GIG TIME: Seth Meyers takes over “Late Night” in February but hasn’t figured out yet how he’ll customize it. (
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The thought of succeeding Jimmy Fallon on “Late Night” never crossed Seth Meyers’ mind — until someone from NBC called him with the offer.
Honest to God.
“I say this a lot,” says the “Saturday Night Live” actor, “but it’s true: when you’re working at ‘SNL’ it’s so exhausting and requires 100 percent of your brain power, so I was never looking past the next show or the next season.
“I was aware, at some point, that I was going to have to leave ‘SNL’ — no one does this forever — but it took something special to make me realize the timing was special enough.”
Meyers, 39 — who’s logged 12 years on “SNL,” serving as head writer and host of the show’s high-profile “Weekend Update” segment — will take over from Fallon (also a former “SNL”-er ) in February, when Fallon replaces Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show.”
Meyers says he’ll “definitely” return to “SNL” this fall, and, “at the very least,” do the first half of next season.
News of Meyers’ ascension into the 12:35 a.m. job — pioneered by David Letterman — is still so fresh that he says he hasn’t yet given serious thought to what he’s going to do.
“I’m not being coy,” he says. “I don’t think I’ll start from Jimmy’s template, if that makes sense.
“I’ll try to start with a clean slate and piece together things I think would be fun to do over the course of a week.”
His new show, however, won’t be too out-of-the-box, Meyers says. “A monologue, the desk and guests at some point. You’ve probably nailed the order,” he says. “With a lot of these things it’s not what you do but how you do it.
“I want ‘Late Night’ to be a place like ‘SNL,’ where writers are instructed to come up with whatever they want to, and then see if it’s produceable.
“I’m lucky enough to have [‘Late Night’ executive producer] Mike Shoemaker staying with the 12:30 show — I worked with him at ‘SNL’ — and he went through this process with Jimmy.
“One thing I’m sure I want to have is sort of like an ensemble of players who can stop by and visit and do bits and play characters. That’s one thing I’d be really sad about if I wasn’t going to be doing.”
And a band? “I haven’t thought about that so far,” he says. “Obviously, one place I’m never going to measure up to Jimmy is musically, so that probably won’t be the focus. We’ll fill that in later.
“What I’m going to focus on, and what I really like about ‘Weekend Update,’ is that I get to tell jokes and I get to play straight man to people.”
It’s mentioned that late-night hosts including Letterman and Jay Leno were criticized early on for their interviewing skills — or lack thereof.
“I don’t think it’s surprising that people always get a little bit of flak at the beginning for that,” Meyers says. “It’s an unnatural thing to do, but I think you learn by repetition.
“I hope to delight people’s minds — without blowing their minds.”