Seth Meyers

Seth Meyers is an American comedian and host of the nightly talk show Late Night with Seth Meyers, a gig he has had since 2014. Meyers is known for his wry sense of humor and laid-back style. In late 2025 Meyers became the latest in a string of late-night talk show hosts to incur the wrath of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump.

Early years

Meyers is the older of two sons born to Larry and Hilary Meyers. (His younger brother is actor and comedian Josh Meyers.) His mother was a homemaker who later taught middle-school French, and his father worked in finance. Seth Meyers lived in Michigan until he was 10 years old, when the family moved to Bedford, New Hampshire, for his father’s job. He has described having a tight-knit family that would play the card game hearts together at the kitchen table. Meyers did not audition for plays in high school, but when he got to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, he loved watching the college’s Mee-Ow improv group perform. “When I was finally cast for Mee-Ow and on stage doing improv, I thought, ‘Oh, this is it. This is what I want to do,’ ” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2022.

Saturday Night Live

Early in his comedy career, Meyers and his brother became cast members of the improv group Boom Chicago. In 2001 he joined the cast of Saturday Night Live (SNL), and by 2006 he was serving as co-head writer, eventually becoming sole head writer. He also was coanchor of the show’s “Weekend Update” segment, along with Amy Poehler, from 2006 to 2008, before anchoring it solo from 2008 to 2013 after Poehler left the show. He appeared in a sketch with Trump on SNL on 2004 and also portrayed celebrities including Russell Crowe and John Kerry.

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Late Night gig

In 2014 Meyers replaced Jimmy Fallon as host of Late Night after Fallon succeeded Jay Leno at The Tonight Show. Meyers’s first show featured then Vice Pres. Joe Biden and Poehler as guests. “The monologue jokes were mostly thin and the host seemed stiff delivering them,” Frazier Moore wrote in a review for the Associated Press. “But jokes about the Winter Olympics that already felt irrelevant, and a few opening-night butterflies for the guy voicing them, could be excused. Soon enough, Seth Meyers seemed to gain control of his inaugural edition of Late Night. ”

Other projects

Alongside his SNL and Late Night gigs, Meyers has been involved in several other shows in different capacities. In 2008 and 2009 he hosted the Webby Awards, followed by ESPN’s 2010 and 2011 ESPY Awards. The next year he, along with Pres. Barack Obama, memorably roasted Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. In 2014 he hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards. He executive produced the animated superhero parody The Awesomes, which ran on Hulu from 2013 to 2015, and teamed up with fellow SNL alums Fred Armisen and Bill Hader on the mockumentary series Documentary Now!, which debuted in 2015. He has had a pair of comedy stand-up specials, Lobby Baby (2019), based on the birth of his son Axel in the lobby of his apartment building, on Netflix and Dad Man Walking (2024) on HBO.

“Jew-ish”

Many people assume that the comedian is Jewish because of his name, which he has gotten some comedy mileage out of. He quipped that his Jewish in-laws “were so happy that their daughter had met a nice Jewish boy,” before he divulged that he was not. But he has said that he has become “Jewish enough” for them. “And I believe that’s the only religion that that happens in. Which is why it’s great that it’s the only religion that ends with -ish.” And in a 2019 episode of the PBS ancestry show Finding Your Roots, Meyers learned that his great-grandfather Moses Menachem Trakianski had changed his surname to Meyers when he immigrated to the United States. “I found out that I had descended from Lithuanian Jews,” he said in Dad Man Walking. “Lithuanian Jews are famous for coining the expression: We’ve got to get the f*** out of Lithuania.” As for his religious beliefs, Meyers has said that he does not believe in an afterlife.

In Trump’s crosshairs

In addition to the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner roast, Meyers has consistently mocked Trump’s campaigns and presidencies on Late Night. In 2025 Trump was harshly critical of Meyers, along with late-night comics Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and Fallon. In a November 2025 Truth Social post, Trump called on NBC to fire Meyers, claiming that the comedian “is suffering from an incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). He was viewed last night in an uncontrollable rage, likely due to the fact that his ‘show’ is a Ratings DISASTER. Aside from everything else, Meyers has no talent, and NBC should fire him, IMMEDIATELY!” About a half-hour later, Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr posted a screenshot of Trump’s post on X. Responding to the attack, Meyers quipped on his show, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I finally have something in common with Marjorie Taylor Greene,” referring to the Republican member of Congress from Georgia who broke with the president. “You know, Trump’s really bringing the country together.”

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