Seth Meyers on nurturing talent

(bright upbeat music) - [Jessi] From the editorial team at LinkedIn, I'm Jessi Hempel. And this is Hello Monday a show where I investigate how we're changing the nature of work, and how that work is changing us. And this, this is our very first episode. I've been writing about technology for nearly two decades. I've been around long enough to remember when MySpace seemed like a bigger deal than Facebook. I once wrote a cover story for Fortune, and the title of the article was, "iPhone vs. Blackberry" because back then, in 2009, we really didn't know the answer yet. But here's the thing the tech wasn't the most interesting part to me. It never has been. What I've always cared about is its impact on people on how we live, and how we work. And man, has work changed. That's why I wanted to do this podcast because somehow we all need to figure out how to change along with it. So each week, I'll bring you interviews with people who've figured out something important about how to make a career work. And we'll also be doing reporting on that week's topic that's with Caroline Fairchild, she manages the news team here at LinkedIn. You'll hear more from her later in this episode. This week's guest is Seth Meyers. I've been watching him perform since he debuted on Saturday Night Live in 2001. And he just celebrated his fifth anniversary as the host of Late Night. I learned so much from talking to Seth, things that apply to anyone who's ever tried to manage a business. Like, Seth knows a ton about management. He has great thoughts on helping his writers have ambitions of their own. He told me about how always tries to help them realize those ambitions, and it pays off because then they give him their best work. He also talked about how he depends on that talent to source new writers. We also talked about starting something new, and making up new rules for it from scratch. He said he tried a hundred things before he figured out what worked on Late Night. And he talked about how long it took for people to stop knowing him as that guy from SNL. Here's my conversation with Seth. - [Jessi] So you've lived this very public life. I've seen your kids on Instagram. They're totally cute. - Thank you. - [Jessi] I love your parents. Whenever they come on the show, - [Seth] They will be very happy to hear that. - [Jessi] But I want to know what happens behind the scenes, the things that we don't see. - Okay. - [Jessi] So what have you learned in those five years about how to keep talented people motivated and how to help them want to stick around? - [Seth] Well, particularly with our writing staff, we want them to stick around, but we also want them to find a path to the next thing they do. We don't, we come into this knowing, just like when I was a writer at SNL, I didn't think that's what I would do be doing forever. So you want them to have a good time here and you want them to stay for long enough that you get value out of them, but you also want them to learn the tools here that they can take on to the next thing. So we're not upset when people leave if it's to go to something that elevates their career. - [Jessi] Well, and there's the sense in SNL and, and in Late Night, Seth, that um, it's like a big alumni network. - [Seth] Yes, - [Jessi] and we as your viewers, we all actually feel like we're kind of tacitly part of that alumni network. We cheer for you when you go off and do your next projects. And that alumni network stretches way back like way before late night. - [Seth] Yes. - [Jessi] I want to talk about how you help it to stretch forward. - [Seth] Well, you know, sometimes one of the ways you help at stretch forward is you just give opportunities to people who didn't have one and then you hope that they will pay it forward. Michelle Wolf is an example of someone we hired who was a standup comedian who had a background in finance and we gave her first job in television, which led to her next job in television, which was the Daily Show, which led to her own television show. And along the way, you know, she would reach back and say to us, "hey, I need someone who will be good to run my show" and we could suggest Christine Nangle, who's someone I met at SNL. So yeah, you're constantly, you know, creating this sort of Rolodex of talent. The longer you work in this business and you try to be able to pull from that whenever you can. - [Jessi] Now when I assume that you were doing that as at SNL. - Yeah. - [Jessi] Something that you learned at SNL. - [Seth] Yes. - [Jessi] So how did it change when you transitioned from being part of the team, the leader of the team in the writing room, - Yeah. - [Jessi] to being the host of the show? - [Seth] Well I would always say that at SNL, Lorne Michaels got 99% of the vote and then the rest of us combined for the final one. So you couldn't really swing things one way or the other if Lorne didn't want it to go that way. And I mean, the great gift of this show is that you got to choose everybody you wanted to work with. And you got to sign off at everybody you wanted to work with. And so that way you can kind of lay in a DNA right when you start it. And I will say it's one of the things I'm proudest about is, there's no one here that I'm upset to see. There's no personality that I find gets in the way of us succeeding. And we just tried to lay that in very early. And one of the things we tried to tell to everybody is, "hey, behave well the whole time you're here. "And then we will always speak well of you." And people ask us all the time about the people who worked here and, and are they good people and are they the kind, not just talented because sometimes that's the first thing people can glean from your work, but are they a good person? Are they someone you want to actually spend time with? - [Jessi] Well, and I feel like we, we actually get to see a lot of your writers. - Yeah. - [Jessi] Because they come on the show. Um, and so it's really evident that you have a particularly diverse writer's room. - [Seth] Yeah, we wanted it to have, not just a, you know, diversity in so far as we wanted women and men and we wanted people from different backgrounds. We also wanted a diversity of styles in that we wanted people from standup. We wanted people who worked at The Onion, we wanted people who were improvisers or sketch performers, people who were just writers and never wanted to be in camera. And would take a swing at us if we told them they had to be. (laughing loud) - [Jessi] Do you have a lot of those? - [Seth] Well, you know, fewer everyday. - Yeah. I got to be honest, they all started warming up to the idea of being in front of the camera. (Jessi laughs) But you know, the interesting thing was, we kind of, when we started the show, and again cause like one of my favorite things about being on weekend update was sharing the desk with guests. You know, most famously with, you know, Bill as Stefon. But that was always my favorite thing to do was just play straight man to a really talented performers. And when we first started the show, we tried that a lot, whereas our writers played characters. And it was a little jarring for the audience I think, because they'd last seen me introducing people that were exactly as well known as I was, you know, it was Seth and Fred or Seth and Cecily, or Seth and Kate, whereas this was Seth and someone I'd never seen before. And it was really heavy sledding. And the interesting thing, the arc that took place over the five years was our writers kind of went away for a while and then the way they came back is they would come on camera and be able to talk from a point of view that I didn't have. So as opposed to being sort of an actor in a sketch, they became individuals. And that has been a lot more useful to us than the previous. - [Jessi] Well it was a wonderful, hilarious, but also incredibly smart way to point out the things you don't have. - [Seth] You know If can sort of sing the praises of, of what you get from a diverse writing staff is, you know, we had an opening and Amber Ruffin who, you know, is probably the writer who's on camera the most on her show. She immediately walked in our door within an hour of finding out, we had an opening and said, you have to hire my friend Jenny Hagle. And, you know, Jenny then came onboard and Amber and Jenny were the ones who came up with the bit, "Jokes Seth Can't Tell," which not only is the fun of it, that I admit to the audience, these are jokes I can't tell, but I never, I personally never would have come up with that as a sketch idea. You know, I don't approach comedy as thinking about the things I can't do. I think about the things I can do. (laughing loudly) But (Jessi laughing) it's really nice to have people in the room who say, "hey, we found a way to actually call out the other of it." And um, and so that was that you don't get, and that was just a gift that they brought to us. - [Jessi] And you wouldn't have that if you didn't have that voice or the perspective at your table. - [Seth] Yes. - [Jessi] But it can also be tricky to have so many different perspectives and so many different, I would assume senses of humor at times around the table. - Yeah. - [Jessi] As the leader of the group like that. How do you help people to work together? - [Seth] Well, you know, I will that, you know, as a host, it is still your taste. You know, even when somebody does something from a perspective that's not mine, we don't put it on the air if I can't see why it's funny. - You know like-- - like. You know and so for me, and again, you know, because most of the time people on camera like Jenny, are writing for my voice and I think they understand that as well. Like, and I think that's probably how they develop that other bit, which is, "oh, we like writing for you. "But also we're coming up with these ideas "that we realized would be bad if you said them, "but we also think they're good jokes." Um, so, you know, there's not really a clash as far as people saying, this is funny. This is what I think is funny. This is what, um, you're wrong about what you think is funny. There's a lot of, you know, respect among the writing staff - [Jessi] Right - [Seth] and they all share one big office, which has also seems like a nightmare (Jessie laughing) but has turned out to be and it was out of necessity it wasn't like we made the decision to put them all in one place. we just didn't-- - [Jessi] Its so roomy here I don't know what you are talking about. (Seth laughing) - [Seth] Exactly, Well, that's it with a conference room every time they walk by it, they probably think we could put three offices in here. (laughing loud) But they, you know, they all like live on top of each other. They all like live on top of each other and so they're, they've learned to be a good co-workers and, and, and a nice support for one another. - [Jessi] Did you think about pursuing say, an acting career? - [Seth] Yeah, in the beginning. Um, and then I was sort of a, I took the feedback of how they, those jobs went to realize that that maybe wasn't a one of my strengths (laughing loud) Even my father, who's a huge fan of mine, he said to me once after one of the lesser films that I appeared in and he said, you know, some people, some actors you forget it's them when they're on the screen, but every time I see you, I just think that's Seth. (laughs loud) And I was like, I don't think that's a compliment. And he said, "oh, no, "I don't think I meant it as a compliment." Um, but I, one of the great, it's really one of the greatest scapes that I don't feel that urge to act anymore. You know, once I, even at SNL, which I loved, you know, and I considered myself, when I started that show, "A Sketch Comedian." But you know, there was a reason I ended up, behind a desk saying "I'm Seth Meyers." You know, even the show figured out, like I think people like it when you're, you and less when you're not. - [Jessi] Five years ago you walked into an institution that existed for a long time before you got here. - [Seth] Yeah. - [Jessi] You are just the, the fourth host. - Yes. - [Jessi] How did you begin to think about preparing to walk into those shoes? - [Seth] The reality is I didn't think about it a lot. I kind of thought, I think at the back of my head I knew that the way we're going to figure out what this show is going to be was by doing it as opposed to thinking about it. And you know, looking back in those three weeks where we sat in this room right here as a writing staff and came up with the things we wanted to try on this show. Nothing of the hundred ideas we came up with still exist as pieces in Late Night and, but we only, we had to figure that out by the doing of it. And so we had the luxury of being able to do the show and figure out what it was as opposed to having any grand plans coming into it. - [Jessi] You realize it's extremely helpful to hear as I record my first episode with you, - [Seth] Yeah. - [Jessi] having never made a podcast. - [Seth] Do you think you thought a lot about it before today? - [Jessi] Do these note cards tell you anything? - [Seth] Well, you know, you wouldn't, I mean the first show I did, I, we did have, you know, I, I knew things to ask the guests so I knew that much. You know, I thought-- - Like? - [Seth] I wanted it to be a good show. - [Jessi] Right - [Seth] I just didn't have a roadmap to those aspirations. I didn't know what you know. In my mind, and I shouldn't say the hardest press I ever did in my life was the three months of press before you have a show. - [Jessi] Oh. - [Seth] Because you are talking about this thing that is so, um, don't even have a handle on it yet. It's, it's an illusion. - Right. - [Seth] And so you say things like, we're going to talk to politicians and authors and we're going to, and then none of it, you know, we're going to make fun of the news and it just didn't feel like interesting press to do. It's so much more fun to talk about a show once it's actually a thing. - [Jessi] Right. Well, was there a moment, do you remember a specific moment early on where you felt like you hit flow and you had created something that is going to endure? - [Seth] We, you know, we did a lot of things, and the first year and a half that I'm proud of that we're, I feel like, you know, gave you a sense that you were making progress, but you know, it was their second August of doing the show. It was a year and a half of doing it. And I remember sitting with Mike Shoemaker and saying, "hey, we should just start let's just try to start the, "at the desk as opposed to doing a monologue." And I feel like we'll just be able to start faster and we'll go back to the style of telling jokes that we told on Update. It'll be a revamp of the show doesn't require new staff or having to bring everybody into a group meeting and tell him what wasn't working. And it was no joke. Three jokes into the first time I did that where I realized, Oh, this is the show. (Jessi laughing) It's going to be this. - [Jessi] Did it just feel a certain way? - [Seth] Yeah, it felt I made this, and it's interesting because I don't know if people in other lines of business worry about this, the way that people in show business worry about it. When I left SNL, one of my fears was, I shouldn't say fears. I wanted to show people I could do another thing that I wasn't just the Update guy. - [Jessi] Right. - [Seth] And so for a year and a half, I fought the idea of telling jokes at a desk and then a year and a half in I realized, why am I not doing the thing I trained for the thing I got better at. Why am I throwing away all that learned skill, - [Jessi] Right. - [Seth] For the purposes of showing people I can do another thing, which I don't even necessarily know I can do. So I, a friend of mine said after I sat down and he said, "oh, it's so, I like it so much more. "I feel so much more comfortable watching you "behind a desk." And I said, "oh, I'm more comfortable too." And he said, "I don't actually care how comfortable you are. "I just feel safer." - [Jessi] So what was the muscle that you probably strengthened to the most or like the newest thing that you figured out how to do? - [Seth] You know, I think I got better at interviewing. I mean that was the farthest away from anything at SNL. You know, when you interview somebody on Weekend Update, it's obviously scripted and you're not surprised by anything they say and trying to be a good listener and trying to, you don't ask your next question based on the answer you got. And, and being able to find segues when it's time to move onto a new topic. I feel like I got better at that. And then the other thing, you know, which was born out of the necessity of the political moment we're living in, it's, you just have to be so much faster. You have to react so much quicker than anything we ever had to do with SNL, which I would've thought, oh, nothing moves faster than SNL. But if you are basically trying to do a 10 minute political piece every day in this day and age, you can't get that far ahead of it because the news is changing so quickly that if you write something Monday for Wednesday, the reality is it will not have any value. - [Jessi] Right. That makes sense. Your show evolved over the course of the last few years - Yeah. - [Jessi] To, um, to embrace a political stance, much more than you did at the beginning. - Yeah. - [Jessi] So where did that come from? Where did you shy away from it at the start? - [Seth] I don't know. You know, I think we, in the start there was a sense of, "oh, does the world need another show "that's talking about politics?" you had the daily show, you have Colbert Report. It wasn't like I think there was a thirst for it, - [Jessi] Right. - [Seth] But the more we did it and every now and then there'd be something that happened in the news that we would write about. We felt good doing it, you know, we felt like, um, I have no way we were doing it better, but it was maybe better than the other stuff we were doing. And so we just kind of committed to the idea of trying to improve upon it. And then it became the thing that we just started getting feedback on. That's a big part of this as well. You know, you, and the nicest shift for me happened two years in, which is people would come up to me for the first two years of doing this show and say, "I loved you on SNL." (Jessie laughing) And then finally two years in they would say, "I love your show." But it took a full two years for people to move on to my present. - Right - [Seth] as lovely it is as it is to be complimented on your past. It's a lot nicer to be complimented on your present. - It feels a certain way. - Yes. - [Jessi] And so the crazy thing to me is that this isn't even all of your present, that you actually are doing number of different things. - [Seth] Yeah. - [Jessi] You have your Documentary Now series, you've done a ton of different things. Why is that important to you? - [Seth] Documentary Now is so different than anything we're doing here. It is the longest tale. You work a year on it before it comes out as opposed to working a morning on it and doing it that night. - Right. - [Seth] Everything here is, lovingly disposable in that it's a bit like a newspaper. You know, by Wednesday you're not going to read Tuesdays, New York Times. And that's the way our show feels, whereas Documentary Now, I feel like those episodes will endure for a very long time. - [Jessi] Yes - [Seth] And we'll, you know, even when they endure for a very long time, but we'll still be seen by less people then probably see our show tonight. - [Jessi] But those seven people are going to love it until they die. - [Seth] The goal. To do something like that is really special. And then, you know, I also, I still really like going out and doing stand up, you know, it's again, totally different experience and you know, a skill I worked a long time to feel good at and I don't want to stop and let it atrophy. And so I tried to get out and do that too. - [Jessi] But you also, you encourage your writers to do that as well, right? I mean your -- - Yeah. - [Jessi] always working on all these other projects. - [Seth] Yeah. Again, one of the limitations of being a writer on the show is 80% of the words are going to be said by me. So maybe you just want to get out and maybe you want to write a sitcom and, and cast it with different voices. Or maybe you want to be the host of something and you know, that's why we're no way, shape or form hoping people stay here forever. You know, I, you know, I'm stuck with me, but I can see as a writer you might want to try other things. The other reason we encourage it is, you know, we feel like, "hey, if you can stay here and work here, "but also we give you this room "and we will happily help you pitch it. "If you want to go try to sell the show to a network, "we'll go in the room with you and we will sort of, "you know, sing your praises and talk about "what a talent you are "and then you can, you can develop "that show while you're still working here. "You don't have to leave one job "to go try to chase the next one." And we, you know, there is this space here to let that happen and we do feel like that makes the people who work here happier to know that, you know, this is, it's not a cage. There's, it is, but they're, doors are open (laughs loud) - [Jessi] But it seems like that is to bring us full circle, that that is what good management looks like. It's not even specific to Hollywood that helping people realize bigger dreams means that you're going to get more from them during the time they're with you. - [Seth] I really hope that's true. And that is certainly is our philosophy. I can't imagine how you wouldn't resent us if you felt like we were giving you a job, but it wasn't the one you dreamed of, and it was also stopping you from, from pursuing that. So we've definitely, you know, with the people who work here, you know, when they come to us and say, "Hey, I got this great offer," our reaction to that is always "Oh my God we're so happy for you." - [Jessi] We are taking a quick break for a message from our sponsors. This podcast is brought to you by Casper. You spend one third of your life sleeping so you should be comfortable. The original Casper mattress combines multiple supportive memory foams for a quality sleep surface to give you that perfect amount of sink and bounce. Casper products are cleverly designed to mimic human curves so it's comfortable for everyone. Plus, they ship it right to your door in a convenient box. You can be sure of your purchase with Casper as 100 night risk free sleep on at trial. Get $50 towards select mattresses by visiting Casper.com/Hello Monday and using the code Hello Monday, terms and conditions apply. This podcast is brought to you by HoneyBook. 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When you think forward over the decades and hopefully decades and decades to come, (Seth laughing) what do you imagine might be future challenges you might be psyched to work on? - [Seth] Well, you know, I, look, we thought at the last election, I'm, I don't think it would come to surprise people. It was not the outcome we expected. And so we have continued to write about politics the way we did during the campaign, which was again, did not see it going on. With that said, you know, when this, hopefully not permanent political moment comes to an end, we are very excited of trying to figure out how the show will change because I think it will have to change, out of necessity. And that's really exciting to everyone here. - Right - [Seth] Um, because I don't think we're alone and feeling a little bit of exhaustion. - Sure. - [Seth] And not just as comedians, as any human being who, who engages with the news on a day to day basis. I think the other challenge is, you know, this, it's five years in and this show is as exciting to do as it ever was for me, if not more exciting. And you just want to, I don't know how you would do this job in this schedule if you weren't excited to come in and every work, it's coming to work everyday. And so it's just trying to make sure that you still feel engaged. I mean, the other thing that's fun is, you know, when writers leave, we bring in, well, you know, we tend to bring in people and give them their first job in television. So when someone leaves and they've been - Right in a writer for five years on TV, then you get somebody who's brand new and you realize, "Oh, this is fun to have somebody who's really excited "to be in television and who watched this show. "And that works here" and you try to, feed off their youth like vampires. (Jessi laughs) - [Jessi] Tell me about the last person you hired. - [Seth] We hired this girl named Karen Chee. And Karen, is fantastic and I believe Karen might be 23 years old, which is shockingly young. But she wrote for the Golden Globes. She wrote on the Golden Globes and, Andy Samberg had reached out to us because I posted the previous year and he was looking for people who could come, write. And so three of the writers on our staff, amber, Jenny, and Allie Hoard went out to the Globes. And while they were there, they met Karen and they came back and, and each one of them said, "oh, we have to hire Karen." And it happened very quickly, but it was again, that great thing of you just sort of have these ambassadors for the show. They go out and enter sort of half ambassadors, half recruiters, and they come back and, and tell you the next thing you have to do. And they're the kind of people who work here and know who's going to be a fit. And so, you know, we're like three weeks into the Karen Chee era, but so far so good. - [Jessi] Seth, it's wonderful to meet you. - [Seth] This has been wonderful. - [Jessi] And I love the show that you do. (bright upbeat music)