One of Seth Meyers’ signature segments on “Weekend Update” was actually the brainchild of the mind behind “Lazy Sunday.”
“Really!?!”—a recurring segment in which Meyers (and co-anchors) offered commentary on a news story that mostly amounted to incredulously asking ‘Really?’ after every point they made—was a staple of Meyers’ time at the “Update” desk. But it never would have happened without one-third of The Lonely Island, Meyers shared on a new episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast.
“I never would have come up with it on my own,” Meyers revealed. “It was a gift from Andy Samberg.”
While it’s not uncommon for SNL writers and cast members to pass around ideas, Samberg’s “Really!?!” suggestion came at a particularly crucial moment in Meyers’ career at SNL.
“He even gave it to me at a more important time than a week where we had a show,” Meyers went on. “He gave it to me when I auditioned for ‘Weekend Update.’”
Meyers tried out for “Weekend Update” ahead of Season 32 as a potential replacement for the departing Tina Fey. Meyers, who was already a cast member and head writer on the show, ultimately got the “Update” job and began serving as Amy Poehler’s co-host in 2006.
“I was working on my audition for ‘Weekend Update,’ and Andy came into my office and said, ‘You should do a bit called ‘Really!?!,’” Meyers recalled. When he asked Samberg why, he said simply: “That’s how you talk all the time.”
“My favorite version of you is when you show up to the office mad about something that’s happening in the world or in your life,” Samberg remembered telling Meyers. “And you get so worked up that you go, ‘Really!? That’s what we’re doing?’”
“When you bring that venom,” Samberg continued, “and it comes from your soul, and you combine it with your comedy mind, it always would make me laugh the hardest you could make me laugh.”
Meyers wound up doing the segment on air for the first time only 11 episodes into his tenure as “Update” co-host. The inaugural “Really!?! with Seth and Amy,” where the pair skewered football player Michael Vick’s arrest for marijuana possession, aired on the January 20, 2007 episode.
The segment, which Meyers called “genuinely a huge moment for my time at ‘Weekend Update,’” recurred throughout his time at the desk, both with co-host Poehler and as a solo host. He also performed it with guest co-hosts like Tina Fey and Jerry Seinfeld, and has even reprised it with Poehler on Late Night multiple times.
So how did Meyers repay the favor of Samberg giving him the gift of “Really!?!”?
“In return for me helping you create that,” Samberg told Meyers on the podcast, “you cut two things of mine from ‘Update’… starting off a long trend of you gatekeeping me from glory in your sacred space.”
