Seth Meyers’ Favorite Part of ‘SNL50’ Was Watching Lorne Michaels Laugh at His Own Roast

By all accounts, Lorne Michaels is a challenging boss. People who have worked for him have said he can be imperious, dismissive and careless with employees’ feelings and self-worth. Even Seth Meyers — who, between Saturday Night Live and Late Night, has worked for Michaels nearly half his life and is clearly grateful for the opportunities Michaels has given him — has no compunction about describing how strange it can be to interact with someone who’s run his own TV fiefdom for decades. 

At the ATX TV Festival’s opening night marquee panel on May 29th, Meyers remembered the phone call in which Michaels told him he’d be the next host of Late Night, saying Michaels’ way of giving information is “like a follow-up call to a conversation you never had,” sliding into an impression of Michaels vaguely saying he thought Meyers would be good, in time. Meyers didn’t hang up and say, “Yes!”; it was more like he hung up and said, “What?!?!” 

Meyers also told the story of the best compliment Michaels ever gave him during Meyers’ time at SNL. Meyers had racked up what he felt were a few consecutive episodes that weren’t so great, and went to see Michaels on a Monday, to get ahead of a dressing-down, with a few ideas for Weekend Update. “Update’s the least of my problems,” Michaels replied. 

“I never felt so seen,” Meyers recalled. “‘The LEAST’!” 

Taking compliments from Michaels, he said, is something you have to teach yourself to do.

Yet Michaels — the man Meyers said drove him so crazy that there was a time he was walking alone in New York muttering to himself because he was having a one-sided argument with Michaels in his head… and then ran into fellow SNL writer John Mulaney doing exactly the same thing — did create SNL for a reason. At the panel, Meyers said that his favorite moment of the SNL50 anniversary special back in February came when Meyers took part in a Weekend Update segment with Vanessa Bayer and Fred Armisen. 

During Meyers’ time as an Update anchor, Bayer and Armisen did a series of appearances as “Best Friends From Growing Up” with various dictators and strongmen like Bashar Al-Assad, Muammar Gaddafi and Kim Jong-Un. Officially, these “best friends” have come on to defend their old pals after recent reports of atrocity, then lower their voices to describe incidents when the dictator in question was gauche or petty to them. But for the 50th anniversary episode, Bayer and Armisen got back into character to talk about a new Best Friend From Growing Up: Lorne Michaels.

Meyers explained that when you’re actually on the show, you almost never see Michaels: He watches from a specific spot that’s out of performers’ eyeline when they’re on stage. But for the 50th anniversary special, Michaels was in the audience and Meyers could see him watching Armisen and Bayer — two stars who particularly delight Michaels — and “laughing so hard.” Meyers said it was “so much fun” to remember how much Michaels loves comedy.

Meyers also said the experience of making the anniversary special sent him into a “memory hole” of his time on the show, and that the memories weren’t always good, but that, at the after-party, everyone could say, “I think we pulled it off.” 

Getting a sincere laugh out of a one-man tough crowd undoubtedly helped.