Seth Meyers

Meyers was born on December 28, 1973, in Evanston, Illinois. When he was four, his family moved to Okemos, Michigan, where he lived until he was ten. After that, he grew up in Bedford, New Hampshire. Seth's mother, Hilary Claire (née Olson), was a French teacher and his father, Laurence (Larry) Meyers Jr., worked in finance. At one point, his mother and fellow Saturday Night Live co-star John Mulaney's grandmother Carolyn Stanton performed together in a hospital benefit show in Marblehead, Massachusetts, called Pills A-Poppin' directed by Tony Award-winning choreographer Tommy Tune. Seth's younger brother, Josh Meyers, is an actor and comedian. Meyers's paternal grandfather was an Ashkenazi Jewish immigrant from Kalvarija near Marijampolė in modern-day Lithuania. The rest of Seth's ancestry is Czech, Austrian, Croatian (from his paternal grandmother), Swedish (from his maternal grandfather), English, and German. Seth discovered on the show Finding Your Roots that his family's original surname, Trakianski, was changed by his great-grandfather to Meyers, after his own father Mejer Trakianski. He graduated from Manchester High School West in Manchester, New Hampshire. He graduated in 1996 from Northwestern University in Evanston, where he was in the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. His college roommate was fellow actor Peter Grosz. Meyers majored in film and television production. In 2011, he was the grand marshal for the school's homecoming parade. In 2016, he delivered the commencement address at Northwestern's graduation. ==Career==

While a student at Northwestern University, Meyers began performing improv comedy as a member of the university's improv sketch group the Mee-Ow Show. He continued his career at ImprovOlympic with the group Preponderate as well as overseas as a cast member of Boom Chicago, an English language improv troupe based in Amsterdam, where his brother was also a cast member. Seth references living in Amsterdam during Late Night with Seth Meyers. When a Boom Chicago show he developed was mounted in Chicago, Saturday Night Live talent scouts noticed him and invited him to audition for SNL. Saturday Night Live Meyers joined the Saturday Night Live cast in 2001. In 2004, Meyers auditioned to co-anchor Weekend Update with Fey, but Amy Poehler was selected. With Fey's departure, Meyers became head writer for the 2006–2007 season and assumed the role of Weekend Update co-anchor with Amy Poehler, although his cast contract was up around this time. He was asked to sign a contract agreeing to be just the head writer if he didn't get Weekend Update, but he declined to sign the contract, and waited to see what the plans for Update were. He considered leaving SNL altogether if he wasn't added to Update. After Poehler's departure, he was a solo anchor from 2008 to 2013. In fall 2009, Meyers co-anchored two episodes of Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday with Poehler. In the 2013–2014 season, Cecily Strong joined Meyers as co-anchor until his mid-season departure. On SNL, Meyers impersonated such figures as John Kerry, Michael Caine, Anderson Cooper, Carrot Top, Prince Charles, David Beckham, Ryan Seacrest, Sean Penn, Stone Phillips, Tobey Maguire, Peyton Manning, Ben Curtis (also known as the Dell Dude), Ty Pennington, Bill Cowher, Brian Williams, Nicollette Sheridan, Wade Robson, Donald Trump Jr., Tom Cruise, and Kevin Federline. While they were hosts on Weekend Update, Meyers and Poehler had a popular recurring bit, "Really!?! with Seth and Amy." Both hosts would take turns mocking people in the news, ending each point with a heavily sarcastic "Really!?!", which Rolling Stone writer Jon Blistein characterized as a "torrent of exasperation and bewilderment." Following Poehler's departure from the show in 2008, they revived the "Really!?!" segment several times when she returned as a guest. After Meyers left the show for his own talk show, Poehler made a surprise appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers in June 2015 to join Meyers in mocking Sports Illustrated sportswriter Andy Benoit, after he disparaged women's sports as "not worth watching." Additionally, the "Abe Lincoln" sketch Meyers wrote for Louis C.K., done in the style of his sitcom, Louie, and the Girls parody, starring Tina Fey as the new Albanian "girl", were praised by critics as among the best sketches Meyers contributed to SNL. Even so, he mentioned in interviews that he regretted missing much of the presidential election primary season. Meyers performed in his final episode of SNL on February 1, 2014. Late Night NBC announced on May 12, 2013, that Meyers would be the new host of Late Night in 2014, succeeding Jimmy Fallon, as Fallon became host of The Tonight Show. Meyers assumed his role on Late Night on February 24, 2014, and his first guest was former SNL castmate and Weekend Update anchor Amy Poehler. Meyers announced February 10, 2014, that the bandleader for his house band "The 8G Band" would be his former SNL colleague Fred Armisen. More recently, he and his Sethmaker Shoemeyers Productions company signed an overall deal with NBCUniversal. ==Other pursuits==

Meyers won the third season of Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown in 2004, and donated the $100,000 prize to the Boston-based Jimmy Fund. Meyers and SNL castmate Bill Hader penned a Spider-Man one-off entitled The Short Halloween. It was illustrated by Kevin Maguire and was published May 29, 2009. Benjamin Birdie of Comic Book Resources gave the work three and a half stars on a scale of five. Meyers, along with Mike Shoemaker of SNL, created an animated half-hour series titled The Awesomes, produced by Lorne Michaels's company, Broadway Video, that aired on Hulu beginning August 2013. Seth and his brother Josh host a podcast called Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers; the first episode was released on June 27, 2023. From August 30 to October 10, Meyers hosted the comedy podcast Strike Force Five with Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and John Oliver to support their staff members out of work due to the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike. He also hosts The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast with The Lonely Island (Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone) which discusses the comedy group's SNL Digital Shorts. Awards hosting Meyers hosted the Webby Awards twice, in 2008 and 2009. In 2009, he hosted the Microsoft Company Meeting at Safeco Field in Seattle. He hosted the 2010 and 2011 ESPY Awards on ESPN. In April 2011, he was the keynote speaker at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. During his introductory remarks, he made a joke about Osama bin Laden's actions while in hiding; namely, that bin Laden was hosting his own afternoon television show on C-SPAN. Meyers was unaware at the time that US intelligence had indeed actually located bin Laden and the Navy SEALs planned an attack on his location for the very next day. In the same speech, he mocked Donald Trump (who was in attendance) for his attempts in finding then US President Barack Obama's birth certificate. He also mocked Trump's intention of running for president, which many later jokingly said was the reason for Trump's later candidacy in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In 2014, Meyers hosted the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2018, he hosted the 75th Golden Globe Awards. ==Influences==

Meyers says that his comedy influences are David Letterman, Monty Python, Steve Martin, Dennis Miller, Mel Brooks,{{cite web|last1=Ouzounian|first1=Richard|title=Seth Meyers had a funny upbringing ==Personal life==

Meyers and his girlfriend of five years, attorney Alexi Ashe, were engaged in July 2013. They married in a Jewish wedding on September 1, 2013, on Martha's Vineyard. Their first son, Ashe Olson Meyers (named after his wife and his mother's maiden names, respectively), was born at Lenox Hill Hospital, in Manhattan, New York City, on March 27, 2016. On April 8, 2018, the couple's second son, Axel Strahl Meyers, was delivered, unplanned, in the lobby of their apartment building. On November 24, 2021, Meyers announced the bathtub home birth of his daughter, Adelaide Ruth Meyers, during Late Nights Corrections segment. The family had an Italian Greyhound named Frisbee. Frisbee died in August 2025 at the age of 14. While interviewing Jake Tapper on the December 4, 2018, episode of Late Night, Meyers said that while he does not consider himself Jewish (despite his Ashkenazi Jewish heritage on his paternal side), his wife is Jewish, and their children are being raised in that faith. Axel's middle name is the surname of Alexi's Holocaust-survivor grandparents. Beginning in July 2013, Alexi worked as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, assigned to the Sex Crimes Bureau. Since then, she joined Sanctuary for Families as an advocate for victims of gender violence. During an interview on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Meyers said that he did not believe in an afterlife. Meyers's children, dressed as "murder hornets," made a quick appearance during one COVID-19 episode of A Closer Look, filmed in the attic of the family's country home. He is a fan of U.S. sports teams including the Boston Red Sox, Boston Celtics, Pittsburgh Steelers, Pittsburgh Pirates, Pittsburgh Penguins (his father being a Pittsburgh native), Northwestern Wildcats (Seth's alma mater), and two European soccer teams, the Netherlands national football team and the Premier League club West Ham United. A fan of comics, Meyers has cited Joe Hill's supernatural Locke & Key as one of his favorite comic book series. IDW Publishing gave him some of the replica keys they licensed. ==Filmography==

Film Television Specials Writing credits ==Bibliography==