Seth Meyers On The Trump Effect On ‘Late Night’ And Emergency Guests

Host Seth Meyers during ‘Corrections.’

Lloyd Bishop/NBC via Getty Images

It’s not unusual for late-night talk shows to make headlines, but 2025 has had them, at times, leading the news agenda. This time, it hasn’t been because of a celebrity guest, but rather for catching the ire of US President Donald Trump, his administration, and supporters, who often discuss hot topics in their monologues. Both Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert have faced his ire; the former was suspended, and the latter’s show was not renewed beyond 2026. Now, Late Night with host Seth Meyers is the focus of his displeasure. In a recent Truth Social post, he referred to the comedian as “a truly deranged lunatic” and suggested that NBC should consider firing him.

However, with broader audiences now talking about and more engaged with late-night shows than they have been in years, and spikes in viewing figures, Colbert, Kimmel, and now Meyersgate have breathed new life into the genre that had been considered to be in decline.

“It’s a better question for audiences, but I will say it certainly makes you have more of an appreciation for what a privilege it is to have a show like this,” Meyers explained recently to a select number of journalists during a virtual press conference. “I think it also hopefully reminds the audience how nice it is to have shows like these.”

“Certainly, in the situation with Kimmel, it seemed like audiences actually had a path they could take to voice their displeasure with it, in a way that, unfortunately, they had less of a path with Stephen. I think he would have had the same response if they had. It was a terrible ten days of not knowing if Jimmy would ever return to the air. That was certainly the worst. If you want to talk about the year and our show, what was the bottom line? That was surely it. We are all just so happy to be doing these shows every day.”

He continues, “Obviously a lot’s been written about the future of late night, and nobody seems particularly bullish on it, but I would say that the present for late night is still fascinating and vital and I’m very happy to be living in the present, because every day when you do a show like this, especially one that’s responding in real time to news that’s happening sort of faster than it’s ever happened before, these are fascinating jobs to have.”

How does he feel about being the subject of a social media post from the President?

“Encouraging is not a word I would use,” he says. “Some people will say to me, ‘It’s a sign you’re doing something right,’ and that’s a very nice thing to hear. I ultimately think it’s better if he’s focused on other stuff, although you can make an argument that when he’s focused on other stuff, that’s not the best outcome either. Perhaps it’s a healthy way for the rest of us to live if he’s attacking late-night shows, particularly with what happened to Kimmel. Maybe we were naive, or I was naive, to think it wouldn’t happen. I appreciated that there was so much comedy in the last one, but I will not be naive enough to think the next one will be as funny.”

How Seth Meyers Found Out Donald Trump Wasn’t Happy

Meyers’ acclaimed A Closer Look segment remains incredibly popular, and two weeks ago, one that included the President talking about catapults, annoyed Trump enough for him to once again lambast Meyers with the drama unfolding over a weekend.

“I don’t try to live in the body of social media on the weekends. I’m enjoying being with my family. At the same time, you know, all of a sudden, I’m getting all these texts about the fact that the President has attacked me on social media, which I want to stress, I don’t care for, and yet, when I read that one, I had a moment of thinking, ‘Well, this one has some inherent comedy to it, unlike past ones,’ because the amount of projection that was happening within the body of his post, accusing me of talking about catapults too much was immediately pretty funny. While I don’t think it’s great that he’s using his time to do these sorts of things, I basically infer that it’s possibly illegal for me to have my opinions about him. It was almost in real time that I was writing the response of being offended that he thinks I talk about catapults too much.”

“Historically, we have not wanted to make ourselves the center of A Closer Look. We feel like, ultimately, what’s happening outside the body of our show is far more important than any personal attacks he made on me, but it was nice to build a little moment there at the end to respond to it. Sometimes when the President says something about you, the worst part about it is like, you know, his army of supporters flooding in after him to hammer his point home, but even they had a moment where they’re like, ‘Is that why we’re mad at him? Are we mad at Seth because he talks about catapults too much? I didn’t realize. Did you guys think that was why we were mad at him?’ So it was funny that one did not have as long or as awful a tale as ones in the past have.”

So does the White House furor impact Meyer’s and his team’s approach to the show?

“It really doesn’t, other than to make the most of it,” the SNL alum explains. “It seems a little trite, but I don’t think you can think ten years into the future with a job like this, not that I ever did, but everybody who is here today knows what’s happening with television, the challenges that linear television has, and linear television has been very good to Seth Meyers. Shout out to LTV. You’ve got to make hay while the sun shines, and that’s what we’re doing right now.”

“There’s no real approach that you can take that would make you feel better or worse about the prospects of it. I think we’re obviously creating content that people are watching on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube, so it’s not like we’re not producing content that thrives in the digital age. It’s just obviously based on a previous model. It’s not really in our wheelhouse to figure out how to marry those two, but hopefully somebody will figure it out.”

You might assume that because the show relies heavily on current events, Meyers spends all day with his head down, consuming news. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

“This is the most shameful thing I’ll say,” he says with a smile. “When people are like, ‘Where do you get your news?’ I’m always like, ‘From the first draft of A Closer Look.’ I get my news from working on a show that’s about the news. There’s this real first line of defense of everybody else who is doing it, like the rest of us. I’m probably too reliant on breaking news alerts, so I’m aware of what’s happening, but when I actually delve into the granular details of the news, it is while I am working on A Closer Look. It is realizing what we’re writing about, reading backup articles, and watching clips.”

“It’s nice. I think there’s a freshness to the show because we like to write it as if we’re reacting to it in real time. Obviously, our show is not live, but it is also not over-rehearsed in any way. I think in this era, there’s a nice draw to being a show that feels a little shaggy, because I think the news is making us all a little shaggy these days.”

Here’s How ‘Late Night With Seth Meyers’ Happens

So what does a usual show day look like for Meyers? It starts around 8.45 am, and they tape each episode at 4 pm most days.

“One of the reasons we tape at four is that we’re directly physically above the Tonight Show studio. We have to either go before them or after them, because The Roots, for all their skill and wonderful music, are very loud. So, we do our show at four, and so it’s really non-stop,” he muses. “The first thing I work on is A Closer Look. I’ll get a first draft of that, and I will go through it, adding my own jokes, making cuts, or maybe there’s a new story that happened over the weekend that’s not in there, which I would love to include. I work with Sal Gentile and Emily Erotas, who are the writer and producer, respectively, and then Alex Bayes will send me the monologue jokes. He’s our head writer. Then I meet with my segment producers, who have, by then, spoken with the guest, and it’s not a very long conversation. I would say they’re in my office for about ten minutes.”

“I’ve learned the longer I do this show, I don’t want to underprepare, but I don’t want to overprepare for guests in a way that I have too much of a blueprint when I’m talking to them. It’s especially the case with guests who’ve been on the show multiple times. When you have a guest who’s happy to talk about anything, and they’re not set on promoting only, those are the best guests for me, and I think for the audience as well. Then we basically go down and I start running cards at around three in the afternoon, but it’s sort of a breakneck pace, but most of my day is spent in front of my computer, writing, which is where I truly believe God intends me to be.”

Producing a show like Late Night with Seth Meyers requires many moving parts to work together, and even the best-put-together productions can go wrong. Among the potential trouble spots is a guest pulling out at the last minute. Who would Meyers call to fill that empty chair as the show can go on?

“It happened once where we decided just to interview Wally the Cue Card Guy,” Seth Meyers recalls. “By the way, we regret it. It has gone straight to his head, and now we feel like he might be working overtime to poison guests in advance in hopes that he can get on the show again. The first late-night spot I ever did as a guest was on Late Night when Conan O’Brien was hosting, and it was very much because somebody dropped out, and they just called upstairs to SNL, and were like, ‘Who have you got?’ So last minute, I would certainly start with Colin Jost and Michael Che because they’re the ones I’m closest with and I’ve known the longest, and then I would work my way down the SNL cast list.”