Late Night with Seth Meyers originates from
NBC Studio 8G in the
Comcast Building at
30 Rockefeller Center in
New York City. The studio is housed directly above Studio 6B, the home of
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon; the combination created logistical challenges for executives, who were concerned about "sound bleed" (as the
Comcast Building was built with steel girders, sound is too easily conducted floor to floor). As a result,
The Tonight Show tapes at 5:00pm, and
Late Night would tape later in the evening, at 6:30pm. After returning to the studio following the COVID-19 pandemic
Late Night pushed up their production schedule and now tapes at 4:00pm. The studio seats nearly 180 individuals, and is housed directly beside
Studio 8H, longtime home of
Saturday Night Live.
Architectural Digest writes that the stage "strikes an
Art Deco tone, with its illuminated proscenium arch reminiscent of the
Chrysler Building's iconic crown." Until the end of the 2023–2024 season, Seth Meyers's
Late Night had a
house band, called
The 8G Band, and led by
Fred Armisen who also acted as the show's sidekick. He also performed as backing and co-lead vocals, rhythm guitars, bass and drums. The other personnel in the band were Seth Jabour on lead guitars and backing vocals,
Marnie Stern on lead and rhythm guitars and backing vocals,
Syd Butler on bass, and
Eli Janney on keyboards, programmer and lead vocals. Just before Marnie Stern took over for Fred Armisen as guitarist in 2015, the role of drummer was held by
Kimberly Thompson, who performed trumpets, backing vocals and melodicas since the premiere of
Late Night on February 24, 2014. Guest performers, such as drummers The Pocket Queen and
Larnell Lewis, were used for weeks when Armisen had other commitments, and their residencies were promoted in each episode's logline on an equal level with the stage guests.
Production process •
8:30am The staff work on the episode's first act, which usually focuses on politics or other current events. A first draft is written by one of the writers, such as Sal Gentile, and Meyers goes over it to add to it or modify it. •
11:00am The staff has a sketch meeting in which it plans non-political and longer lead-in segments, such as the popular recurring sketches "Extreme Dog Shaming" or "Ya Burnt". The staff use this opportunity to make relevant notes on the sketches.
Show structure and segments The show opens with Ron McClary proclaiming "From
30 Rockefeller Plaza in
New York, it's
Late Night with Seth Meyers!" and announcing that night's guests and
The 8G Band with
Fred Armisen, and/or
guest musicians. McClary introduces Meyers with "Ladies and gentlemen, Seth Meyers." Previously, the introduction to Meyers was "And now here he is, Seth Meyers!". Meyers performs a monologue from his desk based around recent news, punctuating jokes with on-screen images and video. This segment is normally followed by a long-form desk piece, or an interaction with bandleader Fred Armisen. The desk piece then leads to a commercial break. After the first commercial, one of various recurring segments appears, followed by the first of the episode's guests, which usually include celebrities and actors, literary figures, people in fashion, artists, athletes, and politicians. This occurred again with the cast of the then-upcoming film
Sisters (which starred Poehler), although the episode featured a short desk segment between the monologue and interviews. An annual holiday tradition since the show's debut year has been an episode broadcast on
Thanksgiving night in which the only guests are Meyers's parents, Hilary and Larry, and his younger brother
Josh. The show eventually increased its focus on politics. After
Jon Stewart left
The Daily Show in 2015, Meyers's program has gradually moved towards the "longer-form political comedy" style
The Daily Show is known for. In an interview with journalist
Chris Hayes, Meyers acknowledged this change, saying that the show was always intended to be politically minded, but when the show started, the creators opted to only gradually work the political material into the content to measure the amount of workload following the 24-hour news cycle would cause. The program has been described as "
The Daily Show for people without
basic cable." One of Meyers's original visions for the show, "A Closer Look" has become the signature segment of
Late Night. However, when it premiered, the crew could not sustain the
long-form writing and intense research periods required to develop the segments. The segment typically appears on every episode except for those broadcast on Tuesday nights. Each segment features a broad topic which Meyers explains and jokes about, with frequent use of news clippings and video from network news. Typically about 10 minutes long, "A Closer Look" has ranged in length from three minutes to almost sixteen minutes, depending on the topic; one edition in particular, airing the night after
Election Day 2020, lasted a full twenty-one minutes. For the show airing on October 2, 2023, the first following the end of the five-month
2023 Writers Guild of America strike, the segment was extended to cover everything from the duration of the show's hiatus and temporarily renamed "A Closer Look To the Max", taking up nearly the entire episode except for the final eight minutes. •
A Couple Things: Meyers gives a few quick comments in response to, and pointing out the inaccuracies or hypocrisies of, a news story. •
Actathalon: One of the night's guests, normally an established or applauded actor, participates in a series of challenges based on stereotypical movie tropes. Challenges in the ten event series include "looking in the mirror and wondering who you've become", "quitting a job angrily", "hanging up the phone then swiping everything off a desk", and "doing an interview for a movie that you know is horrible". •
Amber Says What?: Staff writer
Amber Ruffin discusses the news, ending each comment with "I was like,
what," with various emphases (anger, confusion, shock, etc.) on the word "what." • '''Amber's Minute of Fury:''' As opposed to the multiple-topic format of "Amber Says What?", here staff writer
Amber Ruffin focuses her ire on a singular topic, news event, or newsmaker. •
At This Point in the Broadcast: Meyers shares an unpopular opinion while a "network apology" scrolls on the screen and is read by show announcer and staff writer
Ben Warheit. The disclaimer states due to technical reasons, the segment could not be excised from the broadcast. While it's being read, Meyers is seen
pantomiming a profane rant (no audio is heard from Meyers, outside of audience reaction) against mundane topics such as trees, exercising at the gym, or
Netflix. This sketch is a parody of a message aired during reruns of a 1994
Saturday Night Live episode hosted by
Martin Lawrence; his monologue in that episode, which included a rant about female hygiene, got him banned from the show and almost got the cast members at the time fired. •
Bad Sponsors: Meyers promotes the fake, horrible sponsors who supposedly give money to the show. •
Back in My Day: Seth dons a
Mister Rogers-style old sweater, sits in an old chair, and reminisces about how things were simpler and better in "the good old days"... even though those days were only weeks or months ago. •
The Check In: Seth discusses a political topic, particularly one relating to the Trump administration, that has not received much attention because it is not timely or spans multiple, smaller news stories. Examples include the Trump administration's relationship with religion or their response to the opioid crisis in America. This segment usually airs once a week on Tuesday nights in place of "A Closer Look", although there are weeks where it does not appear. •
Clear the Air: Seth and a guest (most often a former
Saturday Night Live cohort) sit down one-on-one and take turns seeking forgiveness for the bad things they've said or done to each other (e.g. Seth admitting to
Rachel Dratch he bailed out on attending her birthday party, and Rachel admitting she had Seth arrested at the airport). •
CORRECTIONS: Seth reads through comments the show receives on
YouTube, and in this digital-only featurette responds to the commenters he "sort of lovingly" calls jackals, or corrects mistakes he made on-air during that week or previous weeks. A popular online segment (and filmed without a studio audience present), "CORRECTIONS" has been a four-time
Emmy Award nominee for
Outstanding Short Form Comedy, Drama or Variety Series (it lost out to
Carpool Karaoke: The Series in both 2021 and 2022, and lost again in 2024 and 2025). •
Day Drinking: Meyers takes a guest for drinks while asking questions and playing drinking games connected to the guest's work. Guests on the segment have included
Rihanna,
Lizzo, the
Jonas Brothers,
Dua Lipa,
Kelly Clarkson,
Lorde,
Kristen Stewart,
Kevin Hart,
Paul Rudd,
Sabrina Carpenter and
Will Forte, among others. Meyers has also taken members of his family, including his mother and brother
Josh Meyers, for drinks in the morning. •
Deep Google: Meyers reads progressively deeper into the last pages of a
Google search with "millions of results". •
Extreme Dog Shaming: A parody of the internet trend of adorable dogs posing next to signs indicating they had done something bad; here, for example, a
beagle would admit "I corrected someone's grammar during a eulogy." The list normally ends with the Meyers family's own dog, Frisbee, shaming Seth (e.g. "I go to bed after
Fallon"). •
Fake or Florida: a
game show parody where contestants have to guess whether or not a bizarre crime or incident set in
Florida was real. Any contestant from Florida proper is
blindfolded in order to level the playing field. Score is kept with
manatee cutouts on dowels stuck into a holder. •
Fred Talks (aka Fred Checks In): Whenever
Fred Armisen sat in with
The 8G Band and a fellow
Saturday Night Live alumnus was a guest, said guest would tend to make Fred the butt of a joke, pretending not to remember him during their time at
SNL or expressing a negative relationship with him. More often than that, though, Seth would allow Fred to exercise his
improvisation skills. Running about two minutes in length, this segment involved Seth asking a question Fred would not know beforehand (because Seth often thought it up on the walk from the dressing room to the studio). The question was usually worded as a simple inquiry about Fred's latest project, activity, or business venture (a TV show, new store, charity work, etc.). After confirming Seth's "inquiry," Fred would expand on the subject via ad lib, offering elaborate twists and sometimes making the "service" something no one would need. •
FredEx: If Fred was away from
Late Night due to other commitments, and "to keep him involved in the show when he's not here," Seth would mail him a
FedEx package containing costumes, wigs, or props that served as prompts for Fred to create a character and situation on the spot. •
Game of Jones: Seth and former
Saturday Night Live regular
Leslie Jones are huge fans of the TV series
Game of Thrones, with the latter known for live-tweeting the show as it aired on
HBO. On a few occasions during the show's run, Seth and Leslie sat down together to watch and comment on a
GOT episode they had not seen in advance. Noted editions of the filmed segments include the bookend episodes of the series'
8th and final season, as well as a 2017 segment in which
Conleth Hill, in full-on costume as
Varys, surprises Leslie and joins in on the conversation. •
Hey! Seth gets the attention of newsmakers and other figures in current events to deliver them strong words (e.g.
Donald Trump, for falsely claiming voter fraud). •
Jeff Wright conversations: In filmed segments, staff writer Jeff Wright appears as multiple figures or subjects in current events conversing with each other (e.g. the jurors who
convicted Derek Chauvin, various
COVID-19 vaccines awaiting a "job interview"). •
Joke Bucket: Rather than write the setups and then the punchlines for Seth's monologue jokes, his staff tends to write the punchlines ahead of time. Seeking to make lemonade from lemons, Seth pulls punchlines written on slips of paper from an aluminum "joke bucket" until they suitably match a joke setup from the news. A successful match causes Seth to staple the joke and punchline together, stamp it with his approval, ring a "joke bell", and put the match into a "completed joke bucket". Going through mismatches leads to the bucket emptying out before the last joke is matched, causing Seth to seek a match from the likes of a "joke volcano" or a "used joke lot". • '''Jokes Seth Can't Tell:''' When prefacing this segment, Seth notes the diverse makeup of the show's writing team, which sometimes writes jokes that he (being a straight, white male) could not deliver without facing criticism. Rather than have those jokes go untold, two of those writers,
Amber Ruffin (a Black woman) and
Jenny Hagel (a Puerto Rican lesbian), step in alongside Seth and alternate delivering the jokes' punchlines after Seth reads the setups. The segment ends with Amber and Jenny coaxing Seth into telling a full joke; when he delivers the punchline, however, it's met with immediate shock by a chastising Amber and Jenny. Seth's defensive response, after the ladies said it'd be okay to tell the punchline ("Black women and lesbians are liars!"), was improvised, according to Hagel, by Seth during the segment's first rehearsal; it was left in during that night's taping and has closed the segment ever since. "Jokes Seth Can't Tell" has had some variations over the years, including having a third woman join the desk (e.g.
Hillary Clinton in 2017,
Wanda Sykes in 2022), and for the segment's 50th performance in November 2023, Amber and Jenny surprising Seth by forcing him to read the punchlines after they read the setups. •
The Kind of Story We Need Right Now: Giving his audience a respite from bleak current events, here Seth highlights unique, uplifting, and amusing news items. Such examples include a woman who played music by
Metallica to scare away a threatening bobcat, and a man who successfully challenged a ticket for using his phone while driving (he was eating a
McDonald's hash brown instead). •
The Late Night Debate/Press Conference: During
presidential debate season, Seth is seated as a "moderator" and riffs comedic "questions" with actual footage of the participants within those debates taken out of context. Outside of that setting, Seth does the same, but with
White House press briefings and other news conferences. •
The Leave Him Alone Guy: When Seth starts a segment of jokes about a certain newsmaker, a man in the audience (staff writer
John Lutz) stands up and, sensing that the jokes Seth is about to tell will be mean-spirited in tone, loudly asks him to "leave him alone!" and instead make jokes about his own peculiarities and shortcomings ("If you have to make fun of somebody, make fun of
me!"). •
One of My Writers Explains a Joke: Not every joke in Seth's monologue receives a warm response from the audience. For the jokes that really miss the mark (normally ones with bad puns for a punchline), Seth, feigning disappointment, calls on the carpet the staff writer who wrote the joke to explain it to the audience. •
Point, Counterpoint: Staff writers Ally Hord and
Amber Ruffin debate over topics in the news, but while Ally is serious and on-point, Amber goes lightheartedly off-topic with a term Ally had just used. For example, when discussing the
Trump administration's attempts to bar
transgender people from
serving in the U.S. military, Ally calls it a "stunt" to distract from
Donald Trump's personal scandals, to which Amber counterpoints with thoughts on how she loves cinematic action stunts. Ally often voices disappointment by Amber's straying, which is quickly defended by Seth ("You make a point, she makes a counterpoint, and that's how it works"). •
Popsicle Schtick: A lengthy and rarely-seen segment mainly used only on shows with few guests or when Meyers is performing ill, the show's writers and graphics departments come together to wrap around purposefully poorly-written jokes usually emblematic of the type seen on
Popsicle sticks, with long and elaborate interludes performed by CGI
popsicle sticks in costume, which have included parodies of
Jesus Christ Superstar and
Les Misérables. In one of his annual Thanksgiving night appearances, Seth's father Larry stated "Popsicle Schtick" was his least favorite segment on the show. •
Really?! When
Amy Poehler pays a visit, she and Seth reprise their
Weekend Update segment in which the two would lambast a current topic by angrily and varyingly exclaiming "really". •
The Scollywood Minute: Staff writer Mike Scollins discusses upcoming theatrical movie releases, award ceremonies, and other showbiz news, only to turn each mini-review into a comedic jab at Seth. •
Second Chance Theatre: Meyers gives a fellow former
Saturday Night Live cast member a chance to stage a sketch they wrote that never made it to air at
SNL.
Will Forte,
Jason Sudeikis,
Andy Samberg, and
Will Ferrell have participated so far. •
Sea Captain During the COVID pandemic, Seth's sidekick was a portrait of a sea captain, voiced by
Will Forte. •
Seth Explains Teen Slang: Meyers takes current pop culture topics and changes them into words that he claims teenagers are using to describe things, followed by an example sentence. •
Surprise Inspection! The military-themed title card isn't the only thing Seth shakes his head over in this segment that features actual jokes written by the show's staff that didn't reach monologue-level quality. Seth warns the audience that some of the jokes (which are followed by the responsible writer being identified) are dumb, baffling, or even patently offensive, but notes that "because a lot of [the writers] don't watch this show, they'll never know we're doing this." •
This Week in Numbers: Seth uses data, both real and fictional, to set up jokes on pop culture and the news. • '''
Tiny Secret Whispers:'
While Late Night'' taped without a studio audience during the
COVID-19 pandemic, Seth would recommend to his studio crew, and his viewers, this (fictitious) murder mystery series he's hooked on, discussing its various actors, storylines, and intriguing plot twists, as well as "Butternut," the "show's"
streaming video home that specializes in American shows featuring all-foreign casts playing Americans. •
Venn Diagrams: Meyers looks at two different categories, using the spot where they overlap to tell a joke about pop culture and the news. •
What Does Karen Know? Seth shows
millennial-aged staff writer
Karen Chee images she has not previously seen, primarily items and celebrities popular during her infancy or before her birth. The items are those that
Generation X can immediately recognize, so the comedy comes in Karen guessing what they may be, such as a
PalmPilot ("an ancient
iPad?") or a
Teddy Ruxpin doll ("It's an off-brand teddy bear?"), as well as Seth humorously trying to explain them to her. Karen returns the favor and shows Seth items that she grew up on but he and his older generation may not recognize. •
The Wrong Take: Seth offers this compendium of the worst "hot take" opinions from "average citizen" interviews about issues that matter most to Americans. •
Ya Burnt: A story about a study of "migrating
Amazonian tree frogs" is interrupted by the smell of smoke in the studio... which means it's time for a roast: A range of subjects is displayed on the screen (a la
Pardon the Interruption), with Seth offering biting critiques and saying "ya burnt!" to each before moving to the next topic. Occasionally, an "unburnable" topic appears, one which Seth praises (and removes from the screen) rather than roasts. The "tree frogs" introduction is a
running gag that dates from the
Tina Fey/
Jimmy Fallon era on
Saturday Night Live Weekend Update, which invariably led to an interruption from a guest commentator; Meyers would continue the bit during his
Update run, and admitted he "stole" it when he moved to
Late Night. "Ya Burnt" almost always ends with time running out right as Seth would have begun roasting a person or thing whose mocking would be considered in poor taste (e.g. soup kitchen volunteers in a Thanksgiving-themed segment).
Live episodes In July 2016, it was announced that the show would produce two live episodes following the final nights of the
Republican and
Democratic National Conventions. The show is normally recorded live on tape (primarily), but too early in the day to feature content from each night's convention. As a result, Meyers opted to host the show live to have the first opportunity for a fresh take on how each convention ended. The first live episode featured guests
Leslie Jones and Carlo Mirarchi, as well as a live "Ya Burnt" segment. One of the roasting topics for the segment was "live television", in which Meyers stated that he was going to test the Standards & Practices division at NBC to see how well they could censor him live if he used swear words. Ultimately, a few swears were aired in the live version. Meyers also joked with Jones in her interview that she cannot swear like she normally does, because the show would be live. Despite this, Jones ultimately did swear in her interview, though the network censor caught it. The second live episode featured guests
Colin Jost,
Michael Che, and
Jessi Klein. The episode also featured a live "Jokes Seth Can't Tell" segment, in which writer Amber Ruffin used the phrase "bigger dicks though" as the punchline of a joke. Meyers appeared caught off-guard and chastised her for the use of the word, to which she responded by reminding him that the show is live so the network cannot stop them from saying it. Meyers repeated the line offhand later in the segment. The third live episode followed the first presidential debate of the 2016 general election.
Will Forte,
Mandy Moore, and
David Ortiz were the guests, with a special appearance by
Weekend Update co-anchor
Colin Jost. The show opened with a brief monologue, followed by an extended "A Closer Look" segment about the night's debate. It was the first live episode to go as planned, with no impromptu mishaps or swears. The fourth live episode followed the
2018 midterm elections.
Chris Hayes was originally announced to be the guest, but was replaced by
Billy Eichner and
Soledad O'Brien in the live version. The episode also featured an extended "A Closer Look" segment about the results of the elections and a live "Amber Says What" segment with writer Amber Ruffin. The fifth live episode followed the
2019 State of the Union Address. The episode featured guests
Taylor Schilling and
Ana Navarro, with an extended "A Closer Look" segment about the Address and a live "Jokes Seth Can't Tell" segment. == Episodes ==