Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff - Inside Late Night: Eric Ledgin

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Emmy Award-winning writer and St. Denis Medical co-creator Eric Ledgin joins Mark Malkoff to talk about his path through late night, from years of writing packets and facing rejection to landing a job at 'Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.' Ledgin shares what it was like writing monologue jokes under constant pressure, navigating 13-week contract cycles, and learning in Fallon’s fast-paced writers’ room. He also discusses producing pretapes, the realities of joke counts and job security, and how his late-night experience shaped his transition into scripted comedy.

From late-nighter.com, it's Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff. Welcome to Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff. Today we talked to comedy writer Eric Legend about writing for Jimmy Fallon and so much more. Eric Legend, nice to see you. Nice to see you. So how did you get hired on Jimmy Fallon's Late Night show in 2009? Oof. It feels like an act of God looking back, but I was like grinding it out for several years doing packets and trying to get on any show that would have me. So I started out making my own stuff with a couple of friends and just doing sketch comedy online.

All we had as a roadmap is like the Lonely Island. And so we saw what they were able to do. And we just started making sketches and putting them online. And then all that really got me at a certain point was a manager. And the manager, the guy named Dave Rath and his partner, Karo Welker, they agreed to represent me in writing. And so they would get me access to these packets, writing for every major late night show and a bunch of shows that no one's ever heard of

because they went like six episodes and then went away. And I thought I was like crushing it at these packets. And then like six months would go by and I'd look back at my stuff and be like, this is terrible. But I was getting better little by little. And then I wrote a couple that I thought were really good. I remember I had a Colbert that I loved. And I didn't get a meeting or anything.

And I just was like, it's tough. It's all the rejection. And finally, I think I had reached a plateau or reached a new level because I got interest from two places at once. One of them was, well, first I got a meeting at Ellen, and a meeting went really well. And I was like, finally, I'm in. And then, like, two weeks later, I met someone at a party that was like, I just got hired at Ellen. And I was like, okay, I'm going home.

And I was, like, depressed about just, I feel like I'm giving you a long answer. No, this is great. This is what I want to hear. I think it's important to highlight how emotionally devastating the process is before you actually get your first gig, you know. Um, sure. And, and also that if you're in the everything happens for a reason camp, I think I would not have been happy at Ellen from what I, what I hear now. Um, and then, uh, another maybe six months went by and that's when I got interest from real time with Bill Marr, but it was like they weren't actually hiring for another six months. And Fallon,

where I didn't know anyone, I didn't have a connection. I sent like a couple of pages of monologue jokes and I got a call that was like, Jimmy liked your jokes. We're going to fly you out on Friday for an interview because I was in L.A. And it's funny, I came to L.A. to make it in television. And then the first thing I got was like, we're flying you back to New York for the interview. I got the job that afternoon after this like terrifying meeting with like Jimmy Fallon 80 miles, Mike Shoemaker and Wayne Federman. And then it was like, they want you to start Monday. So I flew out over the weekend. I packed my shit and went. And that was like the beginning of my actual writing career. I was not even in the union before that. Can you tell me take me through this meeting? So you arrived

to 30 Rock. I don't know if they're on the sixth floor at that point for the meeting. But take me through that. You said you were terrified. What was the meeting like? So I get first just getting to 30 Rock the exterior, you're like you've just seen that in so many iconic context. that it's like already intimidating. And then I weirdly walked past recently shamed Elliot Spitzer. And I don't know why I said hello to him. And he like set eye back. And it just had a very surreal start to it.

And then I went into this iconic building. And I go into the meeting. And it's just like, I had seen Wayne Federman do stand up and crush 80 miles was like a star of wet hot american summer one of my favorite movies and mike shoemaker i knew just by reputation but jimmy fallon who i now know is like one of the funniest people in the world and they're all doing these bits like pretty aggressively and i'm just like i don't know if i should get in on it or like sit here and just like sit back and not make it weird and i think i like split the difference and sort of chose a moment where I had like a reasonably funny comment to make about Wayne's

boots or something. I just remember, this vague details I remember, but it was like, it got enough of a laugh that I was like, thank God, I'm not going to be like, you know, beating myself up about that for the rest of the week. But otherwise, I just tried to like be myself and show them that I was like a normal person to be around and that I wanted the job. And they were lovely. I have to say they were, they made it very comfortable. It's just that I was intimidated because of who they were. How many late night packets do you think that you've put together in daytime, I guess, Ellen as well, before you were hired? How many packets did you not get jobs on? Would you guess, estimate? I would love to go back and look through it. If I, off the top of my head, it had to have been like a couple dozen, you know, maybe.

Those things take like a week to do normally. I mean, that is. I took them really seriously. Like, even the ones that were like a show I had never heard of that was going to. air on a network I had barely heard of. I took them all really seriously. And sometimes you can do a little recycling. Like if it's a sketch show and you have a couple of sketches that you, you know, but no, that you're right.

They take, like, if I got a daily show packet, I was like recording the news, watching hours of it, getting clips, developing a thesis, writing an essay,

and then like little time codes to explain what you would cut to. It was like doing like a school project very intensely. How many years were, you do in those packets where you had a management, but was it like two years before you got hired or how many years? This was all, I will say that like, I went out to L.A. I had done, made some of my own stuff. I had made a movie with a buddy my name, Steven Schneider, and we came out here more or less together in 2005. I don't think that we got the manager until 2006. And so it was probably three years of doing those packets. I should say I was, I was working during that time first as like an L-SAT tutor and

instructor. And then I shifted, I did get a writer's assistant job for a Comedy Central show called Showbiz Show with David Spade. And that's where I actually learned how to write a lot of these like late night desk piece jokes. I have to ask you about, do you think and who else was over there? You think, yeah. He gave me my first job. Tom Martin was the head writer. He think was the showrunner. The guy named Ed Driscoll was there, Eddie Feldman. And then the writers, Jesse Klein, Ali Waller, Bob Oshack. What was your experience like in the writer's room? Like, what stands out?

So, okay, so I had just been teaching the LSAP for several years. And I was at the point where I was teaching these lecture halls of like 150 people. And it was like, I was like a kind of like a mild version of a professor. Like, that was my job. And I liked it fine. actually like totally was good with it. It was a great job that was like while I was trying to pursue my, what I really wanted. And then I didn't get the job as writer's assistant on show, but show.

Someone else got it. And then all of a sudden, he was the only crew member that got fired season one. And they called me. I think he just was bad at it. I think he just, um, so he was just like fumbling it. And so I got this call that was like, and I was pretty upset when I didn't get the job, but they called me were like, do you want to start Monday? and I was in a class teaching on the weekend.

So I had to burn this bridge to go get in the writer's room, which they were pissed. They were not happy about that. And I went in Monday, and I distinctly remember within a couple of hours of being in the writer's room going, this is what I want to do with my life. I love this. It was just a bunch of funny people just making each other laugh and doing work,

but also just like, I had never felt like physically better in a space. Those TV jobs are tough. I had a day job at Letterman and I literally had one day notice and I burned a bridge at a day job and it was like I'm like this is one of my dreams to work here. I'm so sorry and they said they understood but I don't think they did. Yeah. It's one of the shows that called you in and this is ironic because you have your own show now on NBC

and this person is on it. But did you get interviewed to be a writer on Chocolate? news. Is it done with David Ellen Greer? I did actually, yeah. So I think at one point my manager had introduced me to these guys, Fax and Adam, who had worked on in Living Color and done like a lot of the fire marshal bill sketches and they had a relationship with David Allen Greer and they were like looking out for young writers and they got me my first like interview and I did a packet for that show and I went in and I met with David Allen Greer and a couple of the producers. And he was actually really lovely.

I was super nervous because I was pitching sketches that had like from the perspective it was like a black show and I was like pitching these shows with like black themes to David Allen Greer

an incredibly famous and successful black man that I was a huge fan of and I was like I knew this was granted this was a long time ago but I still knew it just something felt weird about it

and so I just pitched them as best as I could and he laughed He gave me the laughs. And it was like, but I could tell I didn't like crush it or anything. And I did not get the job. But a couple of people, a few people who wrote on that show ended up on late night. Bashir and Diallo, Jeremy Bronson, and they became close friends at Fallon, who I loved.

And I had a good experience with David at the time. And so I was able to tell him that story. I was like, not to make you feel weird, but you didn't hire me. Was he a little bit embarrassed or not? even? I don't think so. I think you. It all worked out. It all worked out. It all worked out. So you get Fallon, how do you find out you get hired? The meeting went well. Did they tell you then or did your manager call you right quickly after? Yeah, like a couple hours later. It's funny because these are like the memories that really stick with you. So I love they're asking about these like real

specifics but I was like in a restaurant called seraphinas and I had actually met my my mom for lunch and I had a glass of wine because I was just like I need to just like relax after that and I got a call for my manager and she was just like you got it and she gave in the news right away and I just like it was a real moment for me because I was a couple months from 30 and I was chasing this thing that I wanted so badly and starting to think that this might just not happen for you, man. It just might not. You may have gone in the wrong direction. And this was like validation of like, well, now I have a real shot. This does not mean that I am successful, but it means like now it's for me to fail, not just like the luck of it,

because luck is part of it. And it was like, now you've gotten enough luck and you can start like making it work. So you were hired for the monologue team or the sketch team or were you writing for both. Yeah, it was just the monologue team. Over the years, I ended up writing a couple of sketches, but I was pure monologue for 99% of it. So what were you doing, you and Wayne Fetterman and the other writers leading up, because I think you had a month or so to prep. And the monologue, for the most part, is topical. What was that month like? So actually, I didn't come on to the show until it had been on the air for about six months. Oh, okay. Yeah, so I was like filling a spot, and I didn't know that at the time, but I ended up there when I, and this is another

thing that was very lucky, I came on just as the show had gone through its like bumpy phase of figuring itself out and was just starting to be that show that people were like, they're doing some weird, funny stuff over there. And so when I came on, like, I was watching the sketches going, these are fucking hilarious. Like, I love that I'm on the show. And out of all those shows that I was so upset about, it just felt like, this. This is where I was supposed to land. Yeah, the pre-tips were really fun, the shorts. Yeah, the show was great.

How long did it take you to get comfortable at the job? Were you fearful about getting fired in the beginning? Or could you, how long did it take you to kind of relax? If any. I think, unless someone's like a true veteran of the industry, I think anyone that tells you they're not scared of being fired for at least the first few months is lying. Like I was, I was like, but it was a mode.

So my schedule for my first few months on the show is that I would, I would wake up in the morning and I would look at the writers. assistant would send all these premises, like what was happening in the news that would hopefully spark these jokes. And so I would write for like whatever, an hour or so in the morning and then I would be writing on the train on the way in. I would write jokes all day long. And obviously, a certain point you turn them in and we get feedback. back from Jimmy, he reads through the best of them and whittles them down, then you have the rehearsal, then you write some more jokes. But then we, after we would tape, so at 5 o'clock, 530, you were taping and you're sort of done. But then I would go home, I would have dinner, and then I would start writing

again because we would get the premises for the next day of what was like the breaking news of that night. So I would write from, you know, seven o'clock to 11, and I would just write. And I just was like, I am going to make this work. And so I just wouldn't stop. And that wasn't how it was for three years, but that's how it was for like a couple months. So it was all consuming, even on the weekends you might be working on this.

It was hard to turn off. You know, it's a little, the one thing that was nice about the monologue side is that it wasn't as intense on the weekends because on Monday, you don't want to be three days behind on the news. Like you never know what will happen. So it wasn't really, it didn't behoove you to do so much writing on the weekend, but come Sunday, as soon as the premises would come out, if that was 4 p.m., yeah, I'd be at my desk for the rest of the night or even writing in bed. Like, that was just what I was doing. There's a 13-week cycle that you're on, and they tell you up front, this is kind of a trial period. You're not just here indefinitely. And after, you know, 10 of those weeks or 11 of those weeks, you're going to find out if you're getting another 13. And so, Once I, I think once I got that first renewal, I was like, okay, that was like a huge drop in fear.

And then after my second renewal, I think by that point I was like, I'm producing a lot here. I'm getting a few jokes on a night. That's like more than the average. And it's pretty consistent and it feels good. That's what I was going to ask is how many jokes were, did you, was a good day. And for you to keep your job, did you feel that you needed to produce? We got to the point where we would all like obsess over the math. And it seemed like on late night we did less monologue jokes than they do on the Tonight Show.

So there were nights that we would do as little as eight or nine jokes. And there were nights that we would do like 15 jokes. And there were like five monologue writers or so. So when you do the math of that and you're like, well, if you're getting three jokes on a night, you're doing your share and more because of the nights that you do eight or nine jokes. If you're getting two jokes on a night, you're probably, limping by, but you're okay. As long as those two jokes are good jokes.

Like, it matters, like, what you're adding. You know, so there were writers that, like, Morgan Murphy was not, like, a numbers person of, like, I'm going to put up a ton of numbers. Sometimes she would. She's, but, but her jokes were very often the best joke of the night. And there's a lot to be said for that. Like, her job was obviously never in danger. And then there were other writers who were just like, just sort of,

of numbers people who got a lot of jokes on consistently, which there's also a huge value to that, obviously. So you kind of want to mix, but it felt like if you were getting one joke on a night or like inconsistent, you were like on the chopping block. Is your memory of Anthony Jezzanek who said he got almost nothing on very little to none? Is that your memory of when he was writing for Fallon? No. I love Anthony.

I think that we, look, we all, our memories evolve. as we do. And I think that, uh, I think part of Anthony's lore is, is perhaps that he was worse at the job than he actually was. Don't get me wrong. He did a couple of, he did a couple of like super awkward things on that show that he's spoken about. And, and when we would pitch,

when we would all pitch sketches, I don't think he ever really took that seriously. Uh, I think he took it as an opportunity to kind of like needle genie me in a way that I was just like, what are you doing right now? But, uh, but he's fucking hilarious. Of course he can write a great monologue joke. And so he was certainly getting enough on that he could have stayed there as long as he wanted to.

But he was like one of the first ones out the door because his career was, you know, was happening. What are one or two Fallon pre-tapes that you wrote or were involved in producing and writing? So they're really not memorable. I wrote this one joke about some stoner advent calendar or something like that. And Jimmy was like, this would make a fun sketch to do like the 12 Days of Christmas song as a bunch of stoner singing like the 12 days of Christmas or something. So he very graciously gave me that idea and was like, write this up and produce it. And so I got to, you know, write this kind of song and sketch that was really fun to do. And also I got to see the intensity and go through the producing process and see how good Jimmy was at it, honestly, like how good his instincts were and, like, what it takes to actually, like, I was very much like, oh, maybe we do this or I guess we could do this.

Then he came in and was like, no, no, no, this should be like this. We want this over here. And he just had such control and, like, kind control. but he had such control over every department just to see him put it together was like really a like a lesson for me. And the other thing I was I was proud of that they did something on Colbert. He did like a thank you notes bit. It was like parodying Jimmy. And I saw it and it was immediately like, we have to do the word.

We have to do the Colbert thing. And this was like on the weekend. And I just like wrote up a draft of like what I thought it should be because I had done that packet that I was like. So I was like, I think I know this voice. And so I sent that into 80 miles. And that became something, because it was like a big thing where it was like to Colbert, I didn't get like complete control over it. But I did get to like be a part of that and write the sort of core of it, which was fun.

That's fun. Yes. What is kind of a Larry Sanders backstage story that you have working at Ballin, either with guests or with the writers or anything that was Sanders-esque, kind of surreal or yeah um so i mean there were oh actually okay i'll i'll tell you one story that uh that always makes me laugh but the the one thing that just strikes me that is not funny but is just surreal was that you would be walking in the hall sometimes and it would be like you would see someone and be like oh my god is that like ll cool jay and then like you would turn a corner and there would be like

seven chickens in a basket. And then you'd be like, you'd turn to your friend to go like, I just saw L.L. Cool Jay and seven chickens in a basket. And then behind your friend would be Paul McCartney. Like, it was just like a very strange thing to be in that hallway before a show would go on. So there was a lot of that kind of just like weirdness. But at one point we had, I'm like in real time. I'm trying to process like, can I get in trouble at all for telling the story?

Is anything weird about this? don't think so. We had like Ben and Jerry's on because they were like giving Jimmy a flavor and they were going to come like scoop ice cream for the crew at a party afterwards like such a nice thing and I actually thought Jimmy's flavor was like really good. And it was kind of just like a funny thing they were coming on. And also one of them is from my hometown or maybe they both are, which is very exciting to me. So anyway, we're in this sketch room where everyone would congregate and we're talking about it and someone starts like talking about it. Talking about it. Talking about it. at how, like, Ben and Jerry's ice cream, the actual ice cream they don't really like, and it's,

it's kind of whatever. And I was like, I'm kind of on your side. I think Ben and Jerry's is, like, overrated. There's better, like, if I'm going to go with a storebot, I'm getting Hog and Does. And my friend Jeremy is like, that is like the most elitist take. Like, Hagenaz is the fancy ice cream. It's Ben and Jerry's is the ice cream of the people, and you just like it because of the umlaught and the packaging. And we were getting fired up. This is like a very stupid writer's room argument. And at some point, which I don't, actually believe this, but just in the heat of the argument, I was like, Hagen-Daz is legitimately good. Ben-Njeri's is shit. It's slop. It's total trash, just put in a little pint box

and sold to the masses. And I, and then like we look outside and we realize the door is wide open. And on the other side of the hall is the conference room where we quickly find out that the entire Ben and Jerry's corporate group that's there for the event is just sitting in there silently. They legit heard everything? There's no way you could not hear it. Did they say anything? No, no. I just I just like be lined it down the hall to like my office and shut the door and just let it be. But I mortifying story that I paid no price for at all. Did the writers make fun of you then for a while? No, no. Everybody was like pretty delighted. by it.

Would you stay for the tapings? And if so, where would you be just in the back of the audience or off to the side? Yes, I would, you would always, it would be like bad form to leave. On monologue, it would be certainly bad form to leave before the monologue is done. After that, you could take off. I mean, that would be fine. It was like, it felt like a place there you wanted to be there a lot of times. So just like watch the show with the sketch people.

And we liked each other a lot on that. that show. And it was fun to be around these people. It wasn't like you were looking to rush home. Sometimes you would just kind of sit around until 7.38 at night just hanging out. That said, the longer I was there, I was like, sure, I can leave. And I would leave after like 515 or 530, whatever the taping of the monologue was. But if there was like a band playing that I wanted to see, that was one of the huge perks of the job is that you could just go and stand in the very back of the studio audience and watch, you know, Paul McCartney or Lauren Hill, who was like incredible. DeAngelo, like, there were so many like performances that were like so incredible

that you got to just watch them play a couple of songs, like at your workplace. How often would you write monologue jokes with standards and practices this NBC sensor have issues and did you after have to deal with them or would that have been Wayne dealing with that better men? Yeah, it would have been like it would have been Wayne and then after a while it was 80 miles and then after him I think it was Jeremy Bronson. But honestly, we really never had too many of those issues and I think we would probably self-censor to a certain degree. And Jimmy was always reading the jokes before and he, I don't think was drawn to jokes that were going to be like super or dirty or inappropriate or hurtful or anything like that.

Were you there for monologue rehearsal? At some point, they would bring in an audience in the round, I don't know if it was noon or so, to test those jokes. And what was that like? And do you think that it was a good gauge? Yeah, I mean, sometimes yes and sometimes no. I think they would go into like the gift shop in the lobby and places like that and be like, hey, do you want to come for a few minutes and see Jimmy Fallon's going to rehearse the monologue?

And when you get people who, this is going to sound xenophobic, but I say when you get people who are American, it's really helpful because they get all the references. So if you're doing a joke about recently shamed Governor Elliott Spitzer, I think they'll get that joke, whereas someone from the Czech Republic might not know who Elliott Spitzer is and what he's done. And frankly, a lot of Americans might not know that either. but it did matter what audience you were getting at the time. And so, but I think on the whole, it was very helpful because I think like there's a certain energy, like, Jimmy was pretty good about being like, that joke didn't get a lot, but I could tell by the vibe of it that it works. And I think I can sell it on the day, like in the evening taping.

So I really believe in that process. I thought like one of the most valuable things about working on that. that show was how many live audience tapings we did because you just get this other sense for like what people are going to laugh at versus what they might go oh that's funny why did you leave phalan show and how long were you there before you left was there like somewhere between two and a half and three years um i honestly it was a lot of it was just that the actual long-term dream was never late night that was sort of the way in and and i and i I loved being in the room so much that it became like, oh, I want to be in comedy.

I want to be. And late night seems to be like within sight to a certain degree. I understand how to make that happen. And it was like so fun. Like I don't think other jobs are as fun as those late night jobs. I really don't. But at a certain point, two things happened. One, I was on a trip to L.A.

And I met my now wife of like 12 years, 13 years. and I knew that we were going to get married and she didn't want to be in New York and I was like, okay, it's time to move. But I also was like, I already knew that sometime within the year I was going to be leaving the show. I had sold a pilot to IFC

through our friend, Dan Pasternak, and I was like, I want to do narrative. I want to write these more like stories and get into half hour. So I kind of knew that I was just sort of ready for the next step. After how hard you worked with those late night packets, what was your last day like at Fallon and did he give you a goodbye present?

I didn't get any presents, but I will say he was very loving, and he was pretty great about the whole thing. Like he, especially like he knew why I was leaving that I had like met my wife. And he just gave me a hug and was like, you know, I hate to lose you. But I actually remember he was like, you're leaving for love. He was like, The good reason. Yeah, he was very excited for me.

And I'm excited to one day get, we don't, I have three young kids, so we're not taking a lot of trips to New York. But I'm excited to get back and like show him my family and be like, you're part of the reason I was able to do this. You know, he gave him the first job and made it all happen for me. When Conan was at TBS, he produced the Pete Holmes show. You were the head writer, correct? Yes.

for season one. How did that come about and what was that experience like? So I was waiting to hear back. I had made my pilot and I had written a couple of backup scripts that they had ordered with my partner at the time on that Michael Blyden. And we were waiting to find out the fate of the series. And in the meantime, I was like just bleeding money living in L.A. We didn't make a lot of money on the sale of that show. Thanks a lot, Dan. And so we were, so my, I was just like, I got to work. And so, and I wasn't going to just work on anything, but I, actually, that's not true. There's a lot I would have worked on. I wrote, I wrote a series of jokes for a Ferris wheel at one point. And it was like writing copy for the Ferris wheel in Las Vegas. And so I, so I,

I guess I would have done anything. However, this was actually an opportunity I was excited about because I was a fan of Pete's. I think he's extremely funny. And I like his philosophical bent. And I was very interested in him. And my friend Orrin Brimmer was EPing that show and is just super talented and a lovely person. And so they needed, I came on as a writer and I became the head writer because they didn't really have anyone that senior. I was like one of the only writers with like a lot of experience from Fallon.

And it was really fun making that show. But I felt a little bit like when I got there, I felt a little bit like I didn't, I wasn't planning to stay in late night. And then like on day two, I think of the job. I got the call that my show wasn't going forward. So it was like a little bit of a whiplash of like, fuck, did I. Was I about to move on to what I wanted to do? And now I'm just not.

But that quickly went away because it's, it's fun to work on. a fun show and there was a lot of work to do on that show so it was it was a grind and we went after it and we made a lot of stuff I was really proud of. And the only reason I didn't go back, frankly, is that I had in that time written another spec script to try to get hired on a half hour. And I think by the time season two was coming around, I either had gotten hired on the show The Comedians for FX or I had gotten very close and felt like I need to just like continue on this path. On Pete Holmes show, how hands-on was Conan at all? From my perspective, not at all. And not in a bad way. I just think he was doing his own show. And I only really sat in a

room with him once. And I was like just, you know, starstruck because he's Conan. And I think he was dealing a lot with Pete. I think they had a lot of like meetings about it and the sort of like upper people. But I was not, that was like above my pay grade. So I don't really know. What was your favorite piece, one or two that you worked on Pete's show that looking back just made you laugh or you had fun with? I really enjoyed writing this monologue for and with Pete that was about getting rid of daylight savings time. And there was a little bit of a bent to it that was like, why are we doing this for farmers? Fuck farmers. Just like, not a good take. But not at all. It was very fun to write at the time.

And so I weirdly remember that. And then there was another one about food trucks that was fun to write. Those monologues were just fun because they weren't news-based. It was fun to just write like stand-upy material for an excellent stand-up. But I will also say this two bits that I had nothing to do with the conception of, but I had to do with the execution of in a way that was really fun for me was wash your own damn towels, which is based on this Pete's stand-up thing about getting that little note in the hotel that says, like, if you would like your towels wash, put them here. And if not,

and he's like, I'm paying all this money, like, wash the damn towels. And so it just became this thing about petty resentments. And at one point, he welcomes the wash-your-towel boys to come out. And it's like a bunch of half-dressed writers coming out with towels. It just became this very stupid, weird, random thing. I also really loved the new material Seinfeld bit. I thought that was really funny. And then you get over to the comedians on FX, and that's Josh Gad and Billy Crystal. How hands on

were they with scripts and ideas, the two of them? Josh, not so much. He was, like, working on a bunch of different stuff, so he would only pop in the writers room once in a while. But Billy was there, I think, every day. So all of a sudden, It was like my first half-hour job, and I was sitting at a table, like, just in, like, it could be any unremarkable writer's room with just nothing on the walls and just like a boringly decorated room, sitting next to Billy Crystal, who was one of the formative, comedic voices of my entire childhood and teenage years. It was incredibly surreal and crazy. Were you there when Mel Brooks,

It made an appearance. Did you get to hang out with him? Well, it sucks. I wasn't there because I was working on another show by then. And so he was at a table read. And it got back to me that he, there was a sketch I wrote where these two guys run into each other and say the same thing at the same time like, hey, how's it going? And they keep saying the same thing and they can't break out of it and they kind of go crazy. And apparently Mel Brooks was laughing and was like, that's funny when they were doing it. And I didn't get to see that. I got to hear about it. It was very meaningful.

But that'll have to be enough. That's very, very cool. Getting to your own show on network television is like winning the lottery. How many years went by from you pitching St. Dennis Medical until it got the green light? Let's see. It wasn't actually that long. it was kind of on the seasonal track that old network used to be with like all its shows where it was like pitched in probably the summer or the early fall.

Yeah, around then and then written over the course of that sort of like school year or whatever and then delivered in February or March and then the pilot was green. The pilot was already pre-approved, but they still have to give you the official pickup. I was something like that. I guess there was probably close to a year between pitching it and actually making the pilot. That's not bad. When it's announced that the show's going forward, your name is in the trades. Does your inbox just get filled up with all these writers that want jobs?

And how hard is that? Or was it? The really tricky, the thing about the actual show being picked up, because we made the pilot, And then we turned it in the day before the strike. So it was sort of like this really bittersweet situation, including the fact that because of the actor's contracts, they had to decide on the show during the strike. So they actually picked up the show to series during the strike. So that's where there was a long gap between the pilot and shooting season one.

There was like an entire year plus went by because of the strike and then waiting for this sort of proper season to start. So there was a big gap there. And so nobody was really flooding my inbox because nobody was, everyone knew there's no, even with a picked up show, there's no staff right now, you know. So it was really on me to think about before the strike ended, well, who is sort of my dream staff and how and how do I position myself to reach out the second it's okay. Did all the performers, the leads have to audition or did some just get hired based on their name? Yeah, several of them got hired just based on their reputation and what we knew of them. And it's sort of, you know, David Allen Greer is a good example of just like, I've seen him do such range on everything from.

That's amazing. Patients to in living color to Jumanji. It's just like, that guy's not auditioning and nor should he, you know. And same thing with Wendy. Allison, we just had like a meeting with. I just had like met her on Zoom and could tell just from the vibe that she was. write. So yeah. What is a studio note, one or two studio notes that were helpful, if any studio notes were helpful? No, they were. I don't necessarily remember what notes came

from the studio, what notes came from the network anymore. But the biggest thing was that there was, there was an element of the pilot. Originally, the nurse Alex, Alison Tolman's character was not married with children. She had like a fiancee. And I think part of me wanted to leave room for like, are they going to break up? Are they going to get together? I didn't see them breaking up, but it was like at least there's some suspense to it. And something about the stakes of her balancing work with just like this guy that she was dating just didn't feel like enough. Or that's what they said.

And my initial reaction to notes maybe used to be. I don't think it's like this anymore, but it used to be to be like, no, no, no, no. You don't get it. But then like letting it sink in, I and my wife actually telling me like, no, they're 100% right. You need to like check yourself and just think about this. And so that led to this thought process of what are we going to do to change that. And actually to give my wife slightly more credit, she was the one that was just like, give her kids, make her marry, give her a family. That feels more relatable.

And once that was unlocked, it just felt like, oh, of course this is who this character is. That's very cool. And congrats on getting another renewal. I mean, again, to have a series go more than a year on network TV is the lottery. So it says a lot about you. So congrats. Eric Lundgren, thanks for talking to us. I really appreciate this.

Yeah, it was a lovely conversation. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe so you never miss an episode. On Apple Podcast, please rate it and leave a review. Be sure to go to late-nighter.com for all your late-night TV news. And you can find my podcast at Ler. late-nighter.com forward slash podcasts.

Have a wonderful week, and I'll see you next Tuesday.