Seth Meyers Has Gotten Very Good At NOT Saying Who He Thinks Should Succeed Lorne Michaels
Seth Meyers is a person who doesn’t seem to have trouble filling his time. He’s been the host of Late Night With Seth Meyers since early 2014. He co-hosts the podcasts Family Trips With The Meyers Brothers with, as you might guess, his brother Josh, and The Lonely Island With Seth Meyers Podcast with, as you might also guess, The Lonely Island (Adam Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone). He’s also partially responsible for the care of his three children and an Italian greyhound named Frisbee. Yet a segment of the population can’t stop fantasy-casting him into the role of Saturday Night Live’s next showrunner.
The question of who would succeed creator Lorne Michaels in running SNL has long been a topic of idle speculation. But this year’s celebration of the show’s 50th season has cranked it up several notches, since Michaels himself told Gayle King, back in 2021, that if he could make it to the show’s 50th anniversary, that “might be a really good time to leave.” Four years later, however, Michaels hasn’t exactly made any movements toward the door. And why would he? He’s one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry; why not remain so for as long as he possibly can?
Regardless: SNL alumni and current cast alike can’t avoid the question of who could, or should, take the SNL helm after Michaels. Earlier this month, Fey said that Michaels is irreplaceable. Just last week, John Mulaney deftly parried a question, from The Town’s Matt Belloni, about what would happen if Michaels were to get hit by a bus, causing Mulaney to get drafted to replace him: “He’s lived in New York for 50 years,” said Mulaney, “you don’t think he knows how to dodge a bus?”
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Meyers, a former SNL head writer whose current show Michaels also produces, has also been in the mix of names floated to fill what is still very much not a vacancy. Meyers told Belloni, “It is dumb money to think that Lorne is stepping down after the 50th.”
It must be hard to be clearer about one’s position in this matter without being rude, but Meyers has found a way, as attendees of the ATX TV Festival just learned. For the festival’s opening night marquee event at Austin’s Paramount Theatre, Meyers sat down with Michael Schneider, Variety’s executive editor for TV. It was a visit years in the making: Meyers had been scheduled to appear at the 2023 Festival, but since it fell weeks into the WGA strike, he canceled what would have been a promotional appearance for a show that was struck.
To Schneider’s credit, he waited until the Q&A portion of the evening to raise the question. Meyers joked that he was talking out of turn and should go into the audience if he wanted to ask something. Before long, though, an audience member took up Schneider’s cause (Schneider joking that the speaker was his assistant), commenting that the writers’ room for SNL50 was like The Hunger Games to determine Michaels’s successor, so…?
Meyers’ practice in receiving this question showed in his answer. Regarding the fan who asked it, Meyers joked back, “He’s pushy. He has a plan. I think it should be you. Give it to that guy!”
Succinct, direct, enthusiastic — by all rights, this endorsement should get Meyers a rest from further interrogation at least until Michaels actually does announce his intention to retire. Failing that, at least get off his back for the next couple of weeks.
