Seth Meyers Plans for Late Night's Midterms Live Special: Basically Winging It

Seth Meyers Plans for Late Night's Midterms Live Special: Basically Winging It For a quick encapsulation of how much has changed for tho...

Seth Meyers Plans for Late Night's Midterms Live Special: Basically Winging It

For a quick encapsulation of how much has changed for those who inhabit the media-comedy vortex in the past two years, look no further than the midterm elections. Local races that once might have gone ignored outside their respective states have become the stuff of national newsâ€"and a source o f gut-wrenching suspense. In other words: perfect live-comedy material. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and Jimmy Kimmel Live! will all air election episodes in real time on Tuesday. As will Late Night, whose host, Seth Meyers, told V.F. in a recent interview ahead of the show’s first such election-night special, “I can’t even imagine how NBC would react in 2014 if we’d asked to go live.”

Although the without-a-net approach to so diffuse a national story might sound daunting, Meyers was game, if cautious, about the task that lies ahead. As he said, Late Night went live in 2016 for both the Democratic and Republican national conventionsâ€"a process that proved rewarding for the host. “It was a lot of fun to mostly just stand around with the staff and watch the night as it sort of broke down,” Meyers said. In total, Late Night has gone live three tim esâ€"twice during the conventions, and once more following the first presidential debate in 2016.

That’s not to say that Tuesday night’s show will be at all the same: “The difference between a convention and an election night is conventions don’t end with a new reality as much as elections do.” With the ominous memory of Donald Trump‘s upset in 2016 still looming, little feels certainâ€"and so, understandably, Meyers said, “I’m trying to go in with as few expectations as possible.”

What does that look like on a practical level? Right now, the plan is to run a few marquee segmentsâ€"including a “Closer Look” and a new edition of writer Amber Ruffin’s “Amber Says What”â€"and interviews with guests Billy Eichner and Soledad O’Brien. Beyond that, though? “There will be nothing on paper as of Tuesday morning,” Meyers said. The Late Night team will stay busy all day, researching and writing on topics that might be of importance laterâ€"like voter suppressionâ€"but otherwise, the plan is essentially to wing it. As Meyers noted, the planned structure, such as it is, will make fleshing out how to spend the hour easierâ€"and besides, it could be worse. “At least we’re not doing a live show that’s also a musical,” he said.

Meyers will not be alone in braving the unpredictable on Tuesday night: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and Jimmy Kimmel Live! will all air live episodes as well. And, as Samantha Bee announced on last week’s Full Frontal, her TBS show will air two episodes this week: “One on Monday to yell at you to vote, and one on Wednesday to yell at you for not voting.” The rationale behind hosts’ decisions to go live is pretty easy to guess. In this competitive environment, it’s better to air live and trust the audience to forgive the episode for being a little less polished than it is to be late to the news.

As tough as it can be for these hosts and writers to compose the monologues meant to help viewers process the news, Meyers described his position as a luxury. “On the off-weeks, that’s when you’re more likely to see me wandering around a park muttering to myself,” he said.

As Meyers’s competitive streak suggests, it’s been a target-rich environment for late-night comedians these last few years, and the 2020 news cycle, which will begin in earnest first thing Wednesday morning, promises to keep delivering. But it all does make one wonder if the frenzy can keep this pace up perpetually. Meyers said he expects the mania to wane a little once the Age of Trump is behind us, whether that’s in two years or six. As for whether the surge in interest is encouraging the late-night host, at least for now?

“I’m not encouraged that [people are] paying attention; I’ll be encouraged if they show up on Tuesday,” Meyers said. “It would be discouraging if four late-night talk shows went live because all these eyeballs were tuned in and wanting to see [what happens], and then nobody ended up walking to the ballot box. That would make me feel even more insignificant than I do on most days.”

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