Long before Jesse McLaren was writing for Jimmy Kimmel Live!, he was cutting school on Long Island to sit in the audience at Late Night with Conan O’Brien—a trip he says helped him realize that late night wasn’t just something to watch, but a job people actually got to do.
The Emmy-nominated Kimmel writer joins Mark Malkoff on this week’s episode of Inside Late Night, where he reflects on his unlikely path from Colbert Report intern to BuzzFeed viral-video creator to one of the rare late-night writers hired off the strength of his Twitter feed.
Along the way, McLaren recalls the Julia Louis-Dreyfus retweet that helped get him followed by Kimmel and his head writers, the DM from Molly McNearney that set the process in motion, and why he treated his Twitter account like a months-long writing packet.
He also shares stories from inside Jimmy Kimmel Live!, including writing the show’s 20th anniversary sketch featuring present-day Jimmy talking to his 2003 self, producing the Brian Cox-in-Euphoria bit, and helping create the hilarious wax-figure prank that left Kimmel’s Cousin Micki terrified.
Elsewhere, McLaren talks about his Colbert Report field-producing days, writing for Kimmel’s Oscar monologues, making custom snow globes during the writers’ strike, and the viral posts—Ariana Grande’s impossible stool pose, Hillary Clinton and the Macarena, and Pennywise in his sister’s engagement photos—that helped make him one of comedy Twitter’s most reliably inventive voices.
Click the embed above to listen to Jesse McLaren’s full conversation with Mark Malkoff now, or find Inside Late Night on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
