For years, Sam Fragoso reminded Seth Meyers this week on the Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso podcast, people have been speculating that either Meyers or Tina Fey would be the logical successor to the 80-year-old Lorne Michaels on Saturday Night Live. Since Meyers already had a tryout with Fey to host Weekend Update back in the day, said Fragoso, would Meyers consider auditioning with Fey to share the SNL producer job if and when Michaels left?
While the tag-team notion was kinda nuts, Meyers found it amusing to imagine what that audition process would be like. Walking around the Studio 8H stage trying to do the best Lorne imitation? “The one thing Lorne definitely wants,” Meyers joked, “is whoever replaces him to do an impression of him the whole time.”
All jokes aside, Meyers is flattered that his name is brought up in connection with the job, considering his lowly status on SNL when he started. “I don’t think anyone is right, nor do I think anyone can replace Lorne,” he said. “But I don’t want people to think I don’t feel esteem when I hear it.”
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Meyers wasn’t sure he’d even survive his early days at SNL. “I still palpably remember what it felt like to be at that show and feel like it wasn’t working,” he recently told Jesse David Fox on the Good One podcast. “I genuinely believed — and I’m not like asking for sympathy — that had they fired me, they would have been right to do so.”
Over the years, Meyers went from a fan of SNL to an insecure cast member to hating the show for what it was doing to him to loving it again once he figured out how to work there and add value. “The very fact that anybody would think you’d be good running SNL, to even hear it feels like a reward for a life well lived,” he explained.
So he’d take the SNL job if it were offered? “I don’t think so,” Meyers told Fox. “No. I think it should be somebody from a corporate background.” He appeared to be joking about that last part, but who knows?
Will Michaels appoint his own successor? He has been known to talk to his new hires as if previous conversations have already occurred. For example, when he tapped Meyers to host Late Night, he skipped the part about Meyers getting the job and went right to, “So I think you’ll be good at it. It’ll take time.”
With that in mind, Meyers told Fragoso, “I do believe (Lorne) has already talked to himself about who it’s going to be. And that person doesn’t know yet.”
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