WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 731 - Seth Meyers

Episode Date: August 8, 2016

Seth Meyers didn't expect to be on Saturday Night Live. Then he didn't expect to anchor Weekend Update or become the show's head writer. And then he really didn't expect to host his own late night talk show. Seth and Marc retrace the steps to figure out how it all happened, complete with some Lorne stories to add to the collection. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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fucking ears what the fuck tuckians what the fuck greekans what the fucksikins how's it going i'm mark maron this is my podcast wt Welcome, if you have not been here before. On the show today, Seth Meyers, one of the missing links of the SNL. Well, obviously, there's dozens of people that have been on SNL, but I've done Seth's show. He's a nice fella. We talked about some stuff we talked about uh riding it out locking in and realizing your limitations acknowledging your limitations perhaps is a better way to put it it was a good conversation i think you'll enjoy it there's there's no way to

say he's not a decent fella that that seth myers with all those s's so what else i've got big news big news that i'm afraid to utter aloud that that is i'm afraid to speak it because it's one of those things many of you know i did not think a lot of things were going to happen and uh and a lot of things happened that I had let go of, which is about, honestly, about realizing your limitations or at least being realistic about where the fuck you are in your life for a second. Long story short, 700 and some odd episodes. Short.

I just didn't anticipate a lot of things and um but i will say this i uh mark maron uh will be playing performing stand-up comedy at carnegie hall on november 4th for the new york comedy festival. The pre-sale will run from Wednesday, August 10th at 10 a.m. Eastern Time to Sunday, August 14th at 10 p.m. Eastern Time. Tickets go on sale for the general public Monday, August 15th at 10 a.m. And that's happening. That's I Am Playing Carnegie Hall. It is insane. I would never Carnegie hall. It's at,

it is insane. I would never have thought I, now I hope I can fill it. I feel like I can. I did all right at bam last year, but, but, and,

and on some level it is a, you know, it is just a big venue, but it's fucking Carnegie hall and I'm feeling the pressure. So if you were wondering why I've been so diligent about working on my standup, that's why that, that's why. That is why.

Because, frankly, I want to have my shit as together as possible for Carnegie Hall. And the weird thing, I don't even know how to process it. I'm just trying not to focus on it. I believe Nate Bargetzi will be opening for me. I've reached out to Nate, who is one of my favorite comics, at this juncture in the history of the medium, of the craft, of the form. And he's into it, so I think that's going to happen. So it's going to be me and Nate at Carnegie Hall. I'm putting together the act for Carnegie Hall, and then I guess after that I can just stop, right? I can quit.

I've done everything that I thought I would never do. Here's the fucked up thing about the life is that all those years of spite and envy and struggle and fuck that guy. And why can't I have this? And why am I not on that? Why am I? I would not have been able to do it. I would not have been able to function given the opportunities. It would not have been able to do it. I would not have been able to function given the opportunities.

It would not have gone well. And sometimes it's weird. Sometimes people know better. You don't know. You know, if you're as stupidly proud and selfishly myopic as I am, you think you're ready for everything. I can do that. I'm ready. Let's go.

It's the act of desiring and fighting and competing and struggling. Give me mine. Where's my entitlement? But usually, a lot of times, the people who are in charge of making decisions to do things with you, no better. You might not be right. There was no way I could have handled it at any other point in my life. Not even last year. And I spent a long time seeing my peers do that venue and do other things.

And I've spoke about this fucking so much. And all that jealousy and all that aggravation and spite, what you should be doing is working on your shit. Whatever it is. Whatever it is you think you can do, all the energy you're putting into saying, fuck, man, where's mine? Why that guy?

How come I didn't get? just try to put that energy into into the other thing but sadly i you know i also did that on stage that was my that was my voice for years but it is not now and i'm going to say it out loud again with my name involved uh mark maron me will be playing carnegie hall for the new york comedy festival on november 4th holy shit another thing that's happening today is August 8th, correct? Tomorrow, August 9th, I will be, if something doesn't fucking go horribly wrong today, if somebody does not

hold me down and dump alcohol into my mouth or lock me in a room and gas it with weed smoke or turn me upside down and suspend me and dump cocaine into my nose. Tomorrow, August 9th, I will be 17 years sober. My name's Mark.

I'm an alcoholic and drug addict. 17 fucking years sober tomorrow. I don't know how this shit happened. I don't know. tomorrow. I don't know how this shit happened. I do know that my memory is diminishing, that everything's becoming a large smear of faces and cars and women and geographical locations. Can't place things. Things pop up here and there. But yeah yeah 17 years sober tomorrow august 9th carnegie hall me november 4th i couldn't have done one without the other that's for goddamn sure and i and also look i get a lot of email from you people and i appreciate it i know that uh that that this show has been

helpful to a lot of people struggling with that shit and it's hard at first and it gets easier life doesn't change but not doing drugs and drinking does get easier if you get off the shit so that's the good news can you fucking believe it i can't fucking believe it see i don't even like saying this because then you're sort of like what the other shoe's gonna drop yeah how do i get rid of that part be like everything's going great but what if oh shit how do i get rid of my internal buzzkill device had a spontaneous a bit of closure last night at the comedy store the greatest comedy club on earth adam eget the dude who books it's bringing in people bringing in the new guard bringing in popular comedians to the haunted old fucking

castle of comedy so i look at the schedule for the comedy store and kumail nanjiani's on the schedule and he don't work there and i don't i guess i guess you guys didn't know but i mean maybe if you were sensitive to the situation and watched my television show Marin on IFC uh Mad Mark season three episode six well it was basically a fictionalized meltdown show and I lose it on the guy playing Kumail and that really happened and that was years ago already and it was never resolved basically what happened is i was doing a show there at nerd melt and it was actually the last fucking show i ever did in that goddamn place whatever happened between me and kumail stopped me entirely from doing alternative rooms entirely i just do the comedy store when i'm in town they They give me a lot of work. I get my

work done or I do the Steve Allen Theater on my own terms and work out shit. I don't go to the Laugh Factory. Fuck the Laugh Factory. Fuck the improv. Fuck Nerd Melt. I go to the comedy store. But the alternative thing, this just detached me from all of it for some reason. I just turned my back on those venues and decided that I'm going back to my roots. I'm going back to what I started to do. I'm going back to a real comedy club, and that's how it goes. And now Kumail Nanjiani is on the schedule at the real comedy club that is my home, the comedy store. And my first thought was like, what's he doing there?

I mean, a lot of those guys are working there now. Mulaney's there, and Nick Kroll's been coming by. And I love those guys. These guys are all funny guys. But me and Kamel had a problem and I was like, why is he in my house? I don't go to his house anymore. What the fuck is happening? So I had that, but it wasn't that.

I didn't really obsess about it. This wasn't an active bit of sort of like, I didn't feel that there was an injustice at hand. I mean mean what happened was not unlike the episode of the show I went on stage after he and Jonah Ray you know kind of did their rambling thing but I got on stage when they brought me up and I took a shot at him I busted some balls I said you know I made fun of him and then I got off stage and he was sitting in there he goes you know you can't you can't make fun of me on my show. And I said, are you fucking serious?

Are you really saying that to me? And this is how I remember it. And I'm like, you really serious? He's like, yeah, it's my show. You can't make fun of me on it. And I was like, fuck you. You know, you fucking baby. I can't bust your balls.

You can't take it. Fuck you. And I called him a fucking baby. And I stormed out of the room, fuck you I called him a fucking baby and I stormed out of the room slamming the door like a fucking baby and I said fuck it I'm not doing you know I'm not you know cross me off the list this big dramatic prideful baby bullshit man but anyways it stuck and I didn't go back there I didn't talk to him we unfollowed each other on Twitter and this was over a year I mean this has been years

so this sat there and we wrote that episode of Marin about that about that incident almost exactly and I saw it as my way of apologizing to Kumail without apologizing and I fucking asked him if he wanted to play himself in the episode

and he did not or he said he couldn't what it doesn't matter he didn't so last night I go to the comedy store I even forget that he's on the show and once I get there I walk into the original room and I see him sitting there he looks at me he goes hey I look at him I go what's up and he goes um is it done i think is what he said and i go yeah i yeah then we walked out in the hallway we hugged and uh you know and and it's over but it wasn't even that loaded i was happy to see him i tweeted later i said me and kumail uh hugged it out fyi he said the walls are something about the walls now we tore the wall down and then i tweeted detente and then we both followed each other again on twitter so there you have it the saga

of mark maron and camille nangiani now ends a secret saga that some of you knew was real is over and i feel okay about it i don't know why I'm saying that. You should be proud of me. Fucking baby. You know what I mean? I'm better though. I'm better. And I love that talk with Eric Andre. That was helpful too. But there's a lot fewer of these.

There's very few left. Oh, before I forget, Eric Andre and I talked a bit, but not really in any detail, but it was a little loaded about the writer Jim Goad. And he emailed me feeling a bit misrepresented. So if you are interested in following up on that, you can go to Jim Goad dot net. There's very little that goes on in his life or in his mind that goes undocumented.

It is challenging. It is a dark rabbit hole, not for the faint of mind or heart, but I wanted to make sure that he is represented and I guess he can do that best himself. So Seth Meyers is here and you can watch his show. It's Late Night with Seth Meyers on at 1230 every weeknight right after the Tonight Show. It's a very pleasant hang. And it was nice to talk to him. You want to listen to it? Because I'll let you listen to it right now.

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on Saturday, March 9th at 5pm in Rock City at torontorock.com Now. I don't know if I told you this, because I was an intern at Comedy Central summer of 95, and I did a lot of watching of Short Attention's fan theater.

When I did it? Yeah. How did, oh my God. But at Comedy Central, not at HBO Downtown, so you're up in the office. Yeah. Oh, that's hilarious. You watched me miraculously string together

a bunch of promotional clips into TV shows? Yeah, and that's the department I worked in was just cutting promos for shows. So we were, you were cutting old sketches into a show and then we were cutting that into promos. I wasn't, I was just. And that was before Broadway video. That was before any.

Yeah. How old were you when you did that? Well, that's right before my senior year of college, so I must have been 20 years old. So you were gunning for show business all along. Well, I was a radio, TV, film major at Northwestern, so I tried to get an internship, and Comedy Central seemed like a fun place to work.

You seem like a very well-adjusted person. It bothers me. Yeah. I'm fairly well-adjusted. Like, I don't know what to do with it. Like, I'd see, like, when I'd see, when you were doing update or when I knew about you, when you were someone I knew, I was like, how's that normal fucker get to be, you know, the king of SNL?

How does that happen? The normal guy. It's not fair. I agree. I agree. Trust me. I will say, I spent the whole time thinking the normal fucker wasn't going to get it either.

Okay, well that makes you more like us. That there were problems inside that don't come out in front. Well, I just felt normal at a place where I felt I was surrounded by exceptional. If that makes sense. Oh, I get it. So wait, so where did you, where was the upbringing? What happened? Where'd you grow up felt I was surrounded by exceptional. Right. If that makes sense. Oh, I get it. I get it. So wait, so where was the upbringing?

What happened? Where'd you grow up? I was born near Chicago in Evanston, Illinois, but we grew up in New Hampshire. Really? Yeah. Pretty much the same town as Sarah Silverman and Adam Sandler.

Yeah. But you didn't know them. I didn't know them. I knew people who knew Sarah, because she's only a couple years older than me. Right. But I do remember thinking it was statistically impossible

that three people from my part of New Hampshire would be on SNL. Once Sarah got on, I assumed, well, that will never. Really? Yeah. Oh, you were working the numbers? You're like, I'm out.

I just thought, no, that's just a long shot. No, God will not allow that. The great- Why would they? Yeah. The great connection of coincidences. Serendipity, it's just a long shot. No, God will not allow that. Why would they? Yeah. The great connection of coincidences. Serendipity, it's over. It's played out in that part.

New Hampshire doesn't get that many. Well, what part of New Hampshire is that? I'm from a town called Bedford, but I went to high school in Manchester, which is San Luis's town. That's like the town. There's only a few in New Hampshire. There really are. It's pretty though, right?

Yeah, it was great. It was a perfectly, you know, it's pastoral to some degree, but it's really suburban more than anything else. Right. How many brothers and sisters do you have? I have one younger brother. That's it? Yeah.

How old is that kid, your brother? He's two years younger than me. Josh, he lives out here. He's an actor and a writer. Josh and Seth. How are you Josh and Seth, but not 100% Jews? How does that work? Isn't that weird?

Well, my father's father's Jewishish and yeah he married a catholic lady and then my mom pure uh pure shiksa yeah and but you get seth and josh i mean jews are afraid to name their kids that jew i know well that was the thing my dad do you know the book north dallas 40 yeah i know the movie yeah so uh i love. One of the characters is Seth, Seth Maxwell. Yeah. And my dad was reading that book when my mom was pregnant with me, and he just liked the name Seth. I don't think he thought how Jew-y it would make him.

Was that Mac Davis' character or Nick Nolte's character? I think it's Nolte, but now I can't. No, maybe it's Mac Davis. Yeah? Yeah. And that's where it comes from. That's where it comes from. It has nothing to do with the Bible or Jews.

It's North Dallas 40. And it was funny. Growing up in New Hampshire, it wasn't until I got to college where I realized how I was around more Jews in college than I was in high school. Yeah, it happens in cities. And that's when you realize, that was the first time I realized, oh, the rest of my life, everyone's going to think that I'm Jewish. Think that you're Jewish?

Yeah. Yeah. And they're going to approach you like you're one of them until you say I'm not Jewish. It was lovely. Well, that's the lovely part is how happy people are to find out that you're Jewish. Like, that was great. Jews. Yeah, Jews are always looking for more.

Jew? Yeah. Now we can talk to the shorthand. Yes. So when you were younger, though, did you do, did you have, like, when did your interest in comedy start? Really early. My parents, my dad especially, was a huge fan.

You would go, well, obviously you went to Fanny Hall. But a lot of listening to Steve Martin albums and Richard Pryor albums. My dad had comedy albums. We would listen to those. Is your dad still around? Yeah. How old is he? I was born in 48.

So he's actually almost like a boomer, almost. Just the beginning of it, in a way. So he was part of all that. He was. They like a boomer, almost. Yeah. Just the beginning of it, in a way. So he was part of all that. He was. They were in Chicago. They both went to Northwestern, so they would go to Second City shows. They were really into that. Green Street Tavern?

Did they do that stuff? I think they did. Were they like Shelly Berman or Mort Sahl? I think they missed that. I think they were more, went to Second City. I think they didn't quite dig for it as much as if there was an institution in place they would go there. So they went and saw

the old Second City people. And then I even remember when we went out to Northwestern to take me out to look at it that was where they took me.

To Second City? Yeah. So that was something I did when I was whatever, you know, 18 years old. Who'd you see?

Do you remember? Anybody? Anybody there? Yeah, Colbert, Carell. Really? You saw that bunch? I did. It was really crazy

because then they kind of both disappeared for a while. Not really, but until they were on The Daily Show. And when it turned up, it was, oh, hey, those guys are really great. Well, you knew then, you knew Colbert then if you were at Comedy Central at that time

because he was on Exit 57, right? Yeah, Exit 57, though, even working at Comedy Central, that was a he was on Exit 57, right? Yeah, Exit 57, though, even working at Comedy Central, that was a show that, it was so brief. So, wait, what's your brother end up doing? Is he in show business? Yeah, he was on MADtv for a couple years.

He was on a year of that 70s show. He's on a show on Amazon right now called Red Oaks. Josh Myers? Josh Myers. And he does some, he writes as well. How did that happen? Yeah, I mean, we were,

we grew up really close. We did a lot of stuff together. Did you do comedy team thing? We did sort of in high school. And then. The Myers brothers? With other people, sort of more part of a troupe. And then we went to college together and then we both ended up out in Amsterdam working for this theater called Boom Chicago. In Amsterdam, the country? Yeah. In Holland? Yeah. Really? Yeah. So, okay. Yeah. Let me, let me understand in Holland. In Amsterdam, Holland? Yeah. Really? Yeah. So, okay. Yeah.

Let me understand. So what's your dad do? My dad is in finance. But he's also- That's vague. So he's a money guy. He's the funny guy. He's the funniest person in any room.

The funny money guy? He's not really. Yeah, he's the funny money guy. It's on right after. He's on right after Jim Cramer. Yep. No, but he's a really funny person he's a fantastic storyteller yeah incredible like every sort of dinner party i'm ever at my whole

youth like my dad was the funny one right just overwhelming everybody yeah no room to be funny well you you had to really wait your time when you a shot, you had to make sure you didn't waste it. Which is where you develop your skills as a talk show host. Yeah. Waiting. Waiting. That's a lot of waiting involved. There is.

There is sometimes, right? Yeah. I've learned to wait. I'm not good at it. It's really important, though. Oh, no. To listen and wait. It's weird.

The first time you decide not to make a joke that you can, it's a big moment for a funny person. Just two weeks ago, there was a show where I walked off and I thought, what was wrong with me today? Really? That I just kept jumping. There's something, there was something. Who was the guest? I can't even remember, but it was all the guests. I just kept like jumping in to say something.

Yeah. As if I don't get to do it every day. That's what makes waiting easy. Well, let's track that day. Maybe you were like sort of like, is anyone watching the show? Am I not doing it right? Or maybe I got to get in there more. Maybe the monologue was flat.

Are you overcompensating? I didn't get my laughs that I needed to move on. So I was trying to steal them from other people. Yeah. But it's a weird moment where you don't where it's a very thrilling moment to decide not to make a joke I've never really talked about it with anybody because I don't I don't know that like I noticed it as much because you only notice it if you're I mean I imagine you did from but on SNL it's

different but in improv it's probably part of it there there's a there's a moment where you're like you got to let them have that yeah I'm not going to do better or mine's redundant yeah and there's no reason to do it or like you know like it's not necessary to win this one and nothing you're right in that nothing is less satisfying than the lateral move right of i can also do what you just did hey hey, audience, look. There's no way not to look like an asshole. Yeah. Like it's like, yeah, it was unnecessary.

We probably notice it more than anyone else because I do think we live in a society where people do lateral moves all the time and social interactions. Yeah, they glom. But so it is hard. Yeah. But it is lovely.

I think that, and you probably discovered this even earlier than I did, but people, the problem with being interesting is the audience doesn't make a noise. Right. If every time they were engaged that way and they were going, ooh, then you would never make it. I've used that to rationalize my entire lack of success throughout my career. I may not be funny, but I'm compelling.

You enjoy watching me no matter what. It's a very good era for compelling. Yeah. I think it really, truly believe. Finally, this culture has come around to compelling. Yeah. Because like, I'm very hard on myself about my jokes and about whether or not they're finished and whether or not the tag is good enough or if there is a tag.

And instead of really work them properly, I'll be like, it interesting it's pretty compelling there yeah it's not it's okay not to have closure i mean you know there's not closure and everything especially once the audience yeah also understands that that's what you're doing right oh i get it he's not being funny right oh this is tonight tonight's not going to be about closure. Or punchlines or necessarily humor. But so I guess I was trying to establish that. Like when you grew up like comfortably, you're not, you weren't in the poor part of New Hampshire. So because like when I hear like two brothers going to Amsterdam to do a show, I'm like, they had a little freedom, these guys. Oh, we really did.

I mean, our parents were so supportive. They came to everything we did. My mom was a theater major at Northwestern. She ended up being a school teacher. So she had a real performer spirit as well. What grade? She taught middle school French for, I think. Like at a public school?

Yeah, about 30 years. So many teacher kids I talked to. Yeah. It's kind of nice i i would i would hope that a teacher would you know be supportive at home and yeah and like you know encourage whatever the creativity the person wants to do the kid my mother is as supportive as you could ask she's my brother i have never done anything that's been anything less than an a plus for her oh really whereas my dad who's also incredibly supportive, he's the one that's judgmental and will give you notes and will tell you that wasn't your best.

You hear from him a lot? Oh, yeah. I'm for the shout out. Less now, but early SNL, I heard from him a lot. Really? To a point that at one time I did have to say, hey, I also am aware it's not going great. I'm there every day.

When you were on Update or before? No, before. Oh, so when you were just writing? Back in the struggle. Well, I started as a cast member at SNL. Yeah. And then I didn't become a credited writer. I mean, everybody in the cast writes, but until about my fifth or sixth year.

But I was just trying to write myself onto the show. And I just remember my dad walking down the street with him. Because he'll be in New York every now and then for business. So I get to see him and he was saying, you know what I've noticed is recurring characters tend to be very helpful. And it was that thing of, I just want you to know, dad,

that I have also come to that conclusion and I'm just not good at them. It wasn't that it hadn't occurred to me. No matter what level of success, through advice, they will diminish you. Yeah. Well, the diminishing thing there is that it's one that I can't, I'm not, I don't have recurring characters. The more insulting thing is that it had never occurred to me as a thinking man. That's right.

That's it. That's exactly it. Because I still get that from my dad. You know, why don't you talk to Bill Maher or maybe talk to Charlie Rose about getting a show like his. Yeah. Like there's a sort of, they don't understand the business quite and they don't realize they're being shitty.

Yeah. Yeah. And that the last person you go to to get a show like theirs is that person. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah, Charlie, why don't you move over? I think your time is up. You seem to be the person to talk to about being direct competition.

I don't know if it's... I have to... As I get older, I just want to believe that it's all with the right spirit. Oh, 100%. There's been no malice from my parents throughout any part of my life. Wow. Yeah. You sound like you're being paid to say that.

It's weird. I didn't think of it until you said, well, yeah. But I really, I mean, again, they are. I guess malice would be a hard word. Yeah, malice, yeah. For anybody. But slight passive aggressive ego battles with parents are not, but I'm not suggesting that.

No. I'm just saying that malice is a strong word. I think my dad, because of the fact that everyone thinks he's really funny because he is, I think he takes great pride in the fact that. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. I think my dad's starting to, reluctantly starting to take pride.

It's nice. So, all right. So you go, you do some things with your brother in high school. Yeah. Is there music involved? No, never. Okay. Well, that's good um i just had no skill for it ever no skill for me yeah i love it but i don't yeah and and then all right so you graduate and then you go look at northwestern you see

corral and colbert are you thinking about snl no no no i was, I wanted to be a director. Film director. And so I applied to schools that had good film programs, and I ended up at Northwestern for that. And pretty, like our new student week at Northwestern, I saw the Northwestern improv troupe perform. What were they called? Meow.

And Were you happy with that name? I wasn't, no no it's a spoof yeah when Gary Marshall was on he mentioned Wah Mew

which was sort of the all school big and so Meow was a spoof on that oh really so at least

it came from something right that's right you and Gary are alumni yeah Julia was in Meow Julia Louis-Dreyfus

was she years before me we talked about that I don't know if she named it though I don't think she did. Was she? Years before me. We talked about that. I don't know if she named it, though. I don't think she did. I think she was smarter than me. She didn't drop it.

No, I like Meow. So you're at Northwestern, it's a Chicago school, so improv is a known thing. So I guess maybe this group, judging by the alum, had a little traction somehow, or at least knew you were in an improv town definitely saw these guys perform that new student week immediately that was the i thought oh i think i can do that yeah were they attached to the theater program or they were was it no it was just it was an independent thing you didn't have to be in theater to audition for it and every year it had a student director who would pick eight students to be in the group different student director different student director every year and i auditioned for

it for three years without getting in really i only did it not till your senior year yeah holy shit that's kind of rough and i never thought they were wrong like when i would go see the shows it would always be four guys and four girls i would look at the four guys who they had picked yeah and you're like i can't, they were all better than I was. Well, what were you doing? Well, they were, it was all, it was just a group of people

a year older than me and they were, you know. Improvising? They were improvising. They were writing sketches. They were fantastic improvisers. Their shows would be sketch and improv. Yeah.

Like, they were very much like based on the Second City model, I would say. Right. But then. Do people go to their shows? Were they popular on campus? Oh, really?

They were rock stars okay alright I like that part yeah sure I was drawn to that yeah but I started

going into Chicago going to ImprovOlympic and taking improv classes yeah at the same time that I was sort of where at ImprovOlympic

so that's the other one IO now yeah Sharna Halperin's place Del Close's place yeah Del Close was ImprovOlympic yeah I should know Halperin's place. Del Close's place. Yeah. Del Close was in Provo Olympic?

Yeah. I should know that. He's the one who started that? That was his offshoot? Yeah, he and Sharna. Yeah. Del Close. Did you meet him?

I didn't. Was he already dead? Is he dead? I think he is. Yeah, he is. I just missed him. He would have been what was level five at this school. It's so amazing to me that, because I've talked to so many people that there's this,

the Chicago influence, man. Yeah. It was a big deal. It was a big deal. And it was a really exciting, you would be able to go down to take your classes. And then it was pretty,

I think if you took class at shows might've even been free, but you would just hang out and see people that turned out to later be like Amy Poehler or Tina Fey. You saw them where? At ImprovOlympic, just doing shows. They were I.O. people? Yeah. They were I.O. people.

I'm sure I know that. I can't remember everything. I.O. was like a place people worked before they got. You didn't get paid at I.O. Oh, so you were heading towards Second City. Yeah, it was like the AAA for Second City. I get it right farm team yeah yeah so you were seeing them you saw tina and uh yeah and and dratch dratch yeah i saw dratch i mean i saw dratch on second city be funnier in a show than i've ever seen like pop out of a show more than anybody Crazy. Horatio. Yeah. And yeah,

I mean, I was just in awe of all of them. So your brother's with you? No, my brother. What's the age difference? Two years.

It's just like me and my brother. He's two and a half though. Two and a half. So I finished school and was doing IO. I'd done the one year of Meow

and that had sort of put in my head that I wanted to keep doing this. My goal was Second City. That's really what I wanted to do more than that. That was the short term goal that you didn't see past that. I really didn't. And they would sort of put in my head that I wanted to keep doing this. My goal was Second City. That's really what I wanted to do more than anything else. That was the short-term goal. You didn't see past that.

I really didn't. And they would sort of audition, maybe every year, every six months. Were you doing characters? No. I, as an improviser, I was doing a two-person show. Yeah. And with this girl named Jill Benjamin, my old comedy partner. And we used to say that, like, just check me out during the course of the show.

This was when I was, was whatever 27 years old and i would say like over the course of the show you'll see me play characters anywhere between 26 and 28 years old because at no point in my career have i had range yes and i think as an improviser all my characters were just like slight variations on you of me yeah so what do you think your big comic strength is? Well, I think I could write really fast as an improviser. I think premise and structure and good jokes. But I, so I ended up out in Amsterdam. So these guys started this like. Okay, so you graduate college, you do IO for a while,

you don't get into Second City. I don't, right. You tried. I tried, I auditioned. And I think like I was probably on a short list for maybe the next year. Uh-huh. But that was the thing about Chicago. Like you really had to like stick around.

Oh, yeah. Well, it's not unlike stand-up where you had to pay your fucking dues. You had to show up at the things. Other guys had to be like, he's a guy. Yeah. And then, you know, then you get your shot. Yeah. If you hang out long enough.

And it's, though, I always remember the thing about auditioning for Second City is it would be a small group of people, not a group of people you picked. Yeah. It was not self-selecting. Right. And then you would maybe have one or two shots to do an improv scene, and you're with somebody else whose skills could be anywhere from a zero to a 10. Yeah.

Yeah, you're just the default straight guy. Yeah. Or they're just dragging you down. Oh, really? And there's a couple ways it could go. How does that work? Well, you go out and you just realize somebody is not that good at improvising.

Oh, so that's the other side, the not good guy. Yeah. The guy who's floundering. And then you just can't elevate your game past those limitations. But then a friend of mine, this guy Pete Gross, we saw an audition notice for this place, Boom Chicago, which was some Chicago guys started an improv theater in Amsterdam.

And it was only in its third year now. It's still going. Still going. Still going. And we auditioned for that. The same guys? Same guys, yeah. They're there?

Yeah, Chicago guys. They just stayed there? Yeah, they all married Dutch women and they just. Really? And they just. Boom Chicago. Boom Chicago.

And there've been Jordan Peele from Key & Peele went through there. Sudeikis was out there at the same time. Ike Barinholtz who's a really funny guy was out there.

In Amsterdam. But most of these guys I assume were sort of like this is my semester abroad. It was abroad it was it was a year contract when you did it most people ended up staying for longer for two because we did shows

in a 250 seat theater they sold really well you got to do about 200 shows a year as a performer and living in Amsterdam was fantastic I mean it was the most fun of my life it was yeah I mean mostly because it was the most fun in my life. It was? Yeah.

I mean, mostly because it was the age that you're just more likely to be happier. How old were you, like 28? I think I was there from 25 to 27. Two years, 25, 27. You're young, excited. Yep. Smoking a lot of hash. I realized I don't love smoking weed there, but I love drinking Heineken from the tap.

It wasn't like there was plenty of debauchery. It's pretty there. It's beautiful. And you went to the Van Gogh Museum. I don't know if I did while I lived there. Didn't make it. I go back a lot, and I've gone since. You go back a lot?

Well, I do. I have close friends there, and I love it. The guys from Chicago who marry Dutch women. Yeah. So you and your wife go there and spend it. I went a lot more without my wife than with her. Yeah. I think. Gotta do your

drinking somewhere, right? Gotta do it somewhere. You seem like a pretty clean cat. You know, like you got a good reputation here. So you sneak off to Amsterdam. Gotta go abroad. There have been a few times where I was really messed up in Amsterdam and someone came up to say, and you just realize, oh, you're not the only

American there. Right. And really messed up and someone's saying, hey, I'm a huge fan. Yeah, or else like, hey, dude, you're making us look bad. Yeah, that's true. I never made us look as bad as some of the Americans there. But that's fascinating to me. So you know these guys that have now been there for over a decade.

More than that now. They started it in, yeah, 97, something like that. Like 20 years. Isn't that crazy? So they're like 45-year-old dudes. Yeah. And they just built a life for them in Amsterdam. Yeah.

And they have kids with Dutch people. They have Dutch kids. Dutch kids. And they speak two languages maybe. They do. And they just keep hiring young people. They have Dutch kids. Dutch kids. And they speak two languages maybe. They do. And they just keep hiring young people from the States. Yep.

And it's a grind. Like running a theater is a grind. But they're just, they still love it so much. But it's a big business. So they all do all right. They live in nice houses in Amsterdam. They do pretty good. And a big part of it is they do a lot of corporate stuff because there aren't a lot of like-

All around Europe? Mostly, you know, actually they do do all around Europe. Yeah. Because there's not that thing- Right. Of like that kind of comedy where, hey, we'll come and like help message and be funny in that American way. Improvisers can do that easily.

They really can. Yeah. Like at a convention or at a corporate retreat. Yeah. A lot of retreats. Yeah. or at a corporate retreat. Yeah, a lot of retreats. Yeah, and I guess with improvisers, it's easier than comics who begrudgingly get that list of, that's the boss and this is what we like to do here.

But with improvisers, they're like, great, we need this shit. We were going to ask for suggestions anyway. Exactly. If you want to give them to us ahead of time. It makes it a lot easier. Yeah. I just like the idea of people like just sort of finding themselves like in another country

and deciding to like, well, this is it. Yeah. I'm going to live here. And it seems exotic to me. It was. There are a couple, I look,

I think I could have ended up in Chicago forever. I really loved it. I think I could have, I was close to saying, oh, I could just do this. I really love Dan Stranet. Work with these guys.

Yeah. And there was this girl, Jill Benjamin, who was, like I mentioned her before, but we were out there at the same time and we were doing a lot of stuff at the theater. And she was the one who said, I think we have to leave because I think we're going to hit the ceiling

of what we can accomplish here because there weren't other jobs. Right, no, you would be doing that. Yeah. And there's a certain type of person that's sort of like, I'm okay just turning this shit out every week. Yeah.

You know, like it's not, I don't, I guess the challenges are different. There's a difference between a creative person that's searching to do something more with their creativity all the time and somebody who is like, we can do this every week. I feel like I'm really a little bit of both. Yeah, no. Because I was really. You're doing a thing every night.

Yeah. I mean, I ended up at one of them. And I was at SNL never thinking, I got to get out of here. I was, this is great. I like this. Funny people here. So I was very lucky to have someone with the ambition of my partner at the time. But also, you were able to find out new things about what you were capable of within the structure of SNL.

Like, it seems like if you were just a cast member, like, you know, like you had some power, you had production power and, you know, you had to manage people after a certain point. So you rose through the ranks a bit. And I think for being a writer, like doing writing more than performing at the show like that kind of never gets old because you're going to go right right anywhere right somewhere else and snl basically is like having whatever writing job you want each week to be i think for cast members i get how somebody like you know kristen wieger or bill hader after seven years can say oh i'm just out right and also they you know they've built up enough cultural capital to do bigger things in a way yeah of course if i don't know if i've ever used that phrase cultural

capital very nice it's pretty good right and i think cultural capital is what snl turns out probably more than any other absolutely so all right so so you're in amsterdam you're drinking heineken's out of the tap you're you're doing uh improvs you probably have moments where you're in Amsterdam you're drinking Heineken's out of the tap you're doing improv you probably have moments where you're like I did this riff the other day I'm doing this improv again yeah similar because it was

there was the most rewarding part of that show was it was like there was sketch writing we did a lot of that but it was the improv was

a lot of it was short form improvising which is has a tendency when you do a lot of reps to feel redundant. Right. But you're learning how to write basically. Yeah. Throughout all this.

And, you know, learning how to sort of strip away sort of pop culture references that would work in the States that don't work in front of a Dutch audience. Right. That was kind of nice too, I think. Yeah.

But like the, the education of comedy writing came from not like class or school but actually just reps reps and listening to jokes and yeah you know like learning joke structure yep sketch structure that was very helpful for that but that real education for me just took place at snl i mean i think i was okay but you just that thing of sitting down every week and hearing 40 sketches be read yeah it's baffling to me that like how some sketches work like you know the because I'm not like I don't know if I have ever thought about it as much as I thought about it

after talking to people doing it but they don't they have their own life you know that like either they're character driven or maybe they're comedy driven. But if you think in terms of comedy logic, like on the page, a lot of sketches that are character driven don't even add up. No. Well, that was when you used to read things before the table read. Right. You know, before you understood what a Maya Rudolph could do. Right.

Right. You would say, well, best of luck with this. I don't like your chances based on the first read. And then, of course, they just do it. Yeah. So how did, how did,

so you come back from Amsterdam and then what happens? Is that when you become a, no, you did the internship in college. Yeah, that was in college.

So I come back two years, yeah, I come back after two years and start doing this show called Pickups and Hiccups with Joe Benjamin

and this was this. Where's she now? She's out here. She's married to John Henson. You know John Henson? I do know John Hensoncups with Joe Benjamin. And this was this- Where's she now? She's out here. She's married to John Henson. You know John Henson? I do know John Henson. So they're married, a couple kids. Everyone, yeah, the kids.

You just had one. Just had one, yeah. Yeah, but it seems like you waited long enough. I did, 42. Yeah. Yeah. You don't look 42. Thank you.

How old's your wife? 32. Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay. Now that's reasonable. Yeah, it's my reason. It's on. Yeah, okay. Now that's reasonable. Yeah, it's within reason. It's on the edge of reason. You know, I've gone unreasonable.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. It doesn't last long. It's not the greatest thing. If I was not with my beautiful wife, and thank God I am, I'm sure I'd be unreasonable. Good. All right, so you do the pick and what? Pickups and hiccups.

Yeah, with Jill. Yeah you do the pick and what? Pickups and hiccups. Yeah. With Jill? Yeah. Off Broadway? It was in Chicago and it was like a little, but it became like a little, a very small, but like local hit. Oh, really? We did it for a while and we were doing it. What was the angle?

It was a sort of sketch improv show about relationships. Oh, okay. Got it. So it was specific and couples could go on Valentine's Day and you do a special Valentine's Day show. Yeah, exactly. Okay, got it. So it was specific and couples could go on Valentine's Day and you do a special Valentine's Day show. Yeah, exactly. Okay.

And then we did it at this Chicago Improv Festival and I was really lucky. This woman who worked in the talent department at SNL was there just randomly. Ayala Cohen was her name.

Is her name still? And she saw the show and reached out for me to send in an audition tape. And that sort of started the process. And you had not even been thinking about that? No. Fully focused on Second City.

On pickups and hiccups. Yeah. I didn't think. And getting into Second City still. Yeah. And then, I mean, I had hoped. And I saw Second City as like, and then maybe after Second City. Because that was the era that Tina had just left for SNL.

So you still thought you had to go through Second City? And you did not have a relationship with Tina Fey at the time? No, I didn't. Okay. So it's just you and Jill, pickups and hiccups. Yep. Chicago Improv Fest. Yep.

You get a call. Someone approaches you. I get a call. What's her name? Ayala? Ayala Cohen. Ayala Cohen. I know.

I've met her. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And she's like, we need a tape. We need a tape. And it's so funny to think back to, which it feels, it's not that, it's not

ancient history, but I had to find a friend who had a digital camera. Oh, yeah. And then it was a little tape, and then I had to find a place that would transport it. Whose living room are you gonna shoot it in, or just shoot it in the theater? Oh, shot it in front of, like, a chest of drawers, just this flat, like, the lighting is so, again, I think the lighting was just two desk like the lighting is so again I think

the lighting was just two desk lamps one is the key and one is the fill but they just you know just blasting heat on my face

I'll never forget this time where we used to work for this company that used to book stand up and they'd get all these audition tapes

and we got hold of one and it was a guy like in a basement doing jokes and he must have had a friend dropping a phonograph needle on a

laugh track record so the guy would do the joke and it would just drop in like and he had must add a friend dropping a phonograph needle on a laugh track record so the guy would do the joke and just drop in like yeah and he pulled the needle but you heard the needle dropping it was one of the best things i ever saw in my life oh so so you do this horrible tape i do the horrible tape i think that's the end of it uh they had said here's i will sometimes say i love when people give me specific rules. Yeah. That structure to me is, oh, thank God. Yeah.

Because Aiella sort of thrown away said, you know, it's about five minutes. If you want to do impressions and characters, like three impressions, three characters. And I just heard that and said, yes, five minutes, three, three. Oh, and you're not a character guy. No. So you did three 29-year-old. No, I went to work. Oh, year old no i went to work i went to work and i i used it i mean i think that the one thing about snl auditions is that you can show off

writing like you can write jokes within your stuff so i think i did russell crowe and hugh grant again we're talking about 2000 here so they were very they were very of the moment um you grant you did a few times didn't you? I did them like once I did them once and then I did you know I wrote like a Boston guy how are ya?

it was a guy who was upset upset you got it this is all of it you've seen it got around what about this guy? I made a very unique choice to do an upset You got it. This is all of it. You've seen it. It got around. What about this guy? I made a very unique choice to do an upset Boston guy. And then I thought that was the end of it.

And then six months later, they reached out again for another tape. And it was funny. Hugh Grant, Russell Crowe, upset Boston guy. Yeah. Oh, this actually was a sketch once it was a uh uh a fallen from grace Italian fashion photographer who now worked at Sears good yeah yeah and then I did that with Hugh Jackman we were we did it together and you did the Italian accent yeah it was fine okay we're not great but fine yeah and then uh so that baby says second tape send that

in and then about after a full year at probably about after they first reached out I got called Fine. Yeah. And then, so that baby says, second tape, send that in. And then about after a full year, probably about after they first reached out, I got called in to audition. So you kind of, like, I've heard that before where you just sort of let it go. Oh, I completely let it go. And you go back to pickups and hiccups. Yeah. Guys are kicking ass. I moved out here, actually.

I came out to L.A. and went through. With Jill and with Josh, my brother. And we went, we had a place on like Vermont wait Josh was in Amsterdam with you right yep and then he flew back from Amsterdam for a pilot season

he ended up going back for a year after and before he fully moved out but we we lived in like a furnished apartment and

went through one pilot season and it was during that that I got the call so I lived out here for almost six months before. Did you get a pilot? No,

I did one episode of Spin City with Charlie Sheen though. Oh yeah? Yeah. And then when the whole Charlie Sheen thing happened, I had forgotten

that was my first time on TV. It was like two months into the Charlie Sheen meltdown that all of a sudden I had the memory of, oh, that was, Yeah,

I know that guy. Yeah, I did a scene with him. He was very nice. Couldn't have been nicer. What happened to that kid? Yeah. So, all right, so the memory of, oh, that was. Yeah, I know that guy. Yeah, I did a scene with him. He was very nice. Couldn't have been nicer. What happened to that kid? Yeah. So, all right.

So, you go back. So, then what's next? So, you get this second call for another tape or you got to go to the studio now? Two tapes. Now I go to the studio. I fly out and I had a friend of a friend, new Rachel Dratch. I asked if I could call her. I called her.

She was absolutely lovely. This was before i'd ever met her yeah and she uh she was on the show at that time she was on the show she gave me advice about auditioning which is the advice i still give people all the time which is the best thing you can tell them is nobody laughs because then if you even just get one laugh you think you broke right you can delude yourself yeah yeah uh and i my audition, and I thought it went really well. And I don't usually think that. You didn't get laughs.

You did. I did. I got enough laughs on. I think I got my laughs more on the jokes than on the performance. But enough laughs that I thought, oh, that went well. Yeah. And flew back to LA, then got a call that Lauren wanted to meet me, flew all the way back to New York and had my, you know.

Your one-on-one? My one-on-one. With Lauren, how long did you wait? I waited probably an hour plus. Yeah. Shoemaker and Higgins came out and said hi. Yeah. Sat down, Lauren, I didn't realize I'd been hired.

That's how pessimistic I am. You thought this was just part of the process. Well, it is part of the audition process usually, isn't it? Yeah, but even in the, he didn't say you're hired over that meeting. He said like, do you think you could work in New York? And then he said, you know, I think we'll bring you in and see how you look in wigs.

And so I left thinking, well, now all I have to do is the wig stage. The wig challenge. And then I flew all the way back to LA before I got a call that you know i was officially gonna start see how you look in wigs and by the way he should have because i look terrible in wigs yeah whereas like bill hater transformative put a wig on him different guy yeah i think i've heard someone else say that yeah they said i think it might have been hater

like you know we have it like it was a question that he would ask. Yeah. Yeah. And just, whereas, I just look like a guy in a wig. Yeah. Interesting. Always. Well, Hader's like one of those guys, it seems like if he held something in his hand that had enough juice, he could transform into it. It's really, I mean, that was, when those guys started showing up, Hader, Sandberg, Sudeikis, before them, Fred and Will,

that was when I had my real crisis of confidence of, oh, I'm not as good as they are. And I like them personally, but I'm deeply jealous of how good they are. Yeah, and there's nothing, that weird humility of moving through jealousy to realizing your limitations. Yeah.

It's brutal. Oof. Yeah. Like, you sit there, like, that moment where you realize, like, there's nothing I could do. That was, I mean, I remember, my, the year four or five was really rough for me

on that test. Well, who was there when you got there? When I got there, last year, Will. Yeah. Catan. Yeah. Valentina. 2001.

2001. Yeah. Tracy Morgan. I start with Polar, which is a lifesaver because we got to be really good friends. And she instantly worked on the show, as would make sense to anybody who knows her talents. And it was good to be friends with somebody who was working. Did you write for her? I did.

And I wrote with her a lot. Yeah. We had a lot of fun writing together. So you were one of those guys where you get brought on as a writer cast member. Just a cast member. Like we, I mean, every cast member writes, but I wasn't credited as a writer. So you started doing that on your own initiative with her. You like you, at some point you realize like, I'm not getting on. I'm going to work with Amy.

Well, it was more like I would write things that were group scenes yeah that i would have a line a good line or two in like that's i was that's how i was trying to stay alive whereas if i wrote a seth scene yeah they were never so yeah but that was just uh instinctual it wasn't like calculated i think it was more instinctual than right like i gotta get on they're not gonna give me the whole scene yeah so maybe i could just be this guy it wasn't for lack of trying right i mean i did try to be the guy in the scene there's a weird thing where when you get hired for snl you have this initial like burst of confidence because you think they are they can't be wrong right if they said you should be here you're about to be will ferrell right they must know something they'll make you into that yeah and then over the course

of that first year, you realize, oh no, like this is, they can be wrong. Yeah. And they can grind you down to nothing.

Yeah. And make you go running away feeling like an empty vessel. Yes. All of those things could have happened. So, all right, so 2001, 2002,

you write with Amy, you get on a little bit. Little bit. And then Will leaves. Will leaves. In 2001. Yeah, you write with Amy, you get on a little bit. A little bit. And then Will leaves. Will leaves. In 2001. Yeah, that was, yeah, 2002 season. And that's not, oh, so then that's Forte and Fred.

No, yeah, Forte and Fred start the next year. And they're kind of immediately like these really unique voices. Yeah. And that you just kind of watch other people at the table like light up when they do their sketches because they're like, I've never seen anything like this. And I'm looking at these faces saying,

I've never seen these expressions. Where were these expressions for my first year? So you're quietly smiling and steaming inside. Yeah. Fuming. Fuming. And also, you know, that thing of knowing, being so aware of your own jealousy.

Yeah. But you didn't, how did you not like see the difference between, I guess, you and me is that I wouldn't have been able to hide it nor keep it to myself. I would have, I would have started a gossip campaign just out of my own fucking anger and fear and just be like, nah, fuck Fred. I, uh. Was there any of those guys just be like, nah, fuck Fred. Was there any of those guys around? The, yeah, fuck Armisen. We were there at a pretty good era.

I don't think there were a lot of fuck people, fuck cast member, like fuck this guy, fuck that guy. You know, Mike Shoemaker, who now I work with at Late Night, he was a producer at SNL. Was he a head writer or he was? No, he was just on the producer side. But when I was there was Tina, was the head writer. From was? No, he was just on the producer side. But when I was there was Tina was the head writer. From 2001?

Pretty much, yeah. And that's when you really met her? Yeah. Her and Dennis McNicholas was a head writer. But Shoemaker was one of these guys. He was like a real good friend to me right away. And he was the guy that kept me from making any of the mistakes that would have ruined my time there.

He was the one. I'm really lucky to have him. He'd pull you out of the crew when you were about to cry and stuff? Or just say like, hey, you can't be jealous. You were going to work with these people for a really long time. You have to figure out a way to make it work. Oh, wow. And you listened to him?

I did. I'm a very good listener when I get good advice yeah yeah that's good because i'm looking for it i your jealousy did not contaminate your perception in a way because you like it like i don't know like well obviously i'm i'm like i have problems but like i would have been like what the fuck do you know but you're like no i want to stay here no because yeah, I want to stay here. No, because yeah, I did want to stay. And also I kind of, you know, the saddest I ever was at my time at SNL was when I came to this realization of if they fired me, I couldn't say they were wrong about it.

This was 2004. So you've been like kind of biting your lip for a long time and trying to figure out how to work it. And you were just, what you're getting in a little bit. A little bit. I was getting sketches on. You know, I was writing, and this ended up-

Were you credited as a writer at that point? No, so what happened was when Tina left, they, Lauren asked if I wanted to be head writer. Just out of nowhere? Pretty much out of nowhere. 2004? 2005, I want to say. So after the crisis.

Like, it kind of saved me from the crisis. Right. Because I thought, oh, well then this will be the thing I am. So you showed that you had, you know, an even keel and could manage content. Yeah. And that I would, I could write for a lot of different voices. Right. I wasn't, I couldn't, some people are very good at writing things for themselves.

Yeah. And not others, but I think I had a good ear for people and could figure. And everybody spoke highly of you and you were delivering sketches and Lorne knows that. Yeah.

He knows who writes what. Yeah, our names were on them. Yeah. So that was really helpful. Yeah. But you weren't credited as a writer yet. No, but when you turn in sketches at the table read,

your name is on the top. Do you get writer money? No. It's weird. Yeah. I was very upset for it. I was very upset about that in the years that I was... Uncredited as a writer.

Yeah, because I like being a writer. Like, Lauren always makes fun of me that I was the only cast member who was so happy to get a writer's credit. It was like, usually people angle the other way. Yeah. But I really wanted that. Well, you knew the, this is a great personal journey where you realized your own limitations,

that you realized that your talent was what it was and you could use it within your reason, but writing was your strong suit. And that if anything, if the other stuff went, you could be a writer on some level. Yes, absolutely. That's always, I would thought, okay, this will be. And I really love doing it.

So, I mean, my favorite moments at SNL, the moments that I remember were more often than not me standing on behind the cameras watching people do something, watching like something murder yeah that i wrote oh yeah yeah you're a good audience and that's exciting yeah because you're waiting you're waiting yeah just waiting and knowing and that thing of this is that line yeah and also the you know as a my first couple years on the show like i'll watch reruns and the stage

managers had to tell me to stop. I would move my mouth during other people's lines if I wrote it. Oh really? Like I couldn't get out of my writer's brain. So. That's a weird habit.

Not everybody, it's a unique thing. I would do it at update too. Oh really? Yeah like. Sitting next to somebody? Yeah and I have no idea but I would be moving

my mouth along. When you were, who were you, you were on with Tina? No, Tina left. Oh that's, you were on with Amy? Who were you,

who was your? Yeah so it was Jimmy and Tina. Jimmy left. We had SNL audition. Did you write for Jimmy a lot? No, I didn't really. I mean, we wrote a couple things together. Yeah.

We weren't there very long. You see each other now. You're in the same building, right? You'd be surprised how little we see each other, just because. You tape at different times? Tape at different times on different floors. Right.

When you're on different floors of a giant skyrise. I was just on his show. Yeah, how'd it go? It was good. Great. It was the first time I'd done his Tonight Show. But Lorne came down to say hi. Oh, really?

That's crazy. That's really great. It's so crazy. Here's what's crazy. What? That means Lorne's come and said hi to you more recently than he's come and said hi to me. I was just so like, I never,

I feel weird that it's so exciting. But like, but I don't know him. Like my experience with him is one bad meeting and then my interview with him. That's it. But during that interview, I was able to see him in a completely different way. Like, you know, he's a guy that works there. Yeah. He just works there.

Yeah. I do still, you know, he doesn't stop by that much, which is fine. To the new show. Yeah. But when he does, it is always really nice. Yeah. He just does that thing of like, everything good? Yeah.

Okay, good. Do you get the sense that he's paying attention? Yeah. I don't know how much he's paying attention, but I think he's been very good over the course of almost, I guess, a year and a half. I hope that's right but he uh of just letting me know how he thinks it's going or or you know he he's the kind of guy who makes wants you to make small adjustments and uh-huh yeah well let's get to that in a second so so now you're like you've been offered the

head writer thing and you're the head writer and uh and what does that mean for your performing did you find yourself on the show less or more as head writer? Right. Yeah. So now I'm a head writer. With who? So I'm still a little bit of overlap with Tina and then Andrew Steele, who works out here now and does a bunch of stuff with Funnier Dad. Funnier Dad, yeah.

I knew his wife used to. Kiki. Kiki used to. I wonder if Kiki still hates me. Kiki used to be a producer on my short attention span theater. Gotcha. Wow. And I was a pain in the ass.

Yeah. And she just did not, I didn't know how to play the game. I didn't want to be there really. I took the job because I was, I had nothing else going on. And, you know, in retrospect, I learned how to read prompter. I did a lot. Sure. But I was not nice to her.

In retrospect, I learned how to read prompter. I did a lot. Sure. But I was not nice to her. And I don't, like, I imagine, like, I don't think I make as big an impression as I do. Like, in everything, time fades everything. Yeah. But I had heard at some point that, like, I was, like, the bane of her existence.

You have the best memory of your worst behavior. Sure. And you think you have this impact, but there's a narcissism to that. You're like, hey, man, I really got to apologize for that thing. And they're like, what? Hey, have you bounced back from me? Have you recovered? I haven't.

Yeah. Yeah. So then Tina leaves and then I auditioned to be an update with Polar. Okay. Did Lauren say we're going to audition? Yeah. We had auditions and also Lauren sort uh threw back channels

not back channels it was pretty specific but my manager at the time called and said hey next season yeah uh lauren thinks you should just be a writer and not a cast member this is before the update audition yeah and i that was a decision in my head where I thought, I think if I don't get update, I'm going to leave because I thought it was the one, cause again, I had all this awareness that these people are better than me. Yeah. They're better than me. I, I'm jealous of their talents.

Yeah. I did think I was the right choice for update. Right. And I kind of thought. Who else was up for it? Gosh, like, I feel like. Everybody? I feel like Kenan auditioned, a couple of other writers auditioned.

And that's just in the audition, you're in the studio at the desk with Amy, just doing camera tests. Just doing jokes. I wrote something. I used to do the thing with Amy called Really, which I wrote one of those for that, to be like, oh, this maybe will be like this.

So anyways, I basically went into that audition being like, this is either, I'll either get this or it's the end of it. So that was the biggest thing that ever happened to me at SNL, obviously. Getting up to it. Yeah. And then that also turned me into, it just allowed me to be so magnanimous

because now all of a sudden as a performer, after years of struggle, I'm going to get 15 minutes every week. Yeah the thing that the one thing i'm comfortable being which is myself right and now i can just like redouble my efforts to sort of help everybody else with my extra energy really yeah i mean he stayed on his head writer and did update and i think that i i mean it was just because of ego and like finally having that moment. It's confidence. Like, you know, your work had paid off in that, that, that piece of the puzzle was set

for the time being. And, and, you know, so now you like, you know, you achieve something. Yeah. And I was so, and it was the first thing, cause again, I, I don't think I'm along, but you feel like a fraud a lot of times at SNL. Like, oh, they made a terrible mistake. And I was all of a sudden like doing something. How many years into it though?

There's like six years in? Six years. You just feel like a fraud until you get an update? I mean, there were some. I'm really getting away with something. There were some drunken rides home from like after after parties and taxis where I was just, oh no, this is, I've got to have fun at these parties because I don't think they're going to last. I think this is going to end soon. And then it was great.

And that was why I wasn't really thinking of what I was going to do next because I was so happy to do an update every week and being a head writer. And I do think that cast that I got to write for and that whole writing staff got to write for, I do think that's one of the top three groups of people that I've ever written for.

And that was who? His hater. So that's Wig, Hater, Polar, Maya, Samberg, Fred, Will, Kenan. They're all very nice people. It's a good group. So your relationship with Lorne was, he must have liked your even keelness and practical listening person. person yeah and i was

the kind of person who was willing to fix problems that lauren had oh yeah try i liked uh like he come to you as a writer and he go i don't think this is working yeah i mean that's really the head writer's main job is sort of you know the things that because again it's that great place where on tuesday everybody just goes off and writes their own thing. So if somebody brings something brilliant, as a head writer, you have nothing to do with that. You're just lucky. Right.

And then it's like when Friday rolls around, like what are the cracks? And oftentimes those are cold opens or monologues or, you know, we're an update feature. Celebrity monologue? You mean guest star monologue? Yeah. Those are really tough to crack sometimes. Uh-huh. Because you don't know if this person can even deliver jokes sometimes.

Oftentimes, by the time it's a problem, you know they can't. You know, it's Friday, and now you've seen enough of them to know that they can't. Yeah. And sometimes they're holding on to the idea that they can. Uh-huh. Oh. I will, and I know that this has now become sort of an SNL trope that people don't like, but I loved question monologues where people in the audience would stand up and ask questions

because then it's just, you know, you take six of them to dress and if four of the questions work and there were hosts who took that as an insult. Oh, really? I just feel like you obviously don't think that I can do a monologue if you have people in the audience asking me a question. It was that. But the real question was, why do you think you can do a monologue? You can't ask that question.

There's no delicate way to do that. Right. So the head writer's job at SNL was to primarily collate all the stuff that comes in, decide which was great, figure out which stuff needed work, and then after the first read-through, listen to Lauren's suggestions. Yeah, well, the best part, I loved it.

I probably am now romanticizing it, but we would do table reads, I'm sorry, rewrite tables on Thursday, which is the writing staff would sit around a table, and you would have the sketches that had already been selected for the show, and you would basically rewrite them just adding jokes making cuts

and it was just sitting in a room with really fucking funny people who was there when you were there the writers I mean

James Anderson Paula Pell Emily Smyvie John Mulaney America Sawyer Simon Rich wow Colin Jost

who's doing Update Now. Rob Klein, Eric Kenward, Liz Kikowski. I mean, there were tons of people. Yeah. I mean, again, I was there for so long that anytime I list names, I know I'm leaving out tons and tons of people. Yeah. So you were there for, how did it end for you there? How was the new job?

How do you go from head writer, update? I don't remember what happened because I don't keep up with the show that much. Yeah. But what was the evolution to where you are now? That basically NBC made the move to put Jimmy in the Tonight Show. And so there was an opening. I really hadn't been thinking about it.

There was a article in the New York Post that said that I was a front runner for it. I just assumed it was a rumor. It was a leak. It was a leak. It was a leak. Yeah. But I talked to Loren and there's this weird thing sometimes when you talk to Loren

that you have a phone conversation with him and it's as if he thinks you had a phone conversation beforehand and this is the followup call. So he's having a followup call to a call that never happened because I was saying, oh, I made some joke about this thing being in the post and Loren's reaction was, no Ian, look, I think you'll be good at it and uh and it was that same thing much like here it was whatever that's how you were told is basically what he's saying is that like

no one ever gets the straight shit from him no but you find out some weird other way and he just oh good he knows now we're you know we're gonna want to try some ties on you and then you know we'll do the tie test. No wigs though. But no, the wigs. You finally can do your own hair. And then that just sort of started this really fast process. And it was near, very near the end of the SNL season.

And I, I don't know if this is the right or wrong decision. I was not emotionally prepared. I basically, when I found out about Late Night, I had only one more show left. Yeah. And I asked Lauren if I could come back and do the first half of the next season which i did um what that meant update uh yeah update and head writer i did it uh but then i did it with cecily strong for half a year so that they would help that would help transition after right but uh and but that only meant i basically while i was doing i was head writing i was update i also had offices downstairs for late night.

We were hiring staff there. It was probably a time in my life where I was doing too much. Yeah. And, cause I only had three weeks between my last SNL and my first late night. And what, now the decision to, for Fred to do the music direction, that was just sort of goofy or like, you know, he wanted to. We, again, going back to like my, I like music, but I don't have an understanding of it. And I certainly had no understanding of what I wanted the music element of this show to be.

I certainly knew we weren't going to be able to provide like sort of the musical expression that like the roots have on The Tonight Show. We weren't going to, so we couldn't have a band that wanted to do a million things because that was outside of my skill set. And so we'd gone down a couple of roads and we didn't really know maybe we wouldn't have a band at all and then lauren had the idea of fred very much uh with like two weeks to go and uh i jumped at it it was just for me so nice as a comfort level to have fred there and he put the band together and fred and i have similar music sensibilities so i really like the way our band sounds and you have a lot of guest players coming yeah so fred now i mean the reality is with Fred, and we always knew this too with Fred's schedule

and all the things, projects he has, you know Fred will probably be there about 10 weeks a year but it's his band and we have guest drummers every week and it's really fun. What were some of the other decisions about the show when you had this short amount of time to revamp it a little bit, but it is what it is. Yeah.

So, tonally, what were you thinking? Well, it was funny how you make all these decisions that are out, like, we're gonna do it differently, and how quickly those don't work, because there is, audiences do want it. They want the desk. They do, they really do. Yeah.

We had this. Because if you don't have the desk, they're like, what are we doing? Yeah. What's happening? We want it. It's a, it's again,

I know these shows are, are consumed a lot of different times of the day now, but the people who are watching them when it happened, it's like, it's a settled time of the night. Yeah. No, it's definitely not like,

yeah. Yeah. Um, but one thing was we built something that looked more like a weekend update desk and the idea would be that after the in the second act of the show

yeah we'd roll this out and I would do something very much like those update features like me and a Stefan type character for whatever

lack of a better word was that a comfort zone thing or just because you thought that you were known we thought it would be different and then as soon as we did it we realized

it was a dud right and we had like spent a lot of money to build a desk that i think we used once yeah you know we had a big tv screen like a hundred inch tv screen that we were going to use as a green screen and then we just like no i don't they repurposed it over there yeah we they took it back right away yeah and so we did all these uh we sort of did all these things that we thought would make them different. We kind of got rid of them. And then we had sort of a fairly conventional structure. I will say from the beginning, people would suggest that maybe I start at the desk instead of starting with a monologue.

Yeah. And it took me, I was resistant to it or hesitant to do it because I thought it would look too much like update. Right. And would sort of be me saying, yeah, I can only do that one thing. And putting stuff on the screen. Yeah. Yeah.

And then all of a sudden, I kind of came to the conclusion of like, oh, it's not bad to be really good at one thing. Yeah. That's not, that's kind of like what show business is. Journey of you realizing your limitations. Oh, every day I find a new one. It's the best.

Because I remember seeing you do stand-up and then you don't do that anymore there? No, I don't. I mean, I don't do a standing monologue anymore. No, you don't. No. And it's nice. And the other nice thing is,

you know, we follow The Tonight Show an hour earlier and I'm sure 95% of our audience are people who watch The Tonight Show first. Uh-huh. So they've just seen a guy do a standing monologue an hour earlier. And a lot of bells and whistles on that show.

Well, that's a big show. I know. It's like there's a lot of things. There's pranks. There's games. They want to make a big show and God love them. It's fantastic to be on after a big show. Especially if you want to be a little smaller. But that's also historically what happens.

Yeah. Right. And we wanted, we realized, oh, we should just try to get to our first joke so much faster. And so now we have a very short opening package, probably the shortest of any talk show. And it just opens with me on the desk

and I just start telling jokes and I do like 15 jokes at the desk with graphics. And that allows you to do them a lot faster. Right. And we sort of get like 12 or 15 minutes in that first act that's all day of writing. And hopefully we hold as much of that audience as we can. And who's writing with you? Alex Bays, who was the head writer at Weekend Update.

Yeah. He was the one guy brought over with me and we put together a great group of writers we got guys that were improvised

in Chicago people who wrote for The Onion people who were stand-ups yeah and we just kind of most of them it was their first job

in TV and how do you how did you take to the guest interviews I dig it yeah I thought it would be

the hardest part and I when it starts I feel like my it would be the hardest part and I, when it starts, I feel like my job is over. Those interviews. Mm-hmm. I like listening to people and I like

talking to them. It's just not, it's, I thought it'd be so hard and it's really, I mean, I'm sure every now and then you have one that's a,

Yeah. It's like, uh-oh, I gotta work. The hardest thing is, especially in this era, where, you know, I do a lot of, most of the interviews I-oh, I gotta work. The hardest thing is, especially in this era, where I do a lot of, most of the interviews I listen to are things like this.

They're so much longer. Right. How short seven minutes is. How do you do it? Oh, no, it's crazy. I don't know how you do it, how you would do that. I mean, I can't do anything in seven minutes. It's hard.

Well, you guys, you don't free wheel, right? You segment produce. We segment produce. I mean, I will say every now and then, you know, you'll have somebody who doesn't want to do a pre-interview. Yeah. And I like that.

No, it's exciting. I like going in that way. Well Jimmy was doing that a bit when he did that spot where I remember doing the late night with him and it was one of the first times, because Kimmel did it too, you know, with his show, where it was one of the first times like because uh kimmel did it too you know with his show where it was just sort of it's like you know you're gonna talk about the thing you're right yeah like i was so used to conan where you know you what stories you got

what do you got what do we what's it how's he gonna lead you but the idea of just sort of like just go out there he'll he'll he'll take care of it and i'm like all right yeah and it's really kind of exciting because for me it was sort of unheard of after you know two decades of doing pretty segments but it is kind of interesting if the person can handle it it is I mean the risk is we try really hard not to edit our interviews right so you know there is this thing if we could talk I'm sure I could talk to anybody for 15 minutes right I have seven great minutes but I do feel like you can tell when a late night oh yeah yeah and so we try to we try to have that feeling of like this was as live as we could make for 15 minutes and have seven great minutes but I do feel like you can tell when a late night interview is edited and so we try to

we try to have that feeling of like this was as live as we could make it five hours before you saw it right well there's that the idea that you only have seven and if you just free wheel it yeah

like it might not have an arc to it it might just kind of you know doesn't feel like you're just getting into it you don't want that to be the end of the interview

where it's like ah you didn't even talk about anything. Well, that, the fun thing is I feel like you prepare an interview. Yeah. And then if you get somebody and you realize they're perfectly happy freewheeling, then you can just kind of throw the interview away. And also you've got a lot of friends in the business. So, like, there are guys you have relationships with and that always makes it easier and fun, right?

It does, yeah. The interesting thing, though, is some people really do want to have their eight beats oh yeah yeah and so they're selling something of course or they just like to get laughs yeah yeah you know they're they don't want to risk yeah yeah i got good bits yeah let's do them and it's funny i mean there's uh i'm doing these shows you realize there are 200 different kinds of talk show guests and the longer you do the show the more you can like clock them quickly yeah because some people just come out and they don't look at you once they just like play out right and they've just they're here for the people and that's great too i never thought of that i do that a lot but that's a good way to do it

well i mean i do but i'll check in like as soon as the joke doesn't go as good i'm like so conan where were you it's your job to save me. That's your job. You're supposed to fill in here. Oh, fantastic. Did you ever have that sense where you're watching somebody and the joke doesn't go and you realize, like, I've got to pull this back around.

Yeah. Well, the worst is when I can't then come up with something to save it, and so I do the awful, like, gear shift of, no, I want to talk to you about it didn't come you wanted something yeah i also try not to look at uh cards yeah during the interview on the desk yeah and so there are um and every now and then i i like while asking the question we'll sort of forget what i'm asking and it's just that like you know like a kid giving an oral report he's trying to run out the clock.

And you know, and this is something that in the times that I've been, and then you'll remember, and then you realize that what you're setting up isn't the question. And then your work is, oh, you just went to Italy. I got it.

I got it. Oh, yeah, yeah. That was all horseshit. Everything I was saying was horseshit. Oh, that's funny. So every night, huh? Yeah. Where do you live?

I live in Manhattan. I live in West Village. Oh, I thought you got it. Did you get another place? No. Oh, it's just all there? Yeah. Right in the fucking village?

Yeah. And you got a baby now? Yeah. How old's the baby? Seven weeks today. Holy shit. So what are you doing in LA? Just out for a day.

For this? For this. And I did a panel for this show documentary Now, the one I do on IFC. Oh, that's right. Well, that show is, that's fun. How did, like, what, because you, do you write on that? Yeah. Are you part of the conceptual part of it?

So it's you and Fred and Bill. And the two directors, Alex Buono and Reese Thomas. Is that the guy from Portlandia? Are those those guys? They were, they did a lot of the, they do SNL short films, commercial parodies and stuff like that. Really good at grasping genre and style. Mulaney's writing on it as well. Oh, is he?

Yeah. So once you decide the period you're working with and the tone of it and you just kind of stay within it yeah we just try to pick things that we feel like would both be fun characters for bill and fred to play and also fun styles for the directors to mess around with yeah and how many you've done eight we did six the first season we're doing another six now but all right so let's talk about this albuquerque connection you spend time in my hometown now yeah i do like a lot because your in-laws are there is that the deal i married a i married a girl from uh from albuquerque who's younger than much younger than me but you say her family kind of knows who my dad's still there yeah well they're uh uh

jews i married jews yeah and uh how does that feel familiar good not it was like a completion of this cycle of i'm not actually like years of telling people i'm not jewish and then just basically like and then your in-laws saying like just keep that to yourself. You're Jewish now. I did a show actually like a fundraiser in Albuquerque for some Jewish federation there and I was like oh this is full circle. You did it.

You've paid your respects. I've paid my respects. So what part of town do you go to when you're there? They're Placidas. Oh god that's fucking crazy because like when I was a kid Placidas was was this weird, beat-up hippie community. Well, they're weird hippies. Oh, okay, so they've been there a while. Yeah, they went out a long time ago.

Oh, they're original Placidas settlers. Yeah, I think they are. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. So they would have maybe known of my dad, but I bet you they know. My buddy Devin jackson his old man was a doctor kind of the hippie doctor at the college and i think they lived in placidas for a couple years gotcha dr dennis jackson all right i'll check i'm throwing him some love even though

my buddy devin doesn't talk to him much anymore but um so when you go to albuquerque that's still a little out do you go into the city do you eat at frontier do you do i've eaten frontier yeah it's worth it the range that's the one we go to Do you go into the city? Do you eat at Frontier? Do you do anything? I've eaten at Frontier, yeah. It's worth it, right? We go to The Range. That's the one we go to up in Placidas all the time. I don't know that one. Like, is Placidas developed now? Yeah, but you still have to, like, drive to,

I mean, if you really want to go out for dinner, you're probably going to Albuquerque. Or Santa Fe. Yeah. But Santa Fe's like 40 minutes, right? But, and then we also, I was also out there because they shot MacGruber, Will Forte's movie MacGruber in Albuquerque.

So I spent a summer out there for that. A lot of shooting there now. Yeah. Where'd you meet the Albuquerque girl? I met the Albuquerque girl at Chris Kattan's wedding. So her older sister worked at SNL in the set department. My wife's a lawyer. She's not in show business at all.

Yeah. But I went to Chris Kattan's wedding and I knew her older sister very, like not well. Yeah. Pretty well. But, and there was this, this girl,

Alexi there and over, we like were a wedding hookup that then turned into a wife and a baby. I saw Chris Kattan on a plane recently. Yeah.

Yeah, but that, and I should get in touch with him. You guys friends still? Yeah, Chris Kattan came to our wedding because again,

we met at his wedding. Yeah. And Chris Kattan, it's it was the greatest gift at a wedding because he got up at the rehearsal dinner to give a toast. And it was just so obvious that the toast would be how we met at his wedding. Yeah. And instead, he told a story about when I first started at SNL,

he and I went out with two girls. Uh-huh. And the girl I was with had a herpy. And so, and again, this is not my memory of the story. So instead, Seth just grabbed her boobs. And it was just one of those things that everybody knew we met at the wedding. Yeah. At his wedding.

He wouldn't do it. And I just got up. I mean, I don't even think he knew. And I got up and I took the mic and I was like, thank you so much, Chris. Because Chris said, I want to tell the story about how you met at my wedding. And I said, no, no, no, Chris. And it, I mean, we like laid the next day in my wedding vows. I brought it up again.

It was just the gift that kept giving. And, you know, Katana's with guys who's walking around the way and going like, what? What did I do? Do you keep in touch with like a lot of the people though? Like from the years of SNL? Like I like knowing that some of you are still friends. Who are your friends? Well, I'm really close with Andy and Polar and obviously Fred and Bill.

I see a lot. Sudeikis I run into. Forte. I mean, these are all people. But Andy's like a buddy. Yeah. Nice guy. Yeah, Andy's really-

I just interviewed his wife a couple weeks ago. She's a genius. Genius. I agree with you. Like a savant of some kind. interviewed his wife a couple weeks ago she's genius genius i agree with you like a savant of some kind he is uh it's really funny too that someone that makes that sort of beautiful lyric music yeah like married our greatest purveyor of dick songs yeah yeah well it's just so funny i went to see her in concert and he was up in a booth and i just saw him just sort of like in awe

yeah of like you know he genuinely is in awe of his wife it's so great It's pretty amazing Yeah but I'm friends with those guys You know one of the things that's so heartbreaking Is I kind of thought when I was at SNL I daydreamed that we would all just like live in New York forever And the reality is there's just not that many jobs out there And so everybody came out here I don't see them as much as I want to But you know you got New York

And I guess it's fun if you If you got the bread to live there, it's a nice place to live. The bread helps. Yeah. Well, thanks for talking to me, Seth. Of course. How'd this go as an interviewer? I thought it was fantastic. It's nice to be on this side a little bit. Yeah. Good. Well, it was good talk. Thanks, man.

Thank you. Okay. That was nice. Me and Seth Meyers. Nice fella. Funny guy. Knows himself. How do you like that? Oh, pow.

I just shit my pants with some cold press. Just coffee.coop. Yeah, I just did that. boomer lives fucked up at the end. I'm not a professional. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus

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