When Dana Carvey Almost Hosted ‘Late Night,’ and What He Wants to do in Streaming Next

Dana Carvey’s first big break came almost a decade before Saturday Night Live, when he won the San Francisco Comedy Competition in 1977. “Robin Williams handed me the check and Mort Sahl was over his shoulder,” Carvey recalled.

Carvey, now 61, just released his first stand-up comedy special in eight years Dana Carvey: Straight White Male, 60 on Netflix. But when Carvey was 22, he was a young prop comic with a guitar. Kind of like a young Jimmy Fallon. And Carvey could have followed the same path as Fallon after SNL, going from movies to a second career hosting late-night talk shows for NBC.

As Carvey told Decider: “It evolved over a very quick period of time. I was developing some movies. Bad Boys was one of them; that Will Smith did. Hans and Franz: The Girlie Man Dilemma. Tucson, a comedy western for me and Jon Lovitz that Bob Odenkirk and I wrote. And then the other lane I was being offered $3 million to do these goofy movies. So when they came out and bombed, because I knew they would, I sort of thought, OK, this game of movies, I’m losing control, so I went back to television. And that show I did with Louis C.K. and Robert Smigel was great (The Dana Carvey Show), but it just didn’t belong on essentially a Disney channel.”

He secured his family’s financial future through stand-up gigs in the 1990s and 2000s, while mostly staying out of the TV and movie limelight, instead helping raise his two sons, who themselves are now pursuing stand-up comedy careers.

“I’ve turned down $200 million. People don’t really realize how much stuff I turn down. I’m kind of unintentionally enigmatic,” Carvey told me. One of those things was Late Night for NBC in 1992-1993.

“Me and David Letterman, they put us on the cover of TV Guide. They paid me $1 million just to say I would consider it. They gave me an album signed by all four Beatles, Meet the Beatles, that’s worth $400,000 now, to woo me. And that was a tortuous year of trying to decide whether I should do that. Conan (O’Brien) had called me at home. He was going to be the producer. He said, ‘I only want to produce it if you’re in.’ So that was big. That was a tough decision. It might have been the right decision, but life is what it is, and Conan ended up being brilliant at it. One of my favorites.”

Carvey had some experience as a late-night, even if only spoofing Johnny Carson in sketches for SNL, at least!

“Well, I’ve always had an empathetic, people-pleasing side to me, so I would’ve done just fine. I think Fallon is currently the closest we have to Johnny Carson, in a way, as far as being naturally, how are you doing? I would have been fine, but you know, it’s a big slog. When you’re around those guys, it’s a different crown to wear. You’re just in this cult. And the show, it’s every night. It’s a big, big decision to take that on and spend 30 years in this box, basically,” Carvey told me. “It’s emotionally intense to be on TV that much. I could’ve done it, but I didn’t. No regrets now.”

Instead, he’s looking to the future, and adapting his comedy to the increasing number of streaming platforms out there.

“I’d love to try to get a livestreaming half-hour show. I have a bunch of ideas, and some pretty big names are now calling me to work with me, so at this age, it’s weird. It’s flattering,” he said.

Carvey, of course, remains a big comedy name himself, and he’s helped catapult other comedians to greatness, too. Among them: Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert; and just earlier this year, Melissa Villaseñor competed on his USA series, First Impressions with Dana Carvey. She’s now on the cast of SNL.

“I love it. I honestly love it. And now I’m really interested in helping my kids, and other people I meet. Carell and Colbert, yeah, it’s fantastic what happened with them. Stephen Colbert sent me an email right before started The Late Show, saying everything I’ve done in my career is coming from you hiring me on that show. Because they both got jobs at Jon Stewart from sketches from the show they did with me, so it’s very flattering. Steve Carell came on the First Impressions show. Life is surreal, and it’s moving very fast,” Carvey told me.

“I still want to do one more special… that’s a little more deconstructive. That’s what I’d like to do. These specials all kind of feel the same and they’re shot the same. It just doesn’t play to my strengths completely. Like the other night, I did John Lennon and Paul McCartney, completely off-script, and that’s normally what I do. In a small room, you can do it…I saw Robin Williams warming up in a little theater in Mill Valley. And he had these magic nights, before his last special. And then, in the special, it’s like, well, here’s the cameras, a quarter-million-dollar production, I better get to it. And you give yourself permission to not get to it. So I’m interested in trying to find a way to shoot a special that pops in a different way. For my style.”

For more great stories from Dana Carvey, check out my podcast, The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

[Watch Dana Carvey: Straight White Male, 60 on Netflix]

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.