Seth Meyers is getting candid about late night television’s uncertain future and the fear that comes along with it as the host of NBC’s Late Night.
The comedian, who has been hosting Late Night With Seth Meyers since 2014, recently appeared on the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast, where he opened up about the industry and how he’ll feel if his show comes to an end.
Earlier this month, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert was abruptly canceled by CBS, with the network citing a “financial decision” for the cancellation. Armchair Expert noted on Instagram that this episode was filmed before The Late Show news.
At one point, host Dax Shepard asked Meyers if he had any “fear” that his career in late night could “end tomorrow.”
“I do. I mean, only because it is such a time we’re living in, as far as the entertainment industry,” Meyers admitted. “There is this weird thing that I feel like I shifted from fearing that I wouldn’t be good enough. And now my fear is weirdly more outside of my control, which is … just at some point, the ecosystem might not support [late night].”
“I guess that’s better than thinking it’s your fault, but it is weird to not feel any control over it,” he added.
Throughout his time in late night television, Meyers said he has learned to focus on what he can control, which is “just show up and do the work.”
“That’s the only part they’re paying you to do. It’s the only part you’re good at,” he explained. “All the other problems, we have people that are as good at that as you are at the thing you do — and don’t mess around with it.”
He continued, “I sometimes take stock of, oh, this isn’t the best time to be doing what I’m doing, but at least I got in. So I sometimes think, all right, the body of my work matters enough that the world knows Seth Myers in a way that I’m happy with.”
Despite the uncertainty of late night and “whatever time we’re living in now,” Meyers also noted that he has “had lower points in the body of the show.”
“Early on in the show, we had some NBC executives actually say to us, ‘We’re very worried about how the show’s gonna go,’” he recalled. “But in a great way, with like no real instruction as to how to get out of it. We just wanted to plant fear.”
Looking ahead, Armchair Expert co-host Monica Padman asked the comedian if his financial security helps ease his worries about Late Night coming to an end.
“I would worry about myself, like, mental health-wise,” Meyers responded. “But I put a lot of thought into diversifying my skill set. Certainly, financially, I could have been fine just doing the show for the last eleven years. But then it was like, oh, you know what? I feel like there’s something to trying to build a stand-up career and trying to do other things.”
“It’s more like, try to find something that makes you as happy as late night’s making you, but it’s not just to have busy work or anything. It’s like, oh, I like these things, too. And there’s no one entity that can take everything away at once, and I think that’s the scariest situation to be in,” he added.
After it was announced that The Late Show With Stephen Colbert would be ending in May 2026, Meyers took to his Instagram Story to pay tribute to his late night friend. “For as great a comedian and host he is, [Stephen Colbert] is an even better person,” he wrote at the time. “I’m going to miss having him on TV every night but I’m excited he can no longer use the excuse that he’s ‘too busy to hang out’ with me.”
