‘Far More Temperamental’ Seth Meyers Had Hot Temper at ‘SNL’
Noted nice guy Seth Meyers could be “shamefully petty” back in his Saturday Night Live days, he confessed on NPR’s Wild Card podcast.
“I was far more temperamental when I was younger,” he told host Rachel Martin. “Things ran very hot at SNL, and there were definitely times where my instincts were to say something that would have been relationship-ending.”
Heated arguments are part of putting on a live show and Meyers’ head was full of those shamefully petty insults. But he held his tongue, thanks to advice from producer Mike Shoemaker. “I remember once saying, ‘I’m going to go tell so-and-so he's a you-know-what.” And (Shoemaker) used to always say, ‘It’s a long life. Look, the people you work with here. What you’re going through with them, even for the ones that aren’t your favorite people, this is bonding. For the rest of your life, you will need these relationships. More of them are going to be at your wedding than aren’t.’”
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Meyers learned to live by the “It’s a long life” adage. “If it’s somebody you think might be your friend in the future, there’s no reason to burn it down in the present.”
Martin wondered if ambition had ever led the Late Night host astray, and Meyers confessed that jealousy sometimes got in his way. “There were a lot of people that I was colleagues with who both were on SNL, and they were having robust acting careers outside of SNL,” he said. “And I was covetous of that.”
“You make this mistake if you walk down a hallway and you see pictures of former cast members and you think because you work at the same place they do, you’re going to have the same career path,” Meyers said. “But it’s a mistake to say just because you got hired at the same place as Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell — that doesn’t mean you’re going to have their career.”
No one ever took Meyers aside and told him he wasn’t a great comic actor, but no one had to. “I kept not getting cast. It’s not like your agents are like ‘Stop.’ But I did at some point say, ‘I don’t want to go on auditions anymore,’” he said. “Slowly it dawned on me — and it probably should have dawned on me faster — Oh, this isn’t the thing I’m supposed to be doing. Like I’m good at some other things but being an actor isn’t one of them.”
It helped that around this same time, Meyers was promoted to head writer at SNL. “I realized, Oh, this is an accomplishment. It should be enough for me,” he said. “I should maybe let go of that other chase.”
