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Conan O'Brien has said that he would not have acted as Jay Leno did "if [the] roles had been reversed", after Leno took over his timeslot.

O'Brien made the admission in an interview with 60 Minutes which will air on Sunday.

In an excerpt released by CBS and reported by The Hollywood Reporter, O'Brien said: "He went and took that show back, and I think in a similar situation, if roles had been reversed, I know, I know me, I wouldn't have done that. If I had surrendered The Tonight Show and handed it over to somebody publicly and wished them well, and then, six months later. But that's me, you know. Everyone's got their own, you know, way of doing things."

When he was asked what he would have done, O’Brien said: "Done something else, go someplace else. I mean, that's just me."

O'Brien added that he had felt his relationship with Leno was "going be toxic".

The deal O'Brien signed to leave NBC bars him from giving any interviews before May 1, and prevents him from criticising either the network or Leno. 60 Minutes host Steve Kroft has previously commented: "He flirts with the restrictions."

O'Brien was recently named the world's second most influential creative figure, after Lady GaGa, in the Time 100 list.