Seth Meyers changes floors, desks and jobs

By Jacqueline Cutler © Zap2it

Framed by corner windows looking out on the skyscrapers of Rockefeller Center, Seth Meyers leans back on his new chair in an empty office, feet on desk, hands clasped behind head.

He plans to move into this space but not until he clears out of his job at “Saturday Night Live.”

“I have to move everything down from (the 17th floor); I never wanted it to seem like I was only half there,” he says of “SNL.”

It’s the last Monday in January, and Meyers is gearing up for his final show, after 12 1/2 years. “Late Night With Seth Meyers” premieres Monday, Feb. 24.

In the past year, Meyers turned 40, married and was selected as host of the talk show that technically starts in the morning, at 12:35 a.m. ET.

David Letterman, who hosted it first, suggested Meyers change the title to “The Tomorrow Show.”

“But that seemed presumptuous,” Meyers says, grinning.

And Meyers is not presumptuous.

Is he ready?

“As ready as you can be,” he says, “leaving a place where you were for 12 1/2 years.”

Meyers isn’t quite certain what other people do on Saturday nights.

“Part of it is, really, I am an adult. It (‘SNL’) is a very good thing if you don’t want to grow up,” Meyers says.

The “SNL” schedule is grueling, and Meyers says he’s been sleeping on his office couch Tuesday nights for years, usually getting a restful three hours between 2 and 5 a.m.

“I drink Red Bulls and eat beef jerky and destroy the inner lining of my stomach,” he says. “And yet I will be so emotional tomorrow.”

Earlier in the month, at a Television Critics Association press conference, Meyers announced that Amy Poehler would be his first guest.

“It was immediate,” he says on this gloomy Monday. “As soon as I said yes, I knew she was the best person I would want out there with me. I got hired on ‘SNL’ in the same class as Amy, ’01.”

Meyers, who studied radio, TV and film at Northwestern, recalls watching Tina Fey and Poehler do improv in Chicago.

Acknowledging the top-tier school, Meyers says, “I do test well. I don’t study well. Being a procrastinator is what drove my parents crazy. But it was perfect training for this.”

He grew up in New Hampshire, adoring “SNL,” recording the show and talking about it with his friends.

“I would bring dates home half an hour early for curfew to get home to watch ‘SNL,’ ” Meyers says. “It gives you an idea of what kind of ladies man I was.”

Meyers is a little self-effacing and very polite. When he’s anchoring “Weekend Update,” he sits back and allows the other players the leeway to shine but doesn’t lose control of the segment.

After eight years, Meyers has held court behind the “Weekend Update” desk the longest and was head writer for nine years.

He’ll be mining much of the same material for “Late Night,” but one advantage of being on weeknights is that he and his 11 writers will get to use more of the jokes they devise. At “SNL,” news that broke early in the week and was ripe for parody was usually other late night comics’ fodder by Saturday.

Now he can use them in the show that will tape around 6 p.m. “Late Night” will begin five nights a week but will switch to four nights a week at an unspecified date.

Meyers, who praises Jay Leno’s monologues, plans to have a strong one for his show, and he wants people to tune in expecting that.

Then, as if worried he had oversold himself, Meyers adds, “It’s a weird thing of not wanting to overpromise and underdeliver.”

He wants guests beyond actors and reality show stars promoting themselves. He wants politicians, writers and athletes “because I have a lot of interests outside of show business,” he says. “I plan to have musicians as guests.”

He would love to have Sarah Palin as a guest. Meyers wrote the skits in which Fey did a dead-on Palin impression. He quickly credits Fey for the success of those skits.

Another ideal guest would be Hillary Clinton.

“I feel like she has a really bright future,” Meyers says, deadpan.

Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are also high on his guest wish list.

One skill Meyers wants to display and has repeatedly demonstrated on “SNL” “is making people look good,” he says. “On ‘Weekend Update,’ if the person next to you is killing it, it looks really good.

“With all things with the show, it is important to spend the first six months figuring out what the show is, to not overthink it,” he says.

It’s a weird week for Meyers, leaving a job that’s been his home for much of his adult life to jump into an exclusive club of which he’s only the fourth member, after Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon.

“The things staying the same are really exciting to me,” he says. “I’m still in New York. I still have the same friends. I am still at 30 Rock.”

There’s some fear about this change; Meyers is too smart to be without fear.

“It is totally different muscles; it is a totally different job,” he says. “I’m reminding myself that I am going into it to learn how to do it.”

ACROSS

1. Koppel and Wass

5. One of the Maverick brothers

9. 1964 Harry Guardino movie about a zoologist

10. Enough, for Tom Bradford

12. Suffix for Hallow or velvet

13. __ Turner

16. Small Chevy of the 1990s

17. Initials for a “Cagney & Lacey” star

18. Role on “The Big Bang Theory”

20. Dracula’s title: abbr.

21. Health nut’s lunch, perhaps

23. Prefix for dynamics and space

25. Judge on “Dancing With the Stars”

26. Monogram for the writer of “Little Women”

27. Lennie Briscoe or Cyrus Lupo: abbr.

28. Mike Todd’s last wife

29. Up to the task

30. Actor Gross

32. “__ Mans”; 1971 movie for Steve McQueen

33. “Rags to __” (1987-88)

38. “__’ Blue Eyes”

5. Boo Boo, for one

6. Smallest of 50: abbr.

7. “The __ and I”; Fred MacMurray movie

8. Robin Williams series (3)

9. Take a break

11. Oz visitor

14. Shucks forerunner

15. Ming-__ Wen

18. Fred Dryer series

19. Long-running prime-time soap opera

22. Perceive; sense

24. Foreign ruler’s title

29. __ Romeo; Italian car

31. Perpendicular building wings

34. “__ __ Joke, Son!”; 1947 Una Merkel movie

35. Heston’s initials

36. Half a laugh?

37. Singer James

40. “__ Tree Hill”

42. Emulate Picabo Street

44. “__ Cortez”; 2006 Lou Diamond Phillips film

46. “I __ Legend”; 2007 Will Smith movie