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Zucker remained hot. “Just let me tell you something—you are not going to fucking play me.”

The conversation ended there. Rosen was stunned at this sudden blast of pressure, coming only thirty-six hours after Conan was hit with the news. He could now picture the whole deal going off the rails. He left a message immediately for Jeff Gaspin. When Gaspin got back to him, Rosen told him that he had just had a nasty conversation with his boss. “If he thinks that by intimidating us he’s going to get the answer he wants, he’s got the wrong guys. You better tell him to chill out and let the process work.”

Gaspin promised he would take care of the situation.

Conan didn’t know about the confrontational call from Zucker when he arrived home that Friday night. He was tense, wrestling with the decision that faced him. Conan truly had not figured out what he should—or even could—do. He tried to talk it over with Liza, unspooling the day’s events. “You know, it’s still The Tonight Show,” he told her, watching her reaction closely.

Liza didn’t contradict him, but she did something that was familiar to him. She gave him a look that somehow combined patience with total skepticism.

At midday Saturday, after an exchange of e-mails, Rosen spoke to Zucker again. Jeff’s tone from the start was much calmer, and Rosen guessed that Gaspin might have suggested a conciliatory call. While Zucker made many of the same points as the night before, he did so in a far more sensitive way. “Look, we just want to resolve this. I know you guys have to go through your process, but there’s going to be a point where I just need a decision.”

Rosen, appreciating the sincere effort from Zucker, said he got it. “I know you have this affiliate thing. We’re not gonna drag this out. No one wants to drag this out. He’s just digesting this still.”

Perhaps signaling that he wanted to keep the line of communication friendly, Zucker shifted topics and told Rosen he also wanted to thank him for steering a new pilot written by the prolific David E. Kelley (Ali McBeal, The Practice) to NBC.

Rosen accepted the thanks and they closed on familiar good terms.

Later the same day, Rosen made it out to Conan’s house, where the group was set to meet. Conan had fallen into an angry phase, sitting sullenly during the gathering in his book-lined study. They were all going round and round about whether he should accept 12:05, and Conan still wasn’t sure whether he really had an option to reject it.

It sounded to Conan that Leigh Brecheen, his lawyer, was suggesting they stall for time while they examined all the drafts of his deals. The issue just wasn’t clear, and as they debated it, Conan started to picture himself as the olive in the middle of an olive oil press—and with every second that passed by, the crank was getting turned and the squeeze was getting tighter. But he never pushed the question of why his deal didn’t contain the overt time-period protection that appeared in so many other late-night contracts.

Sensing the contractual issue was going to become central, Rosen suggested they start thinking about hiring a litigator. And that meant only one name as far as he was concerned: Patty Glaser. Perhaps the best known (and most feared) litigation lawyer in Hollywood, Glaser had represented the Endeavor agency and had faced off against NBC successfully in the past. Given the go-ahead, Rosen reached her on vacation at the California ski resort Mammoth, and she agreed to come down on Sunday night to meet with Conan and his team.

That done, the message to Conan was essentially unchanged: Sit tight. He could bide his time for a while longer.

Conan didn’t feel that way. “I can tell you—as a performer—no, I can’t,” he told them. “I can’t go out there every night and do a show when it’s this unclear what’s happening. It’s too toxic.”

But without a firm interpretation of where they stood legally, there wasn’t much else they could do.

As Saturday came to an end, uncertainty prevailed on the opposite coast as well. Zucker began