I sometimes thought for myself sometimes, ‘Huh, why should I continue to make comedy if my parents are not here anymore?'”

“I still think of them about Oscar Night and try to make them laugh,” he admitted. “It’s a kind of comfort.”

The former talk show host also admitted that it is more pressure to impress his deceased parents now that they are not here.

“It’s also more pressure in the case of the one that they didn’t like it, and they let me know,” said Conan O’Brien. “When your parents go to all the efforts to travel through space time and Mists of Mystery to tell you they didn’t love it, it’s a crushing blow, so I really have to seam it.”