‘Making of Late Night with Seth Meyers’ roundtable
Seth Meyers left “Saturday Night Live” in early 2014 to replace Jimmy Fallon and become host of “Late Night with Seth Meyers” on NBC. In recent months, he and his staff have been celebrating their 10th anniversary. Meyers joined us for our recent “Making of Late Night with Seth Meyers” roundtable panel with his head writer Alex Baze, writer/performer Amber Ruffin and writer/performer Jenny Hagel. Watch the exclusive video interview above.
When asked if he ever expected a 10-year run (so far), Meyers jokes, “No, I was praying for five. I thought if we could make it to one, we could make it five, but I never dared to think 10. It’s been such a trippy 10 years, obviously, like everybody who does one of these. We had a couple of interruptions with COVID and the writers’ strike.”
Ruffin jokingly adds, “It has truly been a nightmare. Seth is horrible to work for.” Then reminded that we’re recording this, she changes to, “No, it’s been pretty dreamy from the start. From the very beginning as one of the writers, we chased around what we thought Seth would like, and then it became clear that he just wants what you like.”
Hired on to the staff two years later, Hagel says, “I joined maybe like eight weeks before we all had the moment where we realized Trump running wasn’t a joke. So I feel like I joined in the last eight fun weeks of America.”
And Baze, who Meyers refers to “the greatest joke writer in the world,” adds, “It was 10 more years because I worked with Seth for so long at Weekend Update before we came over to this show. So it kind of felt like an extension and expansion of what we were doing at Weekend Update. I’d say the first two years felt like eight years because we could not figure out what we were doing exactly what we wanted it to be… It felt like we were running across a bridge that was collapsing behind us every day.”
“Late Night with Seth Meyers” has been nominated at the Emmy Awards for Best Variety Talk Series for the past two seasons. The writing team has also received bids for five of the first nine seasons.
In addition to the 10th anniversary, our special panel also includes discussions of popular segments “Day Drinking” (focusing on Dua Lipa and Kristen Stewart), “A Closer Look,” the 50th edition of “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell,” “Amber Says What,” “Corrections” and recent episodes featuring Austin Butler and Paul Rudd.
