Seth Myers Makes ‘Late Night’ A Little More Jewish

Seth Meyers Image by Getty Images

By Anne Cohen May 14, 2013

“Late Night” just got a little more Jewish. A quarter Jewish, to be exact.

NBC has announced that “Saturday Night Live” writer-performer Seth Myers will be taking over the show next year after current host Jimmy Fallon moves over to “The Tonight Show.”

“I am aware of the history,” Mr. Myers told The New York Times before hosting “SNL” on Saturday. “Each chapter of my life has sort of been spent enjoying each of the guys who had the job. Letterman was sort of my first introduction to late-night television. And Conan was all through college and postcollege years. Jimmy, obviously, I think, does it as well as anyone could ever do it.”

Myers, 39, will be working with SNL producer Lorne Michaels, who will also be executive producer to “The Tonight Show,” CNN reported. All three shows will be reunited at NBC’s headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, a first since Johnny Carson moved “Tonight” to Burbank, California in the 1970s.

In an NBC press release, Myers joked: “I only have to work for Lorne for five more years before I pay him back for the time I totaled his car. 12:30 on NBC has long been incredible real estate. I hope I can do it justice.”

Anne Cohen was the Forward’s deputy digital media editor. When she’s not looking for the secret Jewish history of Voodoo in New Orleans, or making lists about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she writes for The Assimilator. She graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism with an M.S. magazine concentration in 2012.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO