He's no Ant-Man or Julie Klausner, but he'll do just fine: Seth Meyers will replace Jimmy Fallon as host of Late Night next year. Meyers will stay on at Saturday Night Live through the fall and take over Late Night in Feb. 2014 once Fallon takes over The Tonight Show—of course, this is all assuming that Jay Leno doesn't change his mind yet again.
Meyers is finishing his 12th season on SNL, and his eighth as head writer. “Working at ‘SNL’ requires 100 percent of your mental capacity — on easy weeks," Meyers told the Times in an interview Saturday. "And so I had not really spent a lot of time thinking about what I was going to do next. Obviously I can’t quit Lorne. So this seems like a pretty good deal that I have an opportunity to keep working with him.”
Lorne Michaels told them that there was “complete agreement” at NBC on the choice of Meyers: “The only name that kept coming up was Seth.” He said of Meyers, “I think he radiates intelligence. He has a background as a performer and a writer. And because I think he doesn’t like to copy anyone, I think he will find a way to make the show different and distinct and not a mirror of The Tonight Show.”
Meyers has been solid and genial presence on Weekend Update, but has never quite shown the strong personality of a Norm McDonald or Tina Fey. It will be interesting to see what kind of show he'll have once he has the freedom to shape Late Night as he wants. In the meantime, hopefully this will open up the Weekend Update hosting slot to writer and all around hilarious fellow John Mulaney—with his pilot not being picked up by NBC, it certainly would be a good time for that.
Barring that, we will campaign fiercely for Ant-Man.
