Seth Meyers’s Proudest Milestones and Wisest Comedy-Writing Hacks

There are only a few moments in Seth Meyers’s new HBO stand-up special, Dad Man Walking, when the material nods explicitly to the fact that he is Seth Meyers. When he acts out scrounging underneath his couch for misplaced dice because one of his kids came in “too hot” while playing a board game, he is not the host of Late Night; he is a beaten-down dad discussing the trials of raising small children. When he talks about the way his wife’s family orders food delivery by calling a restaurant and then corralling a big group order, he’s not the onetime host of the Emmys, Golden Globes, and White House Correspondents’ Dinner; he’s a bemused husband examining the day-to-day frictions of married life. And when he talks about being inconvenienced by his brother’s decision to become a vegan, he’s not SNL’s former head writer and “Weekend Update” anchor; he’s a middle-aged man coming to terms with the changing values of those around him.

That Meyers can successfully position himself in such a relatable light is a reflection of the joke-writing and performing sensibilities he has refined over his 20-plus years producing comedy in various pressure cookers. His stand-up is not a vessel to relay stories about his adventures in show business, though he’s the rare comedian for whom it wouldn’t be self-indulgent if it were. He has roasted celebrities to their faces, written lines for dozens of comedy legends, and shaped political thinking for a generation via his signature “A Closer Look” Late Night segment. In some ways, he has grown so accustomed to noteworthy experiences like this that they’ve started to feel routine. “Sometimes, we’ll have a hiatus week and people will say, ‘Are you gonna relax?’” he said of his late-night show during our wide-ranging conversation prior to Dad Man Walking’s October 26 release. “I’m like, ‘No, this is relaxing. Now I have to bring my kid to karate class. That’s fucking stressful.’”

Hardest he laughed during an SNL table read 

When it dawned on me what the game was in “What Up With That?” It felt like the opening song was just going to lead into a regular talk-show sketch, but then, when we realized Kenan Thompson was going to keep singing the song, that was maybe the hardest I laughed — certainly, the hardest I laughed at something human beings then laughed at later. There were a lot of times when I laughed really hard at something that didn’t get picked. I remember Andy Samberg once did a Meet the Press sketch where Beetlejuice was filling in for David Gregory as the host. It was just such a bald attempt by Andy to do his Beetlejuice impression on SNL. I laughed very hard, and I think Lorne laughed not at all.

Toughest hosting gig to kill at

Weirdly, the Emmys was the toughest. I thought the ESPYs would be really tough, but the fun thing about the ESPYs, I realized, is that no one there actually cares if they win an ESPY or not. For an athlete, an ESPY is never the crowning achievement of their year. They’ve already won the most important thing. So if you have good jokes about sports, you can crush; whereas at the Emmys, I felt a tightness there. And by the way, I’ve been a bad audience member at the Emmys as well because you’re sitting there and it’s hard not to remember you’re nominated for something.

“A Closer Look” segment he’s proudest of

We went live on January 6 — the January 6, if people are wondering which one — because we were working on our show that day and watching the news and we just didn’t know if we could be confident about what the world would be like eight hours from when we’d taped. Sal Gentile wrote a beautiful preamble to the show that night, and it was a reminder that you could know what was happening that day and that you didn’t need four or five years to pass to realize it. I think it will endure as being accurate to the moment. I just felt very proud to work with someone like Sal and proud of him for writing it.

Best SNL sketch ending he’s written

I had this idea for a sketch when Zach Galifianakis hosted called “Darrell’s House,” where he was a guy hosting a cable-access show in his house. Originally, the sketch was just him giving off-camera notes about things he wanted to get fixed later because the guests weren’t there and he had forgotten to get props. I showed it to another writer, John Solomon, and John had this idea of “I want to see the second half of the sketch. I want to see it after it’s been fixed.” I realized you could do that, but it required us to shoot a sketch and then have Oz Rodriguez, the director, and the editors go make all the changes Zach was calling for in the body of the sketch in the next 20 minutes. So the button was that we had to pull off the back half of the sketch in real time. The first half, when it aired, went fine. I feel like it was a very soft, middle-of-the-road SNL sketch that felt a little half-baked. But then, the payoff of seeing that it was basically a setup for a sketch later in the show … I was very happy with how it resolved itself.

Most embarrassing “Day Drinking” moment

Kevin Hart and I had a life-size Jumanji game literally over the whole floor of the bar. And the next day, he FaceTimed me and said, “My team told me we played Jumanji. I have no memory of it.” And I said, “I am here to tell you that I also have no memory of it.” It wasn’t in the final cut, so I asked, “What happened to the Jumanji section?” And everybody said, “Oh, it was bad. I think you rolled the dice and then Kevin tackled you, and it did not feel like Jumanji at all.”

Dumbest “Weekend Update” joke

I will tell you the dumbest joke that definitely didn’t work: “A man in Washington State was arrested for animal cruelty after he was caught having sex with the family dog. Even worse, it was makeup sex.” What I love about that joke is that, every time I tell it, no one groans until the punch line. So even after “sex with the family dog,” the audience is still like, Okay, well, hear the man out … The delayed groan is why I will never tire of telling that very, very dumb punch line.

Best Lorne Michaels advice

When I started Late Night, he said, “It’ll take you 18 months to figure it out.” I thought that was too much time, but he was 100 percent right. I think it was almost 18 months to the day that I realized I shouldn’t be standing for the monologue. He maybe has a reputation for being an impatient person, but I think he does appreciate the process and that you sometimes need to learn by doing.

Worst Lorne Michaels advice

My first summer on SNL, he told me he thought I should take tap-dancing lessons because he thought that would give me more confidence as a performer. In fact, it was so important, he told someone else to tell me. I never took those tap lessons, but maybe I should now and do something special for him at the 50th — just tap across the stage and give him a hug.

Stand-up joke that caused the biggest marital disagreement

I should note that she has veto power, and if there’s anything she doesn’t like, I will take it out. In fact, there are times when I’ll think, I feel like I could make this joke work, but then it will be so much worse if it works and then she tells me she doesn’t want it in. In Lobby Baby, I had a joke about how we’re both terrible dancers, and she said, “Can you please take out that I’m a bad dancer?” I had to say, “Oh, no, I am going to leave that in. I think you need to learn that we’re both bad dancers and we can have full lives despite that.”

Special trope he’d most like to skip, à la the “skip politics” option in Lobby Baby

I love so many comedians, and what I love most is when they’re onstage telling jokes. I don’t love watching them walk to the stage. It’s a little bit like how, once Late Night abandoned the standing monologue, the show just immediately starts with a joke. I wanted to do the same thing with the new special. In Adam Sandler’s last special, he did maybe the best version of it. I think you could probably retire it since he did one that was genuinely cinematic and gripping.

Joke that bombed that he’ll go to his grave believing in

Here’s how much I believe in it: I’m still going to try to make it work. I’ve been trying to do a joke about how I like hip-hop and my wife likes country, but you can’t listen to hip-hop with your kids because the language is bad. The joke I have, that I love, that is great — that, if you don’t like it, it’s your problem and it reflects badly on you — is “Country music is also a terrible influence on kids. Ever since my kids started listening to country, my youngest can’t fall asleep until he has a half a bottle of whiskey, and my oldest can’t do the whole alphabet because he hates his exes.”

Most combative post-joke encounter

I saw Donald Trump at an event two days after the Correspondents’ Dinner in New York. I walked over and thanked him for being a good sport, and he did not take the opportunity to pretend he had been a good sport. I’m going to say something, and I know this is breaking news: I think he may have a bad sense of humor. I think he might not get or enjoy jokes.

Ultimate Maya Rudolph writing hack

I just got to present with Maya, Kristen Wiig, and Bowen Yang at the Emmys. And for Maya, I wrote, “Lorne, you were robbed.” But I spelled it “rob-buh-ed.” My hack for Maya is to add one or two syllables to a word everyone knows how to say. Because the way she makes a meal of a word — a delicious, seven-course meal — is something to see.

Ultimate Andy Samberg writing hack

Have him say a very dumb thing with total confidence.

Ultimate Amy Poehler writing hack

She’s very funny when she’s frustrated and trying to convince people she’s right.

Most effective trick to make a boring talk-show guest seem interesting

If you can project to an audience that you’re listening, they will also want to listen. You can’t get caught looking like you’re thinking about your next question. There is almost always something of value in an answer a guest is giving, so you just try with all your might to figure out what that might be. The more important thing is you just work harder with what you’ve learned over ten years of hosting a show like this to curate the kinds of guests where you don’t have to work that hard. There’s a lot of really interesting people out there, so if you’re ever talking to somebody and you realize they’re not, it’s probably more your fault than theirs.

Funniest thing one of his kids has said since he taped Dad Man Walking

I was taking my three kids to school, and about a block from our apartment, my middle son, Axel, wrestled away from me. He did not want to go to school. He started running back to the apartment, and I had to chase him down. So I was holding the back of his coat because he’s a runner, and he was struggling against me. Then we got about ten blocks from our apartment, and he just started slacking and said, “You can let go of me. I don’t know how to get home from here.” Even he was like, “Even if I wanted to, Dad, I’ve got no fucking idea how to get home.”

Most important lesson he learned about running a writers’ room

If you’re rewriting anything, don’t pitch lateral moves. If a writer has put all this time into writing a piece and they have a joke, you can pitch a joke if it’s twice as good, but if it’s as good, they’ll probably want to use their own joke. I want a writing staff that feels confident and feels heard, and ultimately, you want to spread the wins around. At SNL, the best shows were always the ones where six or seven writers who had really different voices all had a really good week. Late Night’s a little bit different because everybody is constrained by the fact that they’re mostly writing for my voice. But when you’re putting together a writing staff, you still never want to hire somebody who does something you already have on staff. The more diverse you can be in the styles of your writing staff, the better the show is going to be.