There are many skills that “SNL” stars have, but there are also some that they definitely don’t. And according to Seth Meyers, he definitely did not have interviewing skills thanks to “Weekend Update,” despite what everyone thought.
The NBC host admitted as much to fellow “SNL” alum Maya Rudolph on Wednesday night. Rudolph appeared on “Late Night” to promote her ongoing Broadway run in “Oh, Mary!” and confirmed that she only had 10 days to learn all her lines before hitting the stage. Meyers quickly noted that people tend to assume that “SNL” alums are great at memorizing, because of how many sketches they do on the show, and Rudolph readily agreed.
“And that’s the thing. And I kept saying, ‘I love that you think I can do this, but we read cue cards,’” she said. “Like, we’re lazy. I can’t — I haven’t memorized anything in years. I can’t remember what I’m doing when I walk into the kitchen. Like, I can’t remember what I came in for.”
As the conversation continued, Meyers revealed that he faced the same struggles when he first started hosting “Late Night,” after his “SNL” run had ended.
“I remember when I started doing this show, people would be like, ‘Oh, you’ll be so good at interviewing people because you interview people on Weekend Update,’” he recalled. “And I’m always like, ‘That’s scripted!’”
At that, Rudolph also marveled at people who assume that “SNL” also involves a lot of improvisation, which in turn leads to an assumption that the stars know what they’re doing because of that, too.
“I was like, ‘Who improvised when we were there?’” Rudolph wondered.
You can watch the full discussion between Rudolph and Meyers in the video above.
