
Very quietly—so quietly that its host wasn’t even aware of it—the CBS late-night show, After Midnight, celebrated its first anniversary last week.
This is no mean achievement. Many attempts at new late-night entries have either already crashed and burned a year after their premieres, or are leaking fuel badly.
After Midnight, again pretty quietly, has exceeded expectations and is lately frequently ahead—among the valuable viewers under 50 years old—of its more established, and more conventional, late-night competitor at 12:35 am, NBC’s Late Night.
As with all late-night shows, much of the credit goes to the host, the 31-year-old stand-up comic, Taylor Tomlinson. And she really did say she didn’t realize the show had reached its one-year anniversary.
“Really? I didn’t know,” she said in a telephone interview. “I’m lucky I know what day it is.”
Of course, she may have been joking, because jokes have been Tomlinson’s life since she started doing stand-up at 16. That was in her church, but that’s another story.
The main story is Tomlinson’s recent rocket ride to comedy prominence, which has already included multiple Netflix specials and long national tours. The After Midnight gig came along unexpectedly, and she only accepted when she heard it would tape Monday through Wednesday, allowing ample time to keep up her comedy road work over long weekends.
What she liked was the untraditional format, a game show parody with her setting up three comic “contestants” to throw one-liners at goofy premises lifted off the internet. That was the template for the show this one is based on, @midnight, which ran from 2013 to 2017 on Comedy Central.
But like virtually every late-night show since the invention of Tonight on NBC, After Midnight has made alterations on the fly.
“We’ve kind of evolved,” Tomlinson said. “And now it’s kind of more an in-between show.” As in, part game parody and part comedy talk show.
Most prominently, the show made the most obvious of adjustments. It gave its star a monologue. “I can’t take credit for that at all,” Tomlinson said. “That was a note we got. I was a little resistant at first because I didn’t want to make it look like ‘hey I need more screen time.’ My goal in taking this job was to hopefully support other comedians.”
Comedians have certainly taken her up on that, and not just the up-and-coming crowd. More and more established comics are turning up, like Drew Carey, Pete Holmes, Ilana Glazer, and even “Weird Al” Yankovic.
Opening monologues in late night have always served as greetings of sorts to viewers, allowing them to settle in with a familiar face, most often the major reason they tuned in. Johnny Carson said a long time ago, “These shows are about the guy behind the desk.”
Tomlinson still doesn’t have a desk, but she does have a podium she retreats to post- monologue. “I would never say this show is about the girl behind the podium,” she said. “I get enough attention in my life. I would really like to be part of something that’s a team effort.”
Even without a band, the team is pretty sizeable, at least in terms of researchers and writers. The former have to come up with scads of hopefully comedy-rich premises; the latter have to write large slates of jokes about them.
“They have to write every day from scratch,” Tomlinson said. “It’s pretty incredible how many themes they come up with and how many jokes they write for a variety of voices.”
Those include the comedian guests. The “game” is about points Tomlinson awards for jokes the comics come up with, but it’s not a real competition. The prize for “winning” is a gag gift, like a British barrister’s wig or, in one especially inspired choice, Taylor’s father’s approval.
The show is up front about the extensive writing taking place pre-show and the jokes not being fired off spontaneously.
“Everyone who comes on the show gets a writer to produce them that day,” Tomlinson explained. “They get a few hours to work with them. They get jokes to choose from that our writers have written, or they can come up with their own.” She added: “I really think we set up everyone to win.”
In addition to the monologue, the show has added another more traditional element: conversation with the guests. This is mockingly called “The Talk Show Portion,” but Tomlinson does ask interview-style questions of the guests, even as jokes remain central, and the couch segment also sometimes includes games.
“I went back and forth about it,” Tomlinson said. “I felt like we had hit our stride with games and such in season one.” The idea of bringing in an actual couch unsettled her a bit. “At first I was like, oh maybe I’m not good at this,” she said. “Now I’ve taken to it.”
One other thing surprised Tomlinson at the start: how many questions she got about being a female host in late night. “I was like, I don’t think it’s that big a deal, actually. It’s not The Tonight Show. We’re going to be silly.”
She didn’t give much thought to a reason why it had been so rare for women to break through in late night. “I don’t know? Misogyny? I think there have been amazing female hosts. Carol Burnett, Joan Rivers, Chelsea Handler, Lilly Singh, Amber Ruffin. They were all brilliant women.”
Her first reaction to the persistent “woman” question was: “Let’s not focus on that.”
She said: “This is such a different role for me. And I was scared in the beginning. I just didn’t want to misrepresent myself. I didn’t want anyone to think I was going into this like, ‘Hey everybody, I’m a big-time late-night host now.”
But she has had time to reconsider the issue of the “woman” thing.
“I began to think, yeah, if I was 13 and I saw a woman hosting a show in a late-night time slot, when there weren’t women on at that time, I would be excited to see that. So, I was sort of holding both those things in my mind at the same time. That’s sort of where I’ve landed.”
Things have landed pretty well and, with a network renewal for another season, the engine is still running smoothly on After Midnight. Aside from one hovering concern:
“We use so many TikToks!” Tomlinson said. “Now it might be banned? That would certainly make our job a lot harder.”
Sketch set up
Three people in ski clothes sitting on the lift
It has broken down
I love your show and I try to stay up every night to see you. I hope you are on for a long time. I hope someday I could come to the show to meet you