Seth Adam Meyers (; born December 28, 1973) is an American comedian, television host, writer, actor, and producer. He has hosted Late Night with Seth Meyers, a late-night talk show on NBC since 2014. Prior to hosting Late Night, he was a cast member on NBC's sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live (SNL) from 2001 to 2014. He served as SNL's head writer, as well as an anchor of the news parody segment Weekend Update, from 2006 until his departure from the show.
Meyers was born on December 28, 1973, in Evanston, Illinois. When he was four, his family moved to Okemos, Michigan, where he lived until he was ten. After that, he grew up in Bedford, New Hampshire. Seth's mother, Hilary Claire (née Olson), was a French teacher and his father, Laurence (Larry) Meyers Jr., worked in finance. At one point, his mother and fellow Saturday Night Live co-star John Mulaney's grandmother Carolyn Stanton performed together in a hospital benefit show in Marblehead, Massachusetts, called Pills A-Poppin' directed by Tony Award-winning choreographer Tommy Tune. Seth's younger brother, Josh Meyers, is an actor and comedian.
Meyers's paternal grandfather was an Ashkenazi Jewish immigrant from Kalvarija near Marijampolė in modern-day Lithuania. The rest of Seth's ancestry is Czech, Austrian, Croatian (from his paternal grandmother), Swedish (from his maternal grandfather), English, and German. Seth discovered on the show Finding Your Roots that his family's original surname, Trakianski, was changed by his great-grandfather to Meyers, after his own father Mejer Trakianski.
Meyers attended Edgewood Elementary School in Okemos. He graduated from Manchester High School West in Manchester, New Hampshire. He graduated in 1996 from Northwestern University in Evanston, where he was in the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. His college roommate was fellow actor Peter Grosz. Meyers majored in film and television production. In 2011, he was the grand marshal for the school's homecoming parade. In 2016, he delivered the commencement address at Northwestern's graduation.
While a student at Northwestern University, Meyers began performing improv comedy as a member of the university's improv sketch group the Mee-Ow Show. He continued his career at ImprovOlympic with the group Preponderate as well as overseas as a cast member of Boom Chicago, an English language improv troupe based in Amsterdam, where his brother was also a cast member. Seth references living in Amsterdam during Late Night with Seth Meyers. When a Boom Chicago show he developed was mounted in Chicago, Saturday Night Live talent scouts noticed him and invited him to audition for SNL.
Meyers joined the Saturday Night Live cast in 2001. In 2005, he was promoted to writing supervisor and, in January 2006, became a co-head writer, sharing the role with Tina Fey and Harper Steele. In 2004, Meyers auditioned to co-anchor Weekend Update with Fey, but Amy Poehler was selected. With Fey's departure, Meyers became head writer for the 2006–2007 season and assumed the role of Weekend Update co-anchor with Amy Poehler, although his cast contract was up around this time. He was asked to sign a contract agreeing to be just the head writer if he didn't get Weekend Update, but he declined to sign the contract, and waited to see what the plans for Update were. He considered leaving SNL altogether if he wasn't added to Update. After Poehler's departure, he was a solo anchor from 2008 to 2013. In fall 2009, Meyers co-anchored two episodes of Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday with Poehler. In the 2013–2014 season, Cecily Strong joined Meyers as co-anchor until his mid-season departure.
On SNL, Meyers impersonated such figures as John Kerry, Michael Caine, Anderson Cooper, Carrot Top, Prince Charles, David Beckham, Ryan Seacrest, Sean Penn, Stone Phillips, Tobey Maguire, Peyton Manning, Ben Curtis (also known as the Dell Dude), Ty Pennington, Bill Cowher, Brian Williams, Nicollette Sheridan, Wade Robson, Donald Trump Jr., Tom Cruise, and Kevin Federline. His recurring characters included Zach Ricky, host of the kids' hidden camera show "Pranksters"; Nerod, the receptionist in the recurring sketch "Appalachian Emergency Room"; David Zinger, a scientist who often insults his fellow workers; DJ Johnathan Feinstein, the DJ on the webcam show "Jarett's Room"; Dan Needler, half of a married couple "that should be divorced," (opposite Amy Poehler); William Fitzpatrick, from the Irish talk show "Top o' the Morning," and Boston Powers (one of the comedians in the "Original Kings of Catchphrase Comedy" series). In the season 29 episode hosted by Lindsay Lohan, he portrayed Ron Weasley in a parody of Harry Potter.
Meyers received critical praise for his part in several iconic SNL sketches during his tenure. During the 2008 United States presidential election, he wrote the sketches for former SNL cast member Tina Fey, who returned as a guest star to impersonate Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. He created the famed if inaccurate phrase uttered by Fey's Palin, "I can see Russia from my house." While they were hosts on Weekend Update, Meyers and Poehler had a popular recurring bit, "Really!?! with Seth and Amy." Both hosts would take turns mocking people in the news, ending each point with a heavily sarcastic "Really!?!", which Rolling Stone writer Jon Blistein characterized as a "torrent of exasperation and bewilderment." Following Poehler's departure from the show in 2008, they revived the "Really!?!" segment several times when she returned as a guest. After Meyers left the show for his own talk show, Poehler made a surprise appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers in June 2015 to join Meyers in mocking Sports Illustrated sportswriter Andy Benoit, after he disparaged women's sports as "not worth watching."
Additionally, the "Abe Lincoln" sketch Meyers wrote for Louis C.K., done in the style of his sitcom, Louie, and the Girls parody, starring Tina Fey as the new Albanian "girl", were praised by critics as among the best sketches Meyers contributed to SNL. Meyers supported and picketed during the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike. When interviewed, he said, "We all know how lucky we are to have the jobs we have. We're not asking for much. You have to change the rules because people are watching TV in a different way." Even so, he mentioned in interviews that he regretted missing much of the presidential election primary season.
Meyers performed in his final episode of SNL on February 1, 2014. Strong, Poehler, Bill Hader (in character as Stefon), Andy Samberg, and Fred Armisen (as former New York state governor David Paterson) joined him at the Weekend Update desk. Meyers returned to host the show in 2018 with Paul Simon as the musical guest.
NBC announced on May 12, 2013, that Meyers would be the new host of Late Night in 2014, succeeding Jimmy Fallon, as Fallon became host of The Tonight Show. Meyers assumed his role on Late Night on February 24, 2014, and his first guest was former SNL castmate and Weekend Update anchor Amy Poehler. Meyers announced February 10, 2014, that the bandleader for his house band "The 8G Band" would be his former SNL colleague Fred Armisen. More recently, he and his Sethmaker Shoemeyers Productions company signed an overall deal with NBCUniversal.
Meyers won the third season of Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown in 2004, and donated the $100,000 prize to the Boston-based Jimmy Fund. Meyers and SNL castmate Bill Hader penned a Spider-Man one-off entitled The Short Halloween. It was illustrated by Kevin Maguire and was published May 29, 2009. Benjamin Birdie of Comic Book Resources gave the work three and a half stars on a scale of five. Meyers, along with Mike Shoemaker of SNL, created an animated half-hour series titled The Awesomes, produced by Lorne Michaels's company, Broadway Video, that aired on Hulu beginning August 2013.
Seth and his brother Josh host a podcast called Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers; the first episode was released on June 27, 2023. From August 30 to October 10, Meyers hosted the comedy podcast Strike Force Five with Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and John Oliver to support their staff members out of work due to the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike. He also hosts The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast with The Lonely Island (Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone) which discusses the comedy group's SNL Digital Shorts.