HEAR THE ONE ABOUT MIKE LEECH?

Hear the One About

He Struck Comedy Gold

By Robb Murray ’95

Photograph provided by Mike Leech

While a staff writer on "Late Show with David Letterman," Mike Leech '08 played a government official interrupting a monologue on a 2013 show.

When he describes the joke today, Mike Leech ’08 pauses and offers a qualifier. “It wasn’t the most highbrow joke,” he says. Still, the moment was electric. He’d spent several months submitting jokes to the writers on “Late Show with David Letterman,” hoping one of them would be funny enough to make it into Letterman’s monologue. He’d already worked for the show as an intern, then parlayed that into a job in the mailroom. Day after day he submitted jokes, learning a little bit each time he failed. He studied the show every night to learn the nuances of the material Letterman used and, perhaps more importantly, didn’t use. And then, on June 25, 2012: “Jennifer Lopez has announced she’ll be leaving ‘American Idol,’” Letterman said during a monologue. “Good luck filling that seat.” His joke had made it. “I jumped out of my seat, I screamed, I was so excited,” Leech said. “And every day since I've been chasing that feeling.”

The aspiring comedy writer got his start at KEYC television studios in Mankato. try to get an internship somewhere where you'd like to have a career?’” Leech recalled. “And she suggested I reach out and see if Letterman had internships.” He reached out, got the internship, and thus began his ascent from interning to producing and writing for television comedies. After the Jennifer Lopez joke, Leech says his confidence swelled. “It just let me know that I was at least on the right track and it wasn't all a waste of effort,” he says. “It meant there was hope for me to someday become passable at this job.” Leech eventually earned a spot in the “Late Show with David Letterman” writer’s room, working for Letterman until the show’s run ended in 2015. After that he worked with Robert Smigel on “Triumph the Insult Comic Dog,” writing jokes for the show’s coverage of the 2016 election. From there he went to work as a story editor and voice actor on the Showtime animated show “Our Cartoon President” (he’s the voice of former Speaker of the House Rep. Paul Ryan).

Today Leech is at work on a new venture called “Tooning Out the News,” a mostly animated show on the Paramount

Plus network.

Local intern

Leech’s career in show business began at Mankato’s television station, KEYC, where he spent six years as a production assistant. While attending Minnesota State Mankato he worked in the Memorial Library’s video services department. As he approached graduation, he needed an internship and figured he’d return to KEYC, but his mother urged him to think bigger. “She said ‘Why don't you actually

Early signs

“From the first time I read something that he wrote, I thought ‘Either this guy’s really off the rails or he’s one of the most original student writers I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Nate LeBoutillier, an adjunct instructor who had Leech in an intro to creative writing class. “Nothing good that happens to Mike Leech surprises me. He is just one of the most original characters I’ve ever met in my life.” Though Leech has met and worked with writers with Ivy League backgrounds, he’s never questioned the value of his time at Minnesota State Mankato. “If I could go back and change my life I wouldn’t try for Columbia or UPenn or any of these other schools that all my friends out here went to,” he says. “I feel like things worked out perfectly at Minnesota State Mankato, and I have nothing but gratitude for that institution.”

Read an expanded version of this article online at today.magazine.mnsu.edu