There is a truth universally acknowledged among those who create for the internet: You never, ever read the comments. For better or worse, plenty of creators break that rule but perhaps none so spectacularly as late-night host Seth Meyers, who turned reading feedback from his nitpicky-est viewers into an Emmy-nominated online series called Corrections. Starting back in March, with a few weeks off here and there, Meyers has ended his work week by sitting down at his Late Night desk to crack jokes about YouTube comments that rake him over the coals for factual errors big and small—but mostly small.
The segment has transformed from a 2–3 minute bit into an irreverent, hilarious feedback loop between Meyers and his online audience which has grown in both viewership and length as the running gags and inside jokes pile up. You may have to start at the very beginning to get every reference, but Meyers’s evident joy during Corrections is contagious enough for even the most casual viewer. Now the Saturday Night Live alum is Emmy nominated in the outstanding short form comedy, drama, or variety series category and may very well win what would only be his second Emmy after a two-decade career—all for a segment he started on a whim.
Speaking with Vanity Fair about the origin and evolution of Corrections, Meyers sounds borderline embarrassed for the wild success of a segment he views as almost self-indulgently fun. Corrections is a passion project Seth Meyers has taken full responsibility for leaving longtime producing partner Mike Shoemaker intentionally off the hook. But there is something fitting about the Television Academy taking notice of what Meyers is doing here. Of all the late-night hosts, Meyers seems to have adapted best to the forced informality of at-home tapings in the COVID era. He may have returned to the studio along with his contemporaries but unlike the rest, Meyers hasn’t brought back the live audience and seems to have ditched the suit and tie for good.
Meyers has always been an affable, self-deprecating comedian who thrives in stripping away the layers of formality between himself and his audience. Look no further than his viral day-drinking segments with guests like Lorde, Rihanna, and Kelly Clarkson where the more uncontrolled he becomes, the more connected the audience feels to him. Not every comedian would flourish in such an uninhibited pace but Corrections proves that even without the famous friends and liquid courage, an unfiltered Seth Meyers is a true comedic gift.
Vanity Fair: What’s the origin story of the Corrections segment?
Seth Meyers: It started because I never received more Twitter messages than when I said “Lego block” instead of “Lego brick.” Then I basically just said to Shoemaker one afternoon, “Hey, at the end of the show on Thursday, I want to do this and we’ll just put it up online.” Then it just kind of grew from there. We film it after we finish taping on Thursday. So it’s the last thing we do [before the weekend].
And who’s usually in the audience for it?
It’s the same audience that we’ve had consistently for the last year: the crew. We’re a pretty skeleton staff still, everybody’s working from home. When Corrections started, there was a real sense from the crew of “Hey, you know, we get to go home when this is done. Yet I feel like I won them over to a place where the crew all made Mikey the Shoe shirts. I’m going to say, Joanna, two or three people now have made it part of their routine to roll down and get that Corrections energy live.
Wow two to three?!
Well there’s just not that many people! Two to three is like 80%!
What’s the process of picking which audience comments you’ll address?
The process is I read the comments and keep a running list on my phone and on my computer. Then on Thursday morning—the most embarrassing thing is how we had to reschedule Thursday meetings to other days of the week so that I could have Corrections time to quietly sit by myself and put it together. It’s not scripted and it’s not on cue cards. It’s just me kind of putting together a running list.
That was a question I had. The whole segment is completely extemporaneous other than the list that you’re referencing?
Yes. Very. I’ve saved them all. I can take a photo of what a Corrections card looks like and send it to you. We’re going to start selling them as NFTs. They’re going to be hot enough.
Does that mean you never re-take a Corrections segment? It’s just one shot go?
A hundred percent one shot go. There’s never been a re-take on Corrections. At some point they say “Okay go” and then I just start and go until I’m done talking.
Well then there’s the back of the cards which you started to flash at the camera which became its own ongoing bit. Where did the idea of doing Corrections Easter eggs start?
Everything, which is genuinely the most joyful part of this, everything has been organically born out of reading the comments. We have these cards all around that say “This Area Has Been Cleaned and Disinfected.” I just used that, no thought went into it. Then a lot of people commented on what it said and then I realized that’s a thing they’ll read if I change it. It would just be a fun place to put another joke.
One week you lovingly called the commenters “jackals” and next week there’s a “Jackal Paws Tackle Flaws” mug on your desk. How does something like that come about?
If you’re asking who had the inspiration for that incredibly catchy phrase, that would be me. I have an incredibly co-dependent relationship with Mike Shoemaker and literally everything I have done or said in the last 20 years I have had to run by him and get his approval—except for Corrections. I don’t want him to know a thing about Corrections until I do it, which has meant that I have had to actually learn how to be a producer. For so long I have just been the writer who has whimsical ideas and then emails Shoemaker: “I need a mug that looks like this.” Now I will email the graphics department and say, “I need a Jackal typing on a computer.” Then I will email the art department and say please put this on a mug. So that has been another nice byproduct of this is that I’m actually learning some skills.
I wanted to ask you about Shoemaker actually. Are you keeping all of this back from him specifically so you can have the joy of surprising him and cracking him up live during the segment?
I feel like this is the reward of 20 years of having to hold my hand for everything. For 15 minutes a week, he can just be an audience member.
In an early iteration of the segment the great Amber Ruffin pipes up from the audience to tell you she doesn’t think this segment is good for you! But clearly you love it even though it violates the sacred tenet of entertainment on the internet which is don’t read the comments. Why do you think you love it so much?
It would be like if we found out the solution to global warming was polluted water. Like I have taken something toxic and turned it into an asset. So I feel, I mean, obviously I just feel like a genius.
I mean, give the man an Emmy.
The real fun of it, of course, is now the engagement. That’s the part that continues to genuinely delight me when I read the comments is that it isn’t toxic, it’s play toxic. The people that are now correcting me on hyper specific things or tiny insignificant errors understand the fun of the game. It is this collective piece of content that we’re making.
I think it’s been really interesting to hear you talk about the way in which your relationship with your audience has changed over the course of the pandemic. How it felt much more intimate when you were recording at home. A lot of late night hosts seemed eager to return to “normal” as soon as possible but you’ve now turned your audience into de facto collaborators for this segment which feels very rare for something as glossy as a network late night show.
I think all of our shows lost the gloss to some degree during the pandemic. It was a lot less stressful when the gloss came back and I, personally, didn’t have to worry about every aspect of the technical side of the show. But there were also parts of it that were really cool. I was making it alone in an attic, talking into an iPad. I think a lot of people were watching it on their iPads. Everything in the middle had been taken away. When I first started doing the show at home, a lot of people on YouTube said, “Hey, this sucks. You don’t know what you’re doing.” And then the other half of the people were like, “Here’s how you can do it better.” There was someone I just became Twitter friends with and I reached out and said, “Hey, when you say my lighting sucks what do you mean?” YouTubers were leaps and bounds ahead of where I was. So I think that that was one of the seeds that was planted early on. People who watch the show online, those people also have pretty good feedback as far as what would also be good on the show.
Other hosts brought their studio audiences back in but you’ve stayed with the skeleton crew. I know some people think you should never bring the full audience back in and you yourself have considered it. Where are you leaning on that question these days?
Our biggest hesitation now, sadly, is variant-based. The thing we feared the most was bringing the audience back and then having to send them away again. That just struck us as something that would be too depressing to go through a second time if we can avoid it. They will come back, though, and I think when they come back all my hesitations will seem foolish because it will be so exciting to have a live audience. With that said, I want to stress and I want to put it on the record as a hundred percent lock: we will never have an audience for Corrections. We will continue to do it the way god intended in a pretty much empty studio.
Even after spending years on Saturday Night Live, you’ve never really been an impressions guy but I feel like you’re really leaning into it with Corrections.
We were the first to say Corrections probably shouldn’t be on TV and that by putting it as a digital exclusive it meant we could have also called it “Open Mic Night” because that is how it feels. The liberation of the low stakes of Corrections has been quite a discovery.
When you first started this gig, did you think you had to be a lot like all the people who came before you on late night with the suit and tie and a stand-up monologue, etc.? And as the years have gone on have you figured out that you can just be more and more yourself and people love that approach even more?
I think when you start it’s really important to present as competent. Sometimes in the effort to be competent, you maybe are slightly less creative. You just try so hard to prove they were right to give you a late night show. Do the things that you have seen other people do on late night shows. After you tick the box of competence, then I think you move on to comfort. Once you have comfort, it’s a nice breeding ground for a different kind of creativity. Sometimes work takes you away from what you probably should have been doing from the beginning, but it’s hard to say, “Oh, I’m just going to be myself.” That seems lazy. Still, I’ve been working in this building for 20 years and Corrections—the people who’ve known me the longest will say, “Oh, there you are.”
How does it feel, then, to be Emmy-nominated for doing the thing that feels the most like just being yourself?
When someone tells me they watch Corrections I kind of can’t believe it. The other thing in my life that I feel that way about it is Documentary Now! There are these two things that are so specific and unique to my tastes, you kind of can’t believe there’s this extra level that other people might like as well. Corrections only works because people watch the show and then take the time to sit down and type something. Obviously I jokingly shame them for that but I think they know it doesn’t work without them.
You’re usually pretty reticent about campaigning for an Emmy, but you have found some ways to talk about the prospect of getting one for this segment during the segment itself.
There’s something deeply funny about it being nominated for an Emmy that therefore makes the campaigning for it seem like part of the joke, you know what I mean? As opposed to anything that I would feel shame about. I will only campaign for it within the body of Corrections. We’re going to find out how many voters actually watch.
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