Conversations with SETH MEYERS

thank you so much all for coming out this evening my name is Maura Webster and I'm the program manager for conversations here at sag AFTRA foundation in New York I since I took this job have thought it would be so wonderful to have a career conversation with someone who does late-night television and was so excited that Seth Meyers is coming in to do this this evening he truly excels as a writer producer performer and host and it is my absolute pleasure to welcome him to the stage this evening hello everyone thank you so much for being here I wanted to start by kind of going back to some of your early career when you were doing improv and yeah I'll show it was your first yeah yeah and I was interested to kind of know a little bit more about what was some of your misconceptions about what improv was when you first got into that I think my biggest misconception was that the core goal was to say the funniest thing you could say immediately as opposed to being in a scene with a scene partner and and I think the the thing you learn and the skill that I learned improvising that is the most helpful to me now in the job I do today is how valuable listening is and and that ultimately you don't want to write your script before you hear what the other person is adding to it and if you can listen and react and then the audience appreciates oh they didn't know until this moment they were gonna say that because it only made sense based on the last thing that was said and so it's about being patient as a performer as opposed to just going for the first joke and we early on when I first started taking improv classes there was there was always one or two stand-ups in the class who thought they could also be an improviser and they were the worst to be in sketches with that like be hey by the way that's also an incredible skill but like there's a reason stand-ups are alone on the stage and then one of your early shows hiccups and pickups that you took to London Edinburgh yeah Singapore Singapore yeah yeah and what's really interesting to me about that is you do a show that is broadcast on American television but is watched around the world yeah and so that was that must have been such an early learning curve of how to really translate comedy for different audiences it was like yeah I got my start at a improv comedy theater in Amsterdam called boom Chicago and a lot of people think comedy and Amsterdam must be so easy because everybody stoned I can tell you from experience stoned audiences are not a great comedy audience they will often laugh at the hat you're wearing as opposed to the joke you're telling but it was nice you know going up performing anywhere abroad especially in those early years you just you had to drop all that the crutch sort of of pop culture references and and shared experiences and trying to find things who are more universally funny you are impressed by how many things are universally funny but the only thing that isn't is just trying to get away with sort of a cheap reference to something that everybody's seen because when you were abroad you never were quite sure what what anybody had seen yeah and you were doing the Chicago Fringe when you first kind of got noticed by SNL but what sort of career did you see yourself having and what sort of jobs were you putting yourself out for when that came about I I you know I had like a commercial agent in Chicago I remember getting really close to a part where my role would have been mr. summer man and how excited I was to play mr. summer man and a fast-food commercial I did a commercial for a furniture a company where I said I can't remember the name of the company but I was like and I blanked blanks customer first shopping they put the customer first that's me look at camera I'm the customer so that was really good I think people still talk about that in Chicago customer number well I was a you know I was in Chicago so there were you would audition for pilots and movies but you know I don't know you know thinking back and realizing maybe a little bit better how show business works now that it was a real long shot to get cast in a Los Angeles pilot from Chicago so I was aiming the reason I was in Chicago at the time was to do something like Second City and to ultimately be that have that be the springboard to whatever came next but that was what I had my eye on was second city and then I was just really lucky that this wonderful woman who worked in the town department at SNL just happened to see a show and and so I sort of got to skip the second city process an audition for SNL yeah it was a it's a trip and that is you know people it there's no way to get not as an audition and so the thing I always say is like you just do as many shows as you can cuz you never know the night she was just visiting family in Chicago and saw like Oh Improv Festival I should go check it out and that and again it was a long process it wasn't like I got the job the next day but it wouldn't happen if she hadn't come shooting is a great lesson in that you can't really plan your career which also leads me to asking about when you first went for Weekend Update you didn't get it but you did five years later yeah and kind of how that was a continued lesson and not getting what you want right away right well it is interesting because I really wanted Weekend Update after Jimmy left but they gave it to Amy Poehler and it was that rare case where you don't get a part and you're like you guys got it right you know it's not like it was like how could you go with Amy Poehler I was like yep you guys nailed it that's uh I was not the the first choice but you know it was always a part of the show that I thought I'd be best suited for so I was really lucky that when it rolled back around and after Tina left it was then the opportunity was to to be a co-anchor with somebody who I was you know closest with on the show so I and again I think ultimately I was lucky because by the time I did update it was the person that I should be doing update with and and it worked out obviously really well because then people saw my real skill which was sitting behind a desk you know some actors you want to see do anything but me it's like let's see that top half and keep it still when you first stepped into the position of being co-head writer with Tina was that kind of an interesting dynamic shift because you've gone from just being peers with everyone that you're working with and now you're the person dictating and saying you're gonna do this you're gonna do that part yeah the one you know the best Pete of it right you know cuz mostly just being a head writer at SNL is you know you you you sit at the head of a table one day a week and you do rewrites where you just are basically running a tail where people are trying to pitch jokes to make things that have already been picked for this Saturday rehearsal try to make them better and my producer today Mike shmoo shoemaker who is now running my show he gave me the best advice which was never pitch a joke that's as good as the one they have it has to be twice as good for them to want to take it because writers in all creative people are gonna be more in love with the idea they had than the one that is a parallel idea so that was ultimately what we did and also at SNL and why it's such a cool place to work is you know the writer of the piece has the last say and there are times that Lorne will you know impress on you pretty clearly that he'd like it to be something else but um you know I would always say at the end of those rewrite tables like okay you have a bunch now decide like we pinched a bunch of jokes and and I you never tried to change the DNA of the original idea you may notice sometimes you watch SNL and you might even find the show a little uneven that some sketches are very good and some you don't like at all I think that that's the magic of the show is because it's not it's not a head writer like you would have on a sitcom that would say oh this isn't this joke is not our kind of joke at SNL there's you know every week you might see 15 ideas of what's funny that week and they're not all for you but there's very few shows where you can have that kind of that sort of variance that much freedom yes freedom writers with freedom look out I was I think it's so remarkable the work that guests hosts do when they come onto the show and the amount of work that goes into that have you had situations on SNL where someone came in and they maybe just underestimated exactly what it takes to do it and then if so how would you will navigate that to make sure that the show that was executed was still really good it's really weird because the way the show works is you when you find that out it's too late because they come in and you meet with them on Monday and then you talk to them on Tuesday and you write sketches for them and a lot of actors and I would there was a long time where I did this as well oh think they can do anything and there are certain people that are better than some things and other things and you find out at the table read like sometimes someone be like oh my god I have a credible German accent you go great I'm gonna write my German scene and then all of a sudden it's at the table read on Wednesday and you want to stand up and just so hey I want to make it clear as a writer I was lied to but then you know it's not like you can't start from scratch so you get better as a writing staff to try to as opposed to you know writing what you want to write you try to watch their work and you try to say oh this is something they can do you know this is something they're very good at I will say though I have retro actively because I hosted for the first time this year and I was at that show for twelve and a half years that's very kind and that is the accurate amount of applause but I you know I worked at that show for twelve and a half years I pretty much had every job on that show is I was you know I I felt as though there was no corner of that show that I did not fully understand and then I guest-hosted it and realized oh this is so much harder and and it is such a just the amount of work and the amount of choices you have to make and I retro actively every single host of my time who's come on my talk show since I've said hey I want to apologize I never said it to your face but in the back of my mind I thought you were being difficult and I was wrong you were being absolutely the right way to be based on everything we were asking of you yeah similarly for guest hosts where you might suddenly realize that they are not nailing a certain impression or a certain role would you ever have that yourself where the cast would suddenly go oh wait I know that I was going to play this part but I'm not nailing it maybe this person actually gets a little bit more and switch it up I always stuck to the original plan the first person I would meet who would give up a part would be the first one or the next one hi there there was never anybody who's like hey I'd like to give up this part I'm not nailing it and by the way you don't want that like sort of irrational confidence I think is a really good thing for a show like I said no and I mean that in all seriousness but there were times very rare times where maybe Lorne would say you know I feel like this person would be better playing this part and those were never but it was never easy you know having to tell somebody there really happened very rarely yeah every now and then you would find out like between dress and air like oftentimes I would get apart not because someone thought it was better at it but the person who was playing it was so busy in the show they couldn't make the change and I was so available and they'd be like hey you can be Ryan Seacrest and I'd be like oh my god thank you is there any specific advice that you've given more recent weekend updates like Michael che and Colin Jost advice T based on your tenure there I didn't I mean by the time they got update they'd been around the show so much and I think I'd worked with Jos for probably almost you know seven eight years by that time so there's no you know you watch update and you learn update from that I think more than there's no real secret to it it's also you know what it looks like you just try to tell the funniest jokes you can in the funniest way there's no like see it's not like there's petals underneath the desk where you're also like working an organ so it you know and and I think why they're so good at it is they're doing it in a style that is is you know that's the key to anybody at SNL is you got a the show seems like it's really structured because it's been around for so many years but if you can't build that structure to your strengths or build your strengths that structure it's a hard road I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the other projects that you've done in your career as well and I wanted to dive into documentary now oh please such an incredible show thank you and you guys do everything from really well-known documentaries to more niche things yeah were you already a huge documentary nerd or did you have to dive into a bit I was a great lover of documentary I wouldn't go full nerd there been a few that I've had to watch for the purposes of the show that were recommended we get together in the seasons that we do with the years we do a season I should say we meet in the beginning and we throw out ones we want to do and more often than not we're just trying to find because we do six a year we're just trying to find you know things that are about different themes you know only one about music and you know this year we did one about the art world what about you know sports what about cults like we just try not to have any bumps the great thing is you have to wat when you're writing one and you have to watch the documentary a bunch of times and you know I wrote one this year about Marina Abramovic that then we got Cate Blanchett to play which is yeah it's all pretty much downhill for me after that yeah but you know you watch hers over and over again the artist is present and it was interesting I took this interesting journey being like oh my god this this performance art is so silly and I was like you know what it's kind of great and then by the end I'm like you're a genius and I'm sorry I ever doubted you yeah I'm also interested in how you arc the stories because it's very different to when you were doing something like SNL or even late-night where you're just taking something and making a pocket of content but you're really diving in depth so how is that challenge to you uniquely yeah it's so it's nice to have you know again I feel like on our show you know just so much about dealing with the day-to-day churn of the news whereas documentary now is that you know sometimes you in movies to show that a person is cerebral they show them making a ship in the bottle and you think wow that's a very what a smart person that is they're gonna be the one who catches the spy or they they'll catch the serial killer they're making a ship in a bottle but that is what that's what documentary now feels like is I feel like we're making this ship in the bottle then very few people will look at but ideally the ones that do will be like good ship it's a good ship and then also from a stylistic standpoint because every single one of them is so uniquely different it almost makes me think of black mirror in a way that everyone is a complete standalone piece in its own right and you really just let the original source material dictate that yeah and that's why we also try to find you know even if they're modern documentaries like we did one based on well country the fun of that is it's also you know you get to do 80's looks and eighties footage because that's what that documentary did so well so we're always trying to find like different looks and different styles and then you know find actors who understand the game is to play it very straight and very real and it's fun to make something that well it will endure longer as a piece of work you know I'm very aware that by a day after an episode of our late-night it's kind of like you know last Friday's newspaper like if you see it you're not like oh I've been meaning to read that one so it's fun to make something that you know ultimately you know and when documentary now lives on on something like that flicks it's fun like Oh in ten years somebody might watch one of those and it will be hopefully will have the same resonance because it was already about a documentary from the 50s so it's not like it's gonna be any less dated as it was when we made it and you recently were an executive producer on ap bio yeah which was so superb yes a great show and we're trying to hashtag save ap bio we'll see what happens those side works every now and then right but a great show created by a former colleague of mine Mike O'Brien from SNL and and just a great cast it was um you know you start a show like that we're trying to find somebody like Glenn Howerton who played the lead and then because it takes place in a school and you realize why there is this real you know there's a reason we have workplace comedies which is that's where there are a lot of people and and and so it was just really fun filling out not with just like Paul appellant and Patton Oswalt but with all the kids and all the other teachers and it's been a really fun show to be a part of when you're signing onto a show like that is it more about you're getting the chance to work with long-term collaborators that you really respect or is it about the opportunity to come in and really shape a story that is interesting to you back end no it really for us is and you know the other things that that we try to produce it all it we're really only working with people we know and trying to facilitate their work finding a home you know ultimately when you have somebody like Michael Bryan that's the kind of person you want to produce something for because he has a very clear vision and we'd rather in that same way that what I learned that I liked about working in SNL writers room of just try to get people's uniqueness to the screen so as opposed to saying like hey this is the kind of show we produce we just basically say to people like you're the kind of person we like to work with what's the kind of show you want to make it's fun I was also interested to see that you made a short film at one point that you were a co-director and you also had a bunch of credits from camera operator to location manager yeah what was the genesis of wanting to dive into that and how what did that teach you about all those different jobs that you hadn't experienced well I mean I was a I was a film student in college and what I learned was how hard it is to be behind the camera and just like how much were like how much work directing is and pretty quickly on I thought you know what I think I'd like to be an provides like like these jobs like you have to do so much work to be ready on the day whereas I'd love to just get a suggestion from the audience so to this day I've had so much respect for everybody on a film set and especially you know a show like ours you know we were lucky because we you know it's a family now we've been doing it for five years and and and we probably have 70 plus people who've been there from the beginning and so our crew knows exactly what they're doing exactly how to do it and and yeah I obviously couldn't do with them I mean you also were involved in the awesomes yeah how is that different to everything you've done given that it's animation and what did that allow you to explore creatively that was different in you it was it's interesting because again you come from SNL where you have to write something and turn it around in a week or my job now where you're writing something in the morning and turning it around whereas this was you write something and then you send it away and then five months later they're like here it is you're like what oh yeah you guys the animators but it was a I mean it was again we we do so many things we've been forced to do so many things over the years which is on the upside we had this access that's incredible talent and you know so you know the voice is on the show where everybody from you know Bill Hader - you know my route off - Amy Poehler - you know all these people and and then the downside is none they're all busy and so are we so we would just like basically like record him on like very low level equipment and send it off to the animators and they were like man these are the best voices we've ever worked with and maybe the worst quality sound but it worked out and you know we did three seasons on Hulu and it was you know anytime you can look back and say like hey that's 30 episodes of a TV show it's a great say and again like you know I'm you know comic books and superheroes that's something I always loved in the same way like documentaries and so anytime I can you know use what used to make me odd to like you know succeed in working with my friends it's nice and then I wanted to go back to you when you hosted the White House Correspondents Dinner which all right actually remarkably a couple of us were watching it earlier and the jokes really stand up we were still laughing at a lot of yeah very current yeah and then there's some parts that you don't laugh at at all yeah when you were going into that job did you have did you have a specific goal in mind or a specific mission of like this is what I really want to achieve with the comedy and the jokes I'm gonna tell I really just thought I went back and watched him and the ones I liked watching were the ones with really good jokes and so it was just and we got lucky that the SNL scheduled that year had a three week break that ended with that Saturday basically so I got together 10 to 12 writers who I really liked and we just wrote so many jokes and then every three days we would do a table read where we read all the jokes and we would just do it over and over again and it was just about because it's a lot it's basically a 15 minutes stand-up act where you can never use any of the jokes again like they none of them make you can't do your c-span material on the road and but it was you know I hesitated a long time before saying yes but I'm in general I think I'm very cautious but you know I very look back I'm very happy I did it especially since they now they only give it to biographers and I'm not good at that yeah I don't have to write a biography but it was a it was a thrill to do and I was really lucky to have a lot of friends and family there and you know I look back on it despite everything I look back on it fondly ya know you did a great job and you got to do it during the Obama era yeah is there anything that you think you would do differently if you had to do it now and you were in Michelle Wolf's position no I mean I know I you know I think you can look back at how history changed and but then I feel like that might be one of those you know you know with butterfly flaps his wings you go back in time and change one thing and I'd be like oh maybe if I don't tell this joke you won't be President but then you come back to the future and like we're all underwater like for a different reason so I don't know but it was funny how many and again I can appreciate the humor this like that night considering how many jokes I made about our president who was not our president yet but the amount of people were like that's the last we're gonna hear him and I was like haha you bet now you talk about him every night so then when you went on to host the Golden Globes you did it during a really interesting time when we were in the post me two times up and it was right in the epicenter of the storm for that how did you go about determining what was appropriate content to include but still being respectful of obviously the stories that had come out and the women who were in the room that night yeah again you know that was something we were asked to do pretty late in the game I have no I'm not I'm happy to tell you that we were not the first person who they asked and so and we also our first sentence it was like oh this is a terrible year to do it we should wait for a year where it might be more fun and credit to my wife who said you know what I think you're you are pretty good at times like these like you might be able to make the right kind of choices and then the other thing was we have these really smart talented women on our staff and we sort of brought them in and and you know they basically both were enthusiastic about getting the chance to you know obviously to some degree through me say what they wanted to say but also the idea that why I felt good is there were things even like the day before they had the you know they were empowered enough to come up to me be like hey that's really funny I don't think tonally that's the right thing and anytime they said that it was so I just felt so confident meeting like then that what joke will come out because they were we were trying to you know accomplish something obviously a little different than just let's go out and crush tonight it was more like let's just try to you know ultimately like this night is still happening so that everybody who achieved so much during this year can still have their work celebrated so let's try as much as we can to just sort of be the you know blow the smoke out a little bit you know just like let the Sun Shine through a little bit and hopefully that ended up being how it should go and with the reactions to some of your jokes any difference what you thought cuz in in watching it back what struck me was when you made jokes about Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey and the room got very quiet and kind of went ooh and then you had the great sorry was that to mean to Kevin Spacey had you anticipated that that might any point I think there was an anticipation that you didn't quite know you know I I'm I'm glad I preferred that to like a you know a standing ovation you know was it was trying to you know you are still the comedy part of the night and we had made a decision as well like when you host something like the Golden Globes you're basically is a host given like 12 minutes to do with what you want over the course of the evening and we just decided let's front-load it and then just come back and introduce people because we didn't know how the night was gonna go ultimately it was a great night I would say more because of Oprah than anything else like that's you know as a good failsafe like don't worry so much if you like if a couple of these jokes bomb don't worry Oprah's coming they're not gonna remember you we're here but yeah that was worth I will say you know you go into it with your jokes you know we thought it was very important to say certain names as opposed to making seem like you know we were too afraid to say them but uh you know you that's you know I don't want to say the fun of comedy but the thrill of it is not knowing and then moving into it late night yeah when it was first announced that you were taking over the show it was May of 2013 and then your first show was February 2014 yeah that's a lot of time to map out the show yeah what was the most important prep work that you and your team did during that that's a lot of time but I miss played it in that I stayed at SNL until three weeks before Leigh and I started but not I will say I don't know how badly on has played it one I was - I was not emotionally ready to leave SNL so I couldn't and it would have been either leave it was really like thirty I was like found out on Wednesday it's like so either Saturday's your last day and I didn't want that to be the case so I was like I'd like to stay for the first half of next season and it I would not recommend to anybody only taking three weeks between the two with that said everything we came up with in those three weeks was wrong so had it been six months I'm pretty sure everything we would have come up with in six months would have been wrong like you can't you couldn't figure it out by any other means but doing it so at least when the things we came up with didn't work I didn't feel like I'd wasted six months coming up with him I felt like that's only been three weeks of being wrong and you know we had a writing staff that was started working probably two or three months out and it was Alex Bayes who ran weekend update' came over to be my head writer and some people I know in a long time and my career came over the writing staff and they were very helpful in the times that I was doing basically both jobs they were very helpful in saying to the people in the writing staff they didn't know me like that Seth won't do that he's not like that's not a style more often than not like Seth isn't incapable of doing that he is not good at this this or this you know what you should do though have him sit behind a desk behind a desk he loved him behind a desk but uh so yeah it was um you know but I think in the beginning we had this interesting thing where we thought again we're like what's our strengths that we can update oh it's me one of the things people love about me is like it's me next to a crazy character and so we thought of our writing staff oh we'll do it with our writing staff now and in the early days of the show we would do that but you know what we had missed was it a tie so now even if they hadn't seen the character Bill Hader Kristen Wiig or Will Forte played before they knew it was Bill Hader Kristen Wiig or Will Forte so the audience was a little bit more open to whatever it was whereas with my unknown writers they was a less fun for the audience and so we sort of scaled that back but then I would say a full two years later we came full circle and the way we use our writers now that has resonated and started working about two or three years into the show is hey go out as yourself and talk about your perspective on a thing that I also care about but would not have as advanced at perspective on so it's less here's a crazy character and it's more here's our writer amber Ruffin to share her take on something and so you know again we were right and that our writers would be a valuable part of the on-camera experience of a show we were just wrong how and but we would have been there was nothing that would happen in the pre-production that would have let us know we were wrong except for putting in front of an audience so and again audiences are very helpful which is why I'm glad this is the closest front row I've ever ever sign for them we moved him forward for you I just like that this is a building run by actors and created by actors no actor has ever said this close I like to do a show where they're right next to me you should have put another row here was facing me we can change the station one of the things I think is so unique about being a host on television is this dichotomy of you're there as yourself but it is still a performance yeah did you have any conversations with your team and kind of sit down and think about this is the side of me that I really want to show that I want to bring forward these are the things that I'm comfortable to talk about personally but maybe there's limits between what you can and can't say about your family for example well that's all you know that's something I decide it's not like my writing staff would ever come in and say we wrote a story about your son everything and then it's alright you're like how do you know this so you know that's again that's something you just feel that but you know I do think that audience is now more than ever and I think this is true in politics for politicians as well they have a real sense of authenticity and when people speak back to a previous era maybe even if late night shows where you you know you never knew what they felt about politics I think it'd be very hard thing to pull off right now like to have no sense of where anybody fell on anything would seem in this day and age might just come off as a little insincere whether it was or wasn't and it's throughs like what I mean when I say politicians like sometimes politicians come on my show and they behave exactly the way they would if they were I meet the press or Morning Joe and that is a missed opportunity because my audience knows that this is a different kind of show and they want to see it's an opportunity for politicians to show a different side of themselves not a fake side of themselves but here is you know nobody as well nobody would ever ask me this question I'm morning Joe so I might as well give it the real answer as opposed to tying it into like how I think it'll help jobs and I appreciate that they're out there trying to do different things so but yeah ultimately you just I think over the course of the show the writing staff learns my tastes with that said we have a Thursday table read every week and when we first started doing it we would say hey this week try to write a desk piece that we could do once a month like we would call it a refillable idea which is the the concept we could just whatever happens in the news could fit in a thing and then they would come in and you could tell who is that thing of tell they were aiming for a thing and in sports they always say throw it don't aim it because like when you aim it this isn't right the mechanics are off and so finally we realized we weren't there was nothing coming from it so we said okay from now on just write whatever you want on Thursday and some of them are so bad and they make me so angry because it's something I would never do but we by inviting them to just write what they want I will say that there's not one that ever goes by that there's a thing that happens that we use that we never would have got had I asked for it because I never would ask for it and so you do because again obviously there's a lot of our show that's structured in the first act of our show is very much about the day's news but you know in the fourth fifth act of our show we also like to take advantage of the fact that it's 1:15 you know 1:20 you know people are either you know asleep or crazy take advantage you know yeah take advantage of your audience at that time did you feel like you had to navigate talking about politics any differently because when you had been on other shows previously you're a character and now here you are saying I'm Seth and this is my opinion about this and this is my belief system about this and this is how I feel about this matter a little bit more you know we just we found it kind of organically I don't think we in a good way I don't think we ever had to sit down and have that conversation I think if we did and we might have fumbled it a little but we just sort of again we it was a the helpful thing is you know if you write what you believe you're going to perform it better than if you were you know having to say things you don't believe so that's why all actors should read the script before they take the part so that is ultimately just became it was organic and hopefully that shows how much of a voice do you think nightly shows should have in the 2020 election because I think they've become much or influential to political opinions over the last few years I think that you know I I think there a lot of us that do it try very hard to be we appreciate that we're talking about important things and and certainly with our show we try very hard to be fair we don't to us fair does not mean a joke about them a joke about them like even jokes it's more just like don't say things that are lies and don't make things up by the way there's never been less of a reason to make something up then right now like imagine if I was like today I mean like like you watch that Stephanopoulos interview like he's making it up you know so I you know but we got said like you know I do really believe that I always you know I think shows like ours we're really good secondary source for your news I don't think we're the best place to hear at first but we're a good place to hear it second if you want to feel a little bit better about the first time you heard it yeah and because the news is so insane oh and things happen it used to feel like everything kind of happens during the day and yes happen much more constantly late at night at hours are you having to react a lot more differently in terms of oh that happened we tape in an hour can we squeeze in a joke - the opening monologue yeah within an hour you can squeeze it into the monologue the reality is if it happens it you know after 3:30 4:00 it's very hard to get into a piece like a closer look but you can always fit one if it's one joke where you just need a picture of something then you can get it in late and we try very hard to we get our last round of jokes at them we the last round of jokes I read is 5:40 and so we tape at 6:30 so you can get one or two more in but um we've realized with a closer look because we put so much care into getting it right that if something breaks too late for us to have to rush it we think our audience understands that and we'll know that it will be coming the next day of course the reality is it's amazing how often like something happens at 5:30 you're like well I will get it tomorrow and then by tomorrow you like that what that yako me was fine I think Michael Flynn's firing was the first time we did a Pete literally did a piece which was like who's Michael Flynn and by the time aired he was fired so he at 6:30 he had a job and we talked about his job and then by like 12:30 and that one you can't even take credit for it cuz it's not like anybody was that unless it was trumple's at the taping yeah and I wanted to talk a little bit about the guests that you have on I was really interested to read something that said that you're actually the nightly show with the highest percentage of female guests I think it was around 38% Wow I was going to ask if it was something you were cognizant of but do you really kind of how involved are you in who your guests are gonna be in the booking and are you saying I really think that we should get this person in I think that we haven't had anyone from this field we should get a Republican in we've had a lot of Democrats whatever it is to eat that one the least I will say I'll just be honest like we do like but we don't have as many knits interesting right now we had more last time because obviously a lot more we're running that you don't have that now so we have a lot of democratic politicians on now obviously because it's a giant field where as we did in 2016 have a quite a number of the Republican candidates on it's very hard right now like people who speak for Donald Trump don't want to come on our show nor do I particularly think it would be a good conversation if they were there and at some point it's just like you know I don't quite know like what the purpose of it is instead of some you know fake idea of civility I think there's real civility which I strive very hard for but I don't necessarily want to bring on somebody that I don't think it would be possible to have that with but we try veer head I mean representation is really important to us and you know but with guests it's it's less that I go in and talk about that part of it as so much that we talk about having people you know we like having authors on or we like having you know we had our first poet the other day and he was such a good guest and I was like God a man I if I could write poetry as well as he was a guest on a talk show I'd uh be published and it's fun you know it's fun obviously you know you'll never get tired of talking to actors there's a reason that there they're good in front of people and they're good on camera but it's also fun to sort of use particularly that third guest slot that could be anybody it's fun to have different people on and how much contact or conversation do you have with them before they actually go on because you have them on air for such a finite amount of time yeah and obviously they're there to promote something but you still want to make sure that you get their personality and that authenticity that you're talking about yeah it's amazing when you watch it's very unless them we talk very little I've realized about the show itself you know I think that people go on talk shows to remind people this show is on you know that's ultimately the best thing you can do and you can show a clip but the reality is it's very strange to talk about a thing the audience hasn't seen yet and it's very hard to connect with an audience and I learned that over the course of doing the first year of the show is I tried very hard to watch everything ahead of time and then I'd say oh my god this is so great and that's so great and they'd say aren't they great they're so great and they're great and the audience is like it'd be like if you're at a dinner party sitting between two people who saw a movie you haven't seen you know at some point you're like can we talk about something we all like so you know today for example you know Kevin Bacon is on the show talking about his new Showtime series and it was far more interesting to show a clip and then talk to him just about what it's like to be an actor working in Boston which he had really funny stories about then to ask him about you know how you found a character that the audience hasn't spent any time with yet so you know that is you know ultimately just like a thing you learn in the doing and how do you navigate there was an interview that I saw a few years ago that I was really impressed with when I saw it back in the day where you had Robert De Niro on and he has really interesting things to say but he's a quieter person yeah and I could see that you knew that going in so how much are you looking at what their personality is gonna be like in an interview and kind of prepping for that well that is why I do like you know obviously Robert and I have worked together enough on SNL and stuff not enough for me to say Bob and I I do want you to know I thought about it and then I I thought it would seem a little like as we're talking about in a settings like Bobby and I you know we we go back yeah oh so I you know I know but I always I like the reason I like to go I do say hello to the guests ahead of time is just to if there's somebody you know tonight for example everybody been on the show before and that's happening more and more often which is really cool but if it's someone I haven't met before I like to go back and just again you hear what their volume is or the kind of person they are and you know obviously I don't have to tell you a lot of times people the way they are on camera is different than they are backstage and and that just gives me a little sense of it but you know longer you do any show like this you realize there's a hundred different kinds of guests and ultimately you want to just figure out the best way to facilitate getting that to the audience some people want you they want a lot of help other people there are some people who come out and you ask them their first question and then they just literally turn and perform to the audience and it's you just realized oh you're just here to like give them cue lines for their show and that's also wonderful and you I just learned like it's not like I'm gonna be like hey hey over here I contact I don't care what I just wanted them to be the best version of themselves and you know oh there are some people who you can tell they wanna they're gonna say it exactly the way they set it to the segment producer and there are other people who don't want to talk to the segment producer and we'll say something like oh just tell them I'll talk about whatever they want and and it's fun both of those are really fun because some people you know what I used to do shows you know and remember when I would do I had a file on my laptop of like late night stories just in case I ever went on and and so and then like the first time I went on David Letterman I my wife I was dating her and her dad had a pet goat and I told a story about the pet goat and let Herman love that and so every time I went back on the first thing they'd say is has anything happened with a goat and then I found myself like trying to create moments with the goat just so the next time the next time I go in Letterman I'd have something to say I'm like I'm gonna go get a coffee I might bring the goat maybe like one are you just hoping something goes wrong that's funny enough to tell David Letterman but I would write them out you know and I want to have the stories and so so I appreciate that too because I'm like sometimes like oh this person's put so much work into being a good talk show guest and you obviously as the host appreciate that one of the things that you do so well as an interviewer is you really allow their personality to shine but you also allow yours to come through and how do you navigate that balance of knowing how much and when to push yourself through against I think you know one thing is the longer you have the show the more you feel comfortable with a personality the more you realize the audience knows that personality you know I there's somebody tonight because I always go to the audience during the show and talk to the audience and see if there's anything that want to ask me and somebody who's saying you know do you have our crowds different and in the beginning of my show they were very different because from night tonight because I feel like now people come to see my talk show but in the beginning people were coming to see a talk show maybe they were even people who tried to go see the Tonight Show and they were like we're sold-out but stick around for now yeah if you want to see a different talk show and they were like hey you talk shows a talk show I'm like and that rarely happens except like last year during the QA a very nice lady an older woman in the back raised her hand and and I said yes and she goes do you always make fun of the President and I was like yeah I was like I I feel bad that you had a bad time but you should have read that yelp review yeah very very consistent I also think one of the interesting things about the timing of when you took over late-night is the landscape of these nightly shows has changed tremendously even since then yeah you didn't have weekly shows with John Oliver with Samantha bee yeah we didn't have Trevor Noah on The Daily Show so it really kind of it's been a complete turnaround on all of them how much attention do you pay to what other people are doing on those shows what formats they're doing because everyone has a lot more freedom to try things different style yeah I mean is crazy how I was I feel like I was the new guy for a week and late night and it was I mean pretty much I mean everybody even even Colbert's started his current show after us so that's how you know it five years has been a lifetime as far as how many news shows there are yeah I mean I think like a lot of people I catch everyone's bed stuff maybe the next day if there's something they were just talking about I don't have the bandwidth not just as somebody's doing a show but like is somebody with like a family to like wake up in the morning and watch what everybody did yesterday but you know I but I you know there's a ton of professional respect for what people are doing I had to remind myself at one point when I was just watching like all everybody's best thing that I'm like oh I bet they had a ton of duds last night too but that's just not the thing that's going viral because I'm like ho man well that's so much better than our worst thing and I'm like oh but that's our best thing when you're putting together a closer look as a segment is there anything different about that because you're doing such a deep dive but you really are responding to a story that's usually just happened that day yeah how do you navigate that we're really lucky we have of the head writer for that segment is a writer named Sal genteel and he has this he had a cable news background he's really good at writing in a way that has an arc it's like a thesis statement and you know ultimately what we're trying to do is just get as many jokes into the news as possible and we write them even longer which might be surprising people who sometimes are kind enough to watch a 12-minute piece we write them even longer than that and then we do them in front of a rehearsal audience and you know we we don't take out the information but there are times where we take a section because the joke didn't work and then just he finds a very good way of like making the connective tissue fit so that the story still makes sense but um it is a totally different kind of writing than everything else on the show and you know again you talk about how much things have changed in five years when we started our show I think that the conventional wisdom was shorter was better on anything at a late-night talk show as far as how would live on the next day and we're just constantly we have so much gratitude for the face for the fact that there's that the audience has a an attention span for long enough things but we think one of the keys that attention span is you have to tell a you have to lay out a story as opposed to I think if you did 12 minute piece that was just unconnected jokes people would eventually just hire of it so it's that thread that connective thread is the biggest part of it yeah I also feel like I'd be remiss and not to talk about daytime drinking oh yeah day drinking yeah what I think is really fascinating about that is that I hadn't realized you actually only have the guest for about two hours yeah and how did you find that middle ground between what is drunk enough to make good TV but not too drunk to just be a car wreck yeah well the very fact that you think I'm thinking that much about it if you have seen day drinking day drinking started with my brother and then I did it with my mom and then Rhetta Fanta she was the one who said I want to do it we never even considered doing it with like nan Myers and then and then we did with Kelly Clarkson and then we did it with Ina Garten and the reality is we ultimately I the only way for me to have fun is I have to be drunk enough to stop worrying about how it's going and so I just now just drink I drink so much that when we like stop to reset I have to drink through the stops cuz otherwise I just crash and with Ina Garten I did so many shots at one point we had to edit out shots because when we showed it to our test audience people were like oh god oh he's gonna die and it's really bad cuz I I will admit that I am a I I have I think like a lot of writers particularly like I'm a little bit of a control freak and and during the show during my early years at SNL Lauren would always say hey on Saturday you have to let the writer let writer Seth go home for the weekend cuz you are mouthing other people's lines and scenes that you wrote like literally I would write a scene I would say my line and then while the other person was talking I believe which is not good and then and so I do that but like in day drinking I am also worried about how it's going and so I just have to like drink enough to stop caring and with Kelly Clarkson I she left at the end of it she left and I said to my producer oh I didn't say goodbye to her and he said you've said goodbye to her twice and each time you said the exact same thing so I had a long emotional goodbye with her that she endured because she's patient and kind then I did it again then I fell asleep on the roof of the standard woke up it was like oh I didn't say goodbye also every time my wife is so patient and so supportive there's never been a time that I have done day drinking and we have not had an argument when I get home and I'm always like I'm gonna come home super drunk and then I always do because like we do it for like 12:00 to 2:00 and I'm like dad comes in it like 2:30 knocks over a lamp and she's like oh my god you're a grown man I'm like it was for work look at daddy I also wanted to ask about Game of Thrones cuz that's how that's featured so heavily on your show yeah what are you and Leslie Jones gonna watch now I don't know you know I think we're gonna just follow I mean basically was just watching her Twitter feed the first time that made us think Oh Game of Thrones with her would be so much fun and so we just came to that naturally I know I don't know if we'll force anything but it was so much fun and it is it was really this year and I think like a lot of people I was heartbroken that was coming to an end and we did the second episode in the last episode this year and after the second oh no the first in the last cuz after the first one I came home and my wife said I'm so bummed we didn't watch it together cuz that's a show we watch together and I was like oh I'll watch it with you I did not hear a word of it Leslie cuz Leslie talks the whole time and said it's hard to talk like for an hour not just talk but like with really funny observations about the show so it was you know ultimately like one of the secrets of my um of my success in my career is like the if you can ever find yourself sitting next to a force of nature like comedic ly be a Amy Poehler or Stefan or Leslie Jones like those are good moods yeah and you have the amazing segment joke Seth can tell yeah which I love that you do that and the recognition thank you everybody other voices coming on yeah and how that platform was there a particular topic or joke that led to the genesis of that I don't remember the particular joke but it was Jenny Hagel and amber obviously came over there but jenny was Wright's monologue jokes and uh you know she's Puerto Rican and she's gay and there were we were just like laughs sometimes where she would write a joke and I would say like you know I can't say this she's like I know I just wanted to write it because and then but the reality was but without jokes I've can't tell there was the you didn't literally had to throw him away and so it it was basically just like recycling to be like oh this is a little have a greener planet if we find a way to use these jokes and it was so much fun and we didn't know how the audience would receive it but again it's just being very I mean the premise is the truth and so the audience fully buys into the idea and there's even now like you know I would say once a week someone writes one without trying that we all realize like oh that's a joke Seth can tell that'll be bad that will crush their whereas here the audience will go well you cognizant when you were stuffing up your writers room about ensuring diversity cuz it's quite shocking the amber offends the first african-american writer on yeah first female african-american writer late night yeah I mean we we did care about that and you know we you know especially you know with women coming from SNL you know I feel as though I worked there at a time where you know women were the strength of the show in many ways and certainly on the writing staff working with people like Tina and Paula Pell and Emily Spivey and Liz cackowski there were so many those strong voices that we never wanted and we use realize how much more interesting a show is when people are writing things not it's not like oh they'll write things that you don't think it's funny but they'll think it's funny it's more oh they're gonna read things you would never come up with in a million years because you would never even it would never even occur to you to write about that or write like that so we were we were lucky and I just love that you're giving that platform to these female voices and also I know that Andy Samberg talks very openly about how you were such a mentor to him when he first started on SNL is it something that you really cognizant Lee tried to do to kind of be a mentor in the industry at this point and what I you know I try to uh I like to think that people can talk to me about what they what they're having problems with but you know I think also at my show that's less necessary because Mike shoemaker who as I mentioned before he's been he was my mentor at SNL and he serves that for a lot of people there as well he's just better at it than I would be Samberg though I'm now I'm gonna tell him I burn on Sandberg story but I always like Sandberg is I believe now I hold the position that I will never be you cannot disabuse me of this that he is a comedy genius and has inspired him in and achieving um have just inspired a generation of comedy when I first met him I thought he is so juvenile I will never laugh and I think it does and he used to do things like 2:00 in the morning on a Tuesday night we were spending the whole night writing he would come to my office while I was writing anybody open the door be like hey I'm going to the bathroom you want to come with and I'd be like no I don't want to come with you like it's a really long walk I'd love the company I'm like no and then he would close I had a frosted glass door so you could see the silhouettes of people and he would just close the door and just stand there and over the course of like the first three months that we worked together he won me over from like who's this kid to like oh my god this is the funniest person I'm ever gonna meet my life yeah I also wanted to talk about because you are the you know you are the man in charge of the entire crew and everyone who works on the show and one of the things actually from the Megan McCain interview was when she talked about when she was an intern and how she found you really gracious did you sit back and think about the tone that you want you to create because it really is top down yes I mean it's um you always want to work with people who are happy to be there and I think that as a as someone in charge you mostly can set that tone of positive or negative and you know ultimately leave that sometimes it's not even a show business thing but it's a you know my parents we're really good that way you know my dad is somebody who you know he came from business but as soon I even when I got to be head writer I remember him just giving me really good advice on on what people want like the kind of feedback people want and you know healthy ways to give it and you know ultimately I'm I feel very happy to be at my job if you're really lucky to be there and and and I can't imagine like using any of that to then be hard on people yeah I need you know I think we all we all want the show you know we all want tomorrow's show to be better than today's but I think that there's a positive way to get there as opposed to you know making people feel uncomfortable or as though they are less than yeah I also wanted to ask you a little bit about the fact that you still do stand-up comedy and you still kind of take that on the road what does that allow you to exercise creatively that you don't get to do through your show uh yeah that's a good question I mean it's a different skill and it's one that you know you put time into building it you don't want to like let it I remember Craig Ferguson came on my show once when he still had his show and he was on tour and I was asked him that question and he basically said if you stop for six months you'll never do it again so I don't do it all the time but I do like getting out and doing it and it also you know provides me a chance to not talk about it's not that race to talk about yesterday or today's news and catch up with it it's more you know to step back and talk about your life and talk about your family and it's strangely you know at a time where I feel like things are more segmented for different audiences like it is nice to have a universal experience like you know family that is it fun to be on share and it's fun to just you know spend an hour with people onstage and and yeah it's a good time I wanted to jump to some of the audience questions that we got for you find out who you guys I've been very hard to clock you but now we're gonna find out and I'm very good at this I'll point it I'm very ill tell you guys who wrote it yeah okay so the first one is from Dexter you said you were nervous working on SNL how nervous were you when you got this show I was nervous to get late-night but not as nervous as SNL and I think that's the great thing about SNL is you have to live through it and it's a real like their time so it was really bad certainly I would say the most depressed I've ever been in this business certainly happened there with that said everything after feels a little bit easier it's like you know just like you feel like you're walking around with like giant weights on your leg and then the next job they take the weights off and you're like oh this is hard but no weights yeah thank you Dexter so the next one is from Whitney while studying improv what was some of the best notes that you received I mean the best notes are the simple notes it is you know yes and it is listening you know ultimately be the best one I got and for anyone who's done improv you know you would always do a show and then you would go out for drinks and everybody would talk about you know and sometimes you break into a group with somebody else to be like you know I wouldn't I was doing that I wanted them to do this and then they did that it was like yeah I know one and then one of my friends once said to me he goes hey did you hear that every minute you spend complaining about an improv show you spend a thousand years in hell and I was like oh that's really good advice like it's such since you're making like this you know temporary art the worst thing you can do is like the next day be worried about like you know how that scene went yeah I think that segues quite nicely into his neck question next question from DB Frick who's asking do you think what's funny ever changes is it changing faster than before and what you see is the future of what's funny I that I couldn't speak to I mean I think that yeah I know that there are things that happen when I was on SNL that are still funny you know it's not like I think that in reality you know styles change but the core of humor is probably more consistent than we give it credit for and the kind of thing you know sometimes people say oh this we're in a really interesting area of comedy but we're also just in general and a really interesting era you know comedy is reflecting what's happening and so it's very I think unfair to ask a comedy to be the constant you know and let everything else be the variable the sex one is from Jenny saying if you could give your younger self one piece of advice on how to deal with the hardships of the business what would you tell yourself you know I would say that you should use your youngest years in this business to try there's most you can because failure just gets you think it will get easier somehow and failure gets harder with each passing day it's like you're getting a little bit higher off the ground before you fall and those early years where you're very close to the ground and it's just gonna be a gentle thud like that's where you want to get out and try stuff and you just learned so much from failure I guess the next one was kind of similar like what sort of tips would you have for a comedian trying to get into the game early they a 19 and have been performing for a year and a half that's great I would say you're so far ahead than I was I mean when I was that age I was you know again doing a few things in college but never I would never have the I don't know the courage of that age to get up on stage and do things and if you're doing that you're off to a great start but again you know I'm not saying audiences are always right but you can if you do the same if you're trying to say material you know trying in subtle ways like there's a reason comedians are always working there act like you have to you have to do it and you have to listen you know I think they're nights where you go up and things don't work and you can write it off as a bad audience and then there's a time where you think oh no I think I was a little off and then you tried to tinker with that part this next question is going the opposite way where do you see yourself in five years I'm very bad at looking into the future yeah you know I you know knock on wood I hope in the exact same yeah here we go there's the same studio that I'm in now I'm I'm really happy you know we just hit five years and when I started the job I kind of thought like I think with a show like this you with SNL you thought of it it's year by year and I kind of thought of this one it's like you know let's let's see if we can get through this first five-year chunk and I certainly hope I feel as good about it in five years as I did after the first five thank you everybody are there things that you look back on from doing the show when you first started five years ago that you now are just like I would never do that that way now I mostly it was how I allowed myself to feel emotionally I feel as though the first year of the show I I treated each one emotionally the way I treated in SNL in that if there was a bad if the last show of the week was bad it meant that I had a bad weekend and now I won I think the shows are better but also I am very cognizant now that that doesn't the audience is not judging no one's tuning into my show based on last night you know you're creating a body of work and ultimately if you just are trying to slowly bring up what counts as an average show it'll be better as a poet you know like my wife now doesn't have to worry about me coming home and having the third guest was a bummer and now I'm gonna be sad for four days because everything you're doing is life do you ever have moments where you just feel like either the jokes aren't quite landing or maybe you're interviewing someone and it just doesn't feel like you're really getting that much out of them and and do you have a road to recovery when you feel like that's happening on stage in front of an audience just more that what a gift it is to have the real estate to try to fix it you know the worst thing a you know bad eight minute interview can be is eight minutes you know it's not like you just signed some it's not like this is a were we doing a year on Broadway and you're finding out they don't know their lines so it's more like oh how you know there are some times where people have said to me like the you know the second producer will have talked to them on the phone and say oh they are a this might be a roller coaster and I love being forewarned because then I go into it with rollercoaster energy and it's a really fun thing to just be like alright let's just stay in this for a minutes it would be it would be sad if they were all they were all the same you know even if they were all great that would be a little disappointing cuz you want to value what great means and nothing nothing reminds you how good a good interview is then when you're in the middle of a real stinker this next question is your short parody films are often hilarious have you kicked around to any feature film ideas no I will say I was writing a feature when I got late-night and the first thought I had wasn't like oh my god they just gave me the same show that David Letterman had the Conan O'Brien I know Jimmy Fallon and my first thought was oh my god I'm not gonna have to finish that movie I was like I'm never gonna look at that again and I have so much respect for people who write screenplays because it is just like having to make something have the structure to keep a story alive I mean again you know documentary now is there 25 minutes we're telling a story but there 25 minutes 25 paid like that and it was just so I felt such relief like not how hard a late-night show would be it was just like anything is worth not having to finish this screenplay this next one is what character on SNL are you proudest of playing I wasn't really good at characters but I I played a guy named Dave clinger he was a doctor but he called himself doctor singer and I should say that if Bill Hader was here and he said Stephane there be a standing ovation and did you hear that barely anybody made any noise I mean it was like not even recognition so that speaks to the kind of character work that was my best one I got a name two others that would have been like the absence of sound I heard like a mouse scurry through the walls are there any segments you did on SNL that you slightly wish went on the internet we're not on the internet on the Internet that's a good question I don't say I mean I don't love watching myself I do that's something I wish I could see that in dress rehearsal once I realize now it's a precursor to a closer look but there was a segment because we've done a thing with Amy called really with Seth and Amy and then we did that a few times and I was like I got to figure out thank you hey guys should have said that so they can clap where I held it was like basically like I was taking like a closer look at something like a magnifying glass it was like talking like Sherlock Holmes and it it went so badly that under the bleachers my head writer then and now Alex Bayes was standing with Lauren and when it ended Lauren was watching the monitor and then Lauren turned him and went burn the tapes and to this day I always think I don't think you were supposed to tell me that base because you mentioned Amy briefly is so great when she comes on your show and it's some of the best interviews that you've done but how do you make sure that it doesn't just feel like an inside joke between the two of you I will say that I don't remember which friends they were but the first four or five times I had old cast mates of mine on the show they always went worse than I thought because I think I went into them slightly unprepared with oh how can it be boring for me to talk to this person we were colleagues for five six years and you realise there is still the thing like there is a craft to you know interviewing and not just you but like you still need the researchers do their job which they're so good at and the segment producer to do their job and then you know once you find areas like I mean I think that the you know basically when Poehler comes on you just need to know what the one thing you're gonna talk about like last time we talked about the documentary free solo I think the time before that she talked about Daniel day-lewis retiring from acting and the taiked a lot about that and so you know there's not many people you can come home you can have on and just talk about one thing where you just like you know give them room to say as much stuff as they want but you do you realize there is still a little bit of preparation that has to go into it and I just wanted to kind of end by asking what what aspects of the show are you proudest of evolving over the last five years and and what you still hope to achieve creatively with it I'm really happy that I've got a writing staff that is talented enough that they've really helped me find my voice and I'm really happy that we also have room on the show for our writers to use their voices and it's a real like they're days where you know I introduce someone on our writing staff and I feel 100% like an audience member I just get to sit and watch and and on those moments you think oh this is this can't be work I shouldn't be compensated for today I'm just sitting here and watching someone that I care about be really funny and and great and then as far as the evolution of the show you know it is a you never it's never like a grand pronouncement as far as like what we're gonna do next like you you just try to keep your ear to the ground as far as what the show what the writing staff can provide you try to listen to people on the show who have ideas and more often than not the small idea it will lead you to a slightly bigger one to slow the bay and before you know it but it takes a year before you look back and say oh remember it was like last June we had this idea now that's all this so it's just I think being open to the idea of change well thank you so much for coming out thank you everybody this was wonderful I really appreciate it [Applause]

Channel: SAG-AFTRA Foundation

Views: 32,583

Keywords: SAG Foundation, SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Acting, Actors, Seth Meyers, Mara Webster, Late Night with Seth Meyers, Documentary Now, Interview, Career Retrospective

Id: GYyq2iWIAWU

Length: 69min 27sec (4167 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2019