Seth Meyers on Finding Joy (and Comedy) in Trump’s Second Term

Seth Meyers is growing weary of talking about himself. 

As he recently joked with pal Jimmy Kimmel during a viral stop on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, he’s been busy on the Emmy circuit, eligible for a dizzying number of projects, including Late Night With Seth Meyers, his “Closer Look” election night special, his online series Corrections, the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary special and his HBO comedy special, Dad Man Walking. 

In recent weeks, the man who makes a living interviewing others has found himself on the receiving end of questions, doing a slew of high-profile podcasts, a THR roundtable and a stint at the ATX TV festival. And though JKL was the only campaign stop that included dueling Emmy “attack ads” – Kimmel’s ad compared Meyers to a similarly suit-less Osama bin Laden; Meyers’ accused Kimmel of using forced foreign labor – the NBC host has brought a healthy dose of humor to every appearance. In fact, one colleague called Meyers’ rollicking FYC conversation with another longtime friend, The Studio’s Ike Barinholtz, “the funniest 45 minutes I’ve seen on a stage this year — save my two visits to Oh, Mary.” 

Over a breakfast pizza at Milo & Olive, Meyers discussed the perks and anxieties of returning to SNL, the lessons of late night and the ways in which he’s found comedy — and even some joy — in Trump’s second term.

Let’s start with the SNL 50th. What was it like to be back in the writers room after all these years? 

It was funny because I wrote on the 40th, and I was very fresh from having left and I fell right back into being a head writer. This time, I felt like a guy trying to make a comeback in baseball as a 50-year-old, and he’s kind of throwing in his backyard and he’s like, “Oh, yeah, I still kinda got it.” But this current writing staff is really great, and the person I was most impressed with was [Colin] Jost, who wrote so many things in the 50th and also was carrying that burden of making sure everybody was taken care of, which often gets overlooked at SNL. I mean, every good writer at SNL is always looking out for the cast, but to some degree, you’re always like, “Well, there’s next week.” But with the 50th, you don’t want people to get shut out. I was at the table-read and it was one of those moments in life where you realize, “This is probably the last time this is going to happen for me.” It was very special. And also, at the back of your head, there’s the anxiety of, like, “Am I doing enough? Am I adding enough value?” 

There’s a lot that gets cut, which is simply the nature of SNL. What was your favorite thing on the cutting room floor?

There was very little that was pulled at the last minute. Once you ask Eddie Murphy to do a sketch, you’re not going to cut the sketch. By the way, nor will you ever be in a position to think you should. But in general, it was a really cool thing. It felt different because I think after the 40th, there was a real sense of, like, “Oh my God, can you even imagine what the 50th is going to be like?!” And I don’t think there was that same feeling at this one.

It does feel hard to top this, never mind the fact that Lorne Michaels would be 90 at the 60th.

It does, and so there was something a little bittersweet about it and also this might be the last great showbiz party. Again, we’re all aware we’re living at a different time, but it didn’t feel as though a single corner had been cut. And the afterparty was amazing. I will say the only part, and this was the other difference of 10 years, is at some point we realized the next day was Monday and we had to be parents again. So, my wife and I did great. I mean, we stayed out till three, but the next day I was literally taking two of my kids to the Bluey experience.

You followed up the SNL 50th with a trip to the Camp Store? 

Yeah. And I wasn’t even hungover, it was just emotional exhaustion. And then to be at the Bluey store, and every parent at the Bluey store is hoping there’s someone there they could talk to about something cooler than Bluey, so there were a [number of] parents who were coming over, like, “I can’t believe you’re out.” And I’m like, “Yeah, me either.”

The juxtaposition of the two experiences is really quite beautiful.

It really was. (Laughs.)

I’m assuming there aren’t too many celebrities who you have yet to meet, but were there any noteworthy run-ins that weekend?

There was a true highlight of the night for [my wife] Alexi and me, and it was Bonnie Raitt. We both love Bonnie Raitt a great deal and, for us, it was very special because Bonnie Raitt had seen Lobby Baby [Meyers’ comedy special about his wife delivering their son in the lobby of their Manhattan apartment building], and so she was very excited to talk to Alexi about her heroics. The only photo we took at the 50th was of us with Bonnie Raitt.

You’ve been hosting Late Night for 11 years now. Do you have a sense for what differentiates your show?

One thing that I love hearing is I’ll come backstage for a first-time guest and they will say, “Everybody tells me this will be really fun.” And that’s great. The feedback, I think, is people like doing the show because they feel like it’s a conversation. We don’t ask a ton of them, it’s just come and talk. And a lot of the credit goes to our segment producers. But it’s just a loose, good vibe. Host isn’t in a suit. We have a nice green room…

I remember sitting with you just before the show launched, and you telling me who you thought the ideal guests would be. How different is it from what you imagined?

Very different.

How so?

Well, the one thing I was most wrong about is that I thought politicians would be more interesting. I think it’s very interesting to talk about politics, it’s less interesting to talk to politicians. And we’ve built a show where if the conversation’s good, it’s good television and it doesn’t almost matter who it’s with. Honestly, I think it’s better to have a good conversation with an author than a bad conversation with an A-list star.

I suspect that’s right.

So, ultimately, if we get better at having interesting conversations, that’s what people are tuning in for and it becomes less and less dependent on who’s on. With that said, does it have more value If you have a good conversation with George Clooney? Of course. But if we realize there’s someone who is a giant star who’s maybe better at being a giant star than they are at being a talk show guest, that’s great, we don’t need to chase that person.

A year ago, you told me how it was increasingly hard to find humor in politics, and that was before Trump was reelected. How are you holding up?

I was like a lot of people early on on election night, when you realized [what was happening], it was certainly a real feeling of dread about how we do this again. I’ll admit to thinking, in 2016, like, “This is terrible, mistakes have been made, but at least I know it will not happen again.” And then it happens again, and you just couldn’t emotionally approach it in the same way. It would have felt really empty. I do think we’re in this unique situation where, as comedians, as opposed to the news, you can tonally talk about things however you want to talk about them. So, there wasn’t a big meeting or anything at the show, but we did say, “All right, we have to still be joyful in the making of this show. And even when we’re talking about how bad things are, it has to be through an expression of joy with people who also want to feel like they’re coming for an hour of joyful performance.”

That sounds wonderful in theory. How do you do that in practice?

Well, you realize that it’s a privilege to have a show like this, where you get to talk about things you want — and without it, we would be at a deficit for how to deal with the news each day. So, then it’s like, alright, what are we going to do with this privilege? We’re going to assume that we’re talking to an audience who’s as frustrated as we are, and it’s going to be cathartic for us to do it and hopefully it’ll be cathartic for them to watch it. Because the one piece of value you can offer [to your audience is letting them know] you’re not alone in how you feel about this. And we’re not going to sugarcoat anything that’s bad, but we’re going to be silly and we’re going to have tangents and we’re going to have dumb impressions because part of your humanity is holding onto the ability to laugh at things. If you only feel rage and anger, I feel like they win.

How do you satisfy the viewers who are looking for an escape from the Trump news cycle at the end of their day, or are those viewers simply watching the wrong show?

It’s one path we could’ve taken, which was to say, “Let’s pull back on ‘A Closer Look,’ let’s start doing more [celebrity or pop culture fare],” but the reality is nobody wants to see that show. One could argue that was what our show was in 2014. Actually, I had someone come up to me last night and say, “I’ve been watching you since your first show, and I just want to say, based on how bad that first show was, I never thought I’d love your show as much as I do.” 

Thank you, I think? Are there ever days where that joy feels almost unattainable?

In the writing, but never in the performance. It can be a real slog to put it together, when you’re watching the clips. It’s not like we’re laughing it up while we’re working on “A Closer Look.” But we know that the release valve is the show.

The landscape has changed dramatically. Do you look at shows like Hot Ones or Chicken Shop Date, and envy any aspect of how they’ve been able to innovate within the talk space? 

I’d never want to innovate away from “A Closer Look” – that’s our biggest thing and it takes up a great amount of real estate. But we talk about Hot Ones or Chicken Shop Date, and I’d say that “Day Drinking” is certainly in that world, the problem is you just can’t do it that much. It turns out alcohol has a bigger effect on a person’s recovery than hot sauce. So, there are things like that that we love doing, but we’re limited by how often we can do them. That said, I think we’re pretty happy with the show we have. I don’t ever want to be anti-innovation — and “Closer Look” is always evolving, but probably not through any grand innovation as opposed to just we all get a little better at it as we go.

The biggest change to your show in the last year is losing the band. Though the entire business is being forced to contend with contraction, I can’t imagine those conversations were fun. 

No, they weren’t. But [Mike] Shoemaker [Late Night‘s showrunner] and I have been at the company for a very long time, and we don’t always agree with the people in charge, but we do always believe them. And it is nice to know that they’re coming to you sometimes with bad news from an honest place, and, in this case, the news is industry-wide. So, we didn’t take it personally and we came up with a solution. And while it’s really hard to lose the band and, on a personal level, I miss them all a great deal, we don’t feel as though the show has been massively affected on a quality level. I don’t feel like we hear from anybody, “It’s just not the same.” And it’s funny, when we talk about innovation, we’re never going to innovate by making the show bigger, but weirdly we innovate by making it a little smaller.

More intimate?

Yeah. We made this choice when we came out of COVID, which was like, “Hey, I think we maybe liked how this show got small and a bit more inside.” I just feel like we live in an era now where big tent’s really hard to pull off. Everybody’s got a tent. Literally, everybody’s got their own tent, so we were like, “Let’s just make a tent for the people who like what we’re selling.” And if you were looking for a silver lining during COVID, it was that it was a time to innovate. So, it’s very funny to have your answer to, “What’s your innovation?” be, “We just kind of scaled it back” but it’s true.

I often chafe at the word authentic but it does seem that the show has become more authentically you.

Yeah. Friends of mine that I’ve known forever are like, “This is the most you that you’ve been on TV since you began.” And part of that is when you start, you think you’re supposed to be something else. You’re just judging yourself against others and, internally, I don’t think any of us come into these late night shows with the confidence of, like, “If it’s just me, it’ll be enough.” Certainly I was not prepared to have faith in, like, “Sure, yeah, me.”