Behind the scenes of Seth Meyers' attic-based Late Night

Los Angeles Times

Meyers' typical production day includes joining a Zoom meeting with his writers and then later jumping on Zoom again “so the hair and makeup can take a look at me and make sure I don’t look too much like a weird ghost,” he tells the Los Angeles Times. “In the early days it was like that scene in The Twilight Zone episode when the girl takes off her bandages and everyone screams. But we’re getting better.” Meyers has transformed his sons' playroom in his attic into a makeshift Late Night set. He says the biggest adjustment is working without an audience. “It turns out maybe a lot of us who do this for a living need the adulation of strangers,” he says. With his work-from-home schedule, Meyers is able to tape his show and be done three to four hours earlier than normal, with taping done early in the afternoon, rather than late in the evening. Executive producer Mike Shoemaker admits that he has “minor heart attacks all the time” because of the high potential for glitches. “You’ll be watching a really good interview and then it freezes. It happens about half the time,” he says. “We long to be back in the studio just to have wired connections.” Meanwhile, Meyers says he tries to get his two sons to go to bed early so that they won't see his NBC colleague Jimmy Fallon's home-based Tonight Show. “The thing we’re trying to avoid at all costs is our kids watching The Tonight Show and finding out about this slide," he says.