Episode 114: Late-Night Writers of the WGAE

By: Liz Hynes

Host Liz Hynes, a WGAE Council member and writer for LAST WEEK TONIGHT, moderates a conversation with writers from some of your favorite late night comedy series about their experiences and insights from the world of late-night comedy writing.

The panelists include Molly McNearney (JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE), Dan Amira (THE DAILY SHOW), Felipe Torres Medina (LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT) and Jenny Hagel (LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS).

Listen here:

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OnWriting is an official podcast of the Writers Guild of America East. The series was created and is produced by Jason Gordon. Associate Producers are Molly Beer and Tiana Timmerberg. OnWriting’s Designer is Molly Beer. Mix, tech production, and original music by Taylor Bradshaw.

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Thanks for listening. Write on.

Transcript

Liz Hynes: Hi, you’re listening to OnWriting, a podcast from the Writer’s Guild of America East. In each episode, you’ll hear from the union members who create the film, TV series, podcasts, and news stories that define our culture. We’ll discuss everything from inspirations and creative process, to what it takes to build a successful career in media and entertainment. I’m your host, Liz Hines. I serve on the council of the WGA East, and I’m a writer on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. We have an amazing panel today to talk about writing for late night television. Let’s go around and I’d like everyone to introduce themselves, your name, the show you write on, your title, where you’re based, and where you’re from. Jenny, we’ll start with you.

Jenny Hagel: Hi, my name is Jenny Hagel. I write for Late Night With Seth Meyers. I’m based in New York City and I’m from [inaudible 00:00:57] writing [inaudible 00:00:57] Virginia.

Felipe Torres Medina: Hi, I’m Felipe Torres Medina. I am writer for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. I’m based in New York as well, and I am originally from Columbia down in South America.

Dan Amira: Hi, I am Dan Amira. I’m the head of writer/producer at The Daily Show. Based in New York, and I’m from Long Island.

Molly McNearney: Hi, I am Molly McNearney. I am executive producer and co-head writer of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, based in Los Angeles.

Liz Hynes: Awesome. Now everyone will know who’s talking when. Thank you so much everybody for being here today. I’m going to jump right in with some questions that I’m going to try to keep them pretty granular. If you want to move to any big picture discussions instead, we can do that too. To start, what is a favorite, either a late night bit or a comedy bit in general, that you can remember from when you were growing up that maybe warped your brain a little and made you realize, oh, if that’s a job I might want to do that?

Molly McNearney: I loved watching Letterman and Conan as a kid. Or, I wouldn’t say kid, but growing up. In high school and college when I was young, I loved watching Johnny Carson. And Letterman and Conan both did a similar thing that I was drawn to, which is I felt like I really knew who they were as humans when they interacted with other normal humans. For me, when Letterman would throw stuff off the roof and interact with his surroundings and talk to his mother, I really loved that. When Conan would do his man on the street things, I felt like seeing these guys, these big hosts going into the real world and having some of the most mundane things.

Like when Letterman went into, I think it was the lamp shop, or the store that was just about light bulbs. Seeing that helped me feel like they were relatable human beings, and I found I loved the humor in it. I had absolutely no idea that there were writers doing those things. It never even occurred to me that any of that material was written. Similarly, I’m sure some of my friends on here feel like when your parents don’t realize that you write the things that come out of this mouth. But I love late night television, and I became a fan as a young kid, and couldn’t believe that writing actually existed for those shows. And I can’t believe I get to do it.

Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah, I am going to echo what Molly said. I think it is one of those things where I adore late night, I think it’s such a wonderful genre. I think for me, as a person growing up in another country, when SNL aired in Columbia when I was growing up, it was on Tuesdays and it was three months late. So it was not Saturday night, or live. But I do remember watching a lot of the sketches and being like, “Wait, this is incredible. This is so great.” But I do remember at one point Conan, and this is obviously I had seen the shows and everything, but I was probably in college or finishing high school when Conan went to Cuba. His whole man on the street thing.

But he goes to this grocery store in Cuba, where everything is whatever is allowed within the embargo within the communist system in Cuba to be sold. And there’s an entire aisle full of this thing called vino dulce El Mundo, which is like sweet wine El Mundo brand. And he’s just walking there and this guy comes up to him and is like, “You can’t record here.” And Conan says, “Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. No worries. I just have one question. Do you have any vino dulce El Mundo?” And he’s standing in front of this. The picture is just incredible. And I remember watching that and being like, wait, he’s actually saying something here about what these people can buy and everything. It was really wonderful. And as a person not from the States, being able to comment on other cultures and other people and still be funny and universally funny. I remember all my friends watched that in Columbia and we were like, that was hilarious for everyone. I think that was really one of those moments where I was like, “Oh, I want to do that.”

Jenny Hagel: I actually watched a ton of Kids in the Hall growing up, which I know it doesn’t technically count as late night. And I don’t know why, but I think I was really struck by their dead pan stuff was really formative for me. I know they did a lot of silly stuff with wigs and costumes, but there were a lot of pieces that they did these really slow burns, and I feel like for some reason that made a really big impact on me. I think everybody grew up seeing sketches and stuff where there’s a big character who’s doing a bunch of crazy stuff, but I feel like it really was cool.

And everybody grows up with a class clown in the back of the classroom who’s making fart bruises in their armpit. But to watch somebody very skillfully lay out a premise and then very slowly play it out and heighten it really slowly, I felt like they were teaching a clinic. And then to watch it be funny every time. Sketch has that cool format where you know what’s coming every time, but it’s still fun. That made a really big impact on me. I can still think of a dozen sketches off the top of my head that do exactly that, but it’s still something to me to think about. And that, for whatever reason, I think that was the earliest education [inaudible 00:06:25] comedy structure. That’s what you asked, right? As a child, what structure inspired you? That’s fine.

Liz Hynes: Yes. Hearing you taking notes on, “Oh yeah, great build, great build.”

Jenny Hagel: [inaudible 00:06:38]. But they made a really big impact on me because I just thought they were so cool. It was so smart how they would find things, make one tiny little observation about the world and then burn that thing like the slowest burning wick on a candle, and it was such a delight to watch.

Molly McNearney: I was in ad sales, so no, I would not say that prepared me for comedy writing. Just my misery probably prepared me. But I came from the improv world, Second City, Chicago, so I feel like that prepared me better than anything. And then I was in ad sales living in LA just desperately trying to get into the industry. I didn’t know I wanted to be a writer, but as soon as I started working at Jimmy Kimmel Live! as an assistant to the executive producer, I was dying to get in that writer’s room. And through pestering the head writer at the time, Steve O’Donnell, I asked him to help me get in the room. I became a writer’s assistant, then writer, then head writer.

Felipe Torres Medina: I was also doing improv in New York, I did UCB. And I think that is, to me… I did sketch and improv at UCB, and I think that was the best comedy school possible to just be able to do stuff and fail a big stage and it’s still fine. I also worked as a copywriter for a long time, and as an immigrant, I wasn’t allowed to stay in the country without doing something related to my degree, and my degree was in screenwriting, so I had to be like, “No, no, no. This is the same as screenwriting, but for tiny screens and for 15 seconds on your phone.” Copywriting, and I wouldn’t say prepared me for late night, but it is a good skill to have. And you learn pith. More than comedy, I think you learn to write pithy lines. So, it’s helpful. Yeah, that was my big jobs before late night were working in copywriting.

Jenny Hagel: I came from the improv and sketch world, like these guys also. Which I feel like, in addition to the comedy education, you get such an education and collaboration. You really learn how to work with people and instead of saying no to ideas, which I think is so crucial in the time crunch that you’re often in the late night writer’s room. If news breaks, you don’t have time to sit around for hours and hours and hours and think of the perfect idea. It’s a lot of time like, “Hey man, this thing, just found out that this celebrity, I don’t know, was running a drug ring and it’s 4:30, and we are taping and we cannot not address it. So what do we have?” And instead of it being the perfect idea, it’s like, what is the first workable idea? And then, how do we all say yes to it and build on it until we have something that works?

Molly McNearney: I’d just like to say, Jenny, I love your celebrity drug ring bits. They’re great.

Jenny Hagel: Oh, my God, thank you. [inaudible 00:09:18]. I know, I like to think that now every time a celebrity thinks about starting a drug ring, they’re like, “I don’t know though, because I don’t want to get caught and burned by Jenny Hagel.”

Molly McNearney: He’s paying attention.

Jenny Hagel: I think there’s that. And then weirdly, the other job that helped me so much is I had a job for three years, a few years before I got late night where I worked at a top 10 countdown show at MTV 14. Where it was the top 10 coolest things this week. And it was like we talked about Twilight and we talked about Justin Bieber, and we talked about all that stuff. But what helped me was that it was a clip based show, and I came from a world of live theater and I had not gone to film school or anything like that. And so everything I did was like, you’re in front of a live audience and you can control laughs in real time. I didn’t have a lot of education in writing for the screen. And so, really it was so helpful to be like, okay, well, so-and-so dropped a new music video and we’re going to talk about it, and we’re going to show a couple clips of it.

Okay, we’re going to pull this clip, then we’re going to do this comment, this comment, this comment. Then we’re going to pull this clip. Then we’re going to do this, this, this. And so to be able to build a piece based on video clips was a thing that I learned from that job, which was really incredibly… And to go and sit with an editor. And then find out, “Hey, the segment’s seven seconds too long, can you cut seven seconds? Hey, legal says we can’t use a clip that’s that long. So for legal purposes, you need to cut two seconds out of that clip. Can you still make it work?” And I just got such a great education in the nuts and bolts of producing clip based piece. And then I ended up at late night using clips I think a lot more than a lot of my colleagues, because I then got such a lovely education on how the mechanics of how to do that. Shout out to 10 on Top, a show at MTV that nobody saw.

Liz Hynes: It’s pretty spot on training. That’s incredible how well that lines up.

Jenny Hagel: It was awesome. Also, I know everything about team pop culture from 2010 to 2013.

Liz Hynes: How many celebrity drug rings happened during that time?

Jenny Hagel: I mean, none. But I do know a lot about the Twilight series.

Liz Hynes: That’s fantastic. Dan, if you want to double-decker both of your answers, if you have answers to both of them.

Dan Amira: Oh, yeah. Sure, sure. I’ll do this one first. Sorry about all the… Before this, I was basically a blogger. I was working at New York Magazine at their news blog, Daily Intelligencer. And I actually think it was a really good training for late night because you basically get all the news stories in and then you’re like, we have to turn this around very quickly with a few jokes, some kind of angle, point of view that’ll make it interesting, and get it out there. And I was writing, I don’t know, six or eight blog posts a day. You’re really just cranking them out. So once you get to late night, you’re on a pretty fast schedule as well. And I think being a blogger prepared me for that. Just like, get the news. What’s funny about this? What’s my angle? Put it out there. Obviously, to give a little more thought for television, but the principle is kind of the same in each one. I think that was good preparation.

As for the other question, I used to watch SNL as a kid, but in my mind I think I thought that late night was kind of stale, kind of boring. And then my older sister told me, “You should watch Conan.” And I watched Conan and I was like, “Oh, wow, this is really weird and zany and funny.” And I think that turned me on to late night. And then, I hit my political awakening as a person at the same time that Jon Stewart was hitting his stride at The Daily Show. That really became like, oh wow, that’d be the dream job to work for Jon Stewart at The Daily Show. And didn’t actually think that would happen, because that would be ridiculous to think that would happen. There’s like 15 people can do that, but now it did happen. So that worked out pretty well, I guess.

Liz Hynes: Amazing. Worked out literally as well as it could have. That’s fantastic.

Dan Amira: It worked out. It couldn’t have worked out any better. I have no complaints.

Liz Hynes: Awesome. I want to circle back to something that Jenny was just talking about, the famous late breaking thing that blows up your whole day. I think everyone working in late night, particularly if you’re on a show that tapes every day, everyone has experienced the, “Oh, we are about to tape in five minutes and the news story of the day just broke.” Is there any story like that you want to share? Or it could be we’re out on a field shoot and somebody didn’t show up, or a prop didn’t turn up. Just any stories that you have about having to adapt to how relentless that schedule can be.

Jenny Hagel: I remember this was insane timing, but when I was head writer at The Amber Ruffin Show, and we used to tape on Fridays. And there was one week where we… So we would write all during the week and then we would finalize all the graphics and finalize all the scripts and we would have a rehearsal on Thursday. And then I would go to bed on Thursday night and we would put the show to bed. And we actually had a week where I was like, you know what? Sometimes I’m up late, 11:30 at night getting emails from the graphics department being like, “Does this hedgehog’s head fit well on this man’s body?” And I’d be like, “Yes, perfect.” And then there was one week where 5:00 PM on Thursday the whole thing was great. I went to bed that night, at 8:30 at night and I was like, “We have done a great job.” And I woke up the next morning, and Friday at 6:30 in the morning and I had 300 text messages, and it was the night that Trump tested positive for COVID.

[inaudible 00:14:49] happened on Thursday night. If it happened any other night of the week, it would not have affected it. We had written an entire show, and we had to throw the entire show in the garbage. And we would rehearse first thing in the morning and tape it at 12:30 in the afternoon. And so I got up at 6:30 and I sprang out of bed and went straight to my computer. I knew Amber was getting up. We had a production meeting at eight, I knew Amber would be up in an hour. And I just started typing. And I just texted, “Call me when you are awake.” And I just started typing. We had to rewrite the entire show. Everybody got on a Zoom at eight. And I was like, “Great, here’s what Act I is now.” And we just had to… And I texted every writer and was like, “Call me when you are up. I will take any pitches you have.”

And it was exactly that mentality we talked about. It was like, it is not the perfect pitch. It is, what can we do? But the other challenge of that day, in addition to finding just what are the words that will fill Act I? But it was also, we are the first people taking a swing. So it’s also tricky because it’s like, okay, what is the tone going to be here? Because obviously he’s a piece of shit, but also he has this life-threatening disease. So are we going to look like assholes if we just go in on, we do a musical parody of “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead”? And then two days later, and then if every other late night host goes on and is like, “Our hearts go out to him and his family.” Are we going to look like pieces of shit?

Or, if we go out and we are soft and then everyone else goes hard, are we going to look like weird Trump sympathizers? That was also too, we were like, how are we allowed to play this? Because we all know how we feel in our secret hearts about this, but how are we allowed? What is the tone we can play?

Molly McNearney: We had the same struggle on the same [inaudible 00:16:24]-

Jenny Hagel: That makes me feel better. Because also, it’s like the sun’s not even up yet, so am I overthinking this? Yeah, I remember [inaudible 00:16:31]… I’d love to hear that.

Molly McNearney: We pushed the monologue an hour late that night because we watched the helicopter come pick him up to bring him to the hospital. Remember that footage? [inaudible 00:16:41].

Jenny Hagel: You watched it, watched it, okay.

Molly McNearney: No, no, Trump. When Trump tested positive, remember? And then they lifted it, they took the helicopter and were trying to see, is he walking? Is he okay? We were trying to see if he would die or not to determine whether the monologue we had just totally rewritten about him testing positive would play well three hours from now, if God… Not, God forbid, but if he was dead. Whereas, we couldn’t be totally tone-deaf to someone dying, even as much as we hated him. But that was one of the most stressful days, writing and rewriting. And then we just kept pushing as far as we could push before, then it had to go live on the feed. Like, all right, let’s do it. He’s up. Right now he’s alive, so let’s put the monologue on as is.

Jenny Hagel: Right. And then we taped at 12:30 and we didn’t air until 9:30 that night, so we had nine hours too where we’re like, is he going to eat it in these nine hours?

Molly McNearney: That’s a lot of time.

Jenny Hagel: [inaudible 00:17:37] Amber was the only female late night host on at that point. And so you know that whatever, if she makes a misstep, it’s going to hit her harder than other people. That was a dicey day. I remember we filmed the show and then I went home and I went for a bike ride to burn off the stress. Every time my phone would ding, I would stop and pull over on my bike and pull out my phone to see if that was a text that said he’s dead. And I was like, “What life is this?” I was like, “This is the most insane day of my life.”

 

Molly McNearney: We just had it similarly last week, or whatever week before with the conviction. And we’re on West Coast, and so that conviction came out. We heard it was coming around two, then it came out at 2:30 and our monologue, we go at 4:30. So we had two hours to… And our monologue was written for the day by that point, so we had to rewrite the entire monologue. We had two hours. We sent an assignment out to the writers saying, “Start writing jokes for guilty and write jokes for not guilty.” And so we had to be ready to go, and then we started piecing the monologues together based on what the verdict would be. And then we gratefully got to go with our 34 convictions email. Or, our 34 convictions monologue.

Jenny Hagel: Not one not guilty joke was used.

Molly McNearney: Yeah, I know. [inaudible 00:18:49]-

Jenny Hagel: … I want to delight though, I feel like I hope you get to use that someday just to be like, “Just so you guys know, we have this ready to go.”

Molly McNearney: Yeah.

Jenny Hagel: Also, there was one time we… The Harvey Weinstein article, that article that broke open all of Harvey Weinstein stuff and all of “me too”, it dropped, I want to say at 5:45 or 6:00 PM on a Thursday, East Coast time. And at that point, Seth is in his dressing room reviewing cue cards, the audience is… He’s headed out to the stage. But that article was as it should be, long and in-depth. So it dropped. And I remember we’re all scrolling on our phones, as Seth is. We’re all like, “Holy shit.” So we’re all just absorbing the news. And we were all like, “Well, this is some fucking news.” And so we’re all even just trying to absorb the facts of it. And so that whole weekend we’re all thinking, “Well, wow, how are we going to address this on Monday?” And we all talked about it and we did, we addressed it that first Monday back. Over the weekend, there were all these articles that were like, “Well, well, well, some late night shows were suspiciously silent on…” And it was just like [inaudible 00:19:56]-

Dan Amira: Oh, God.

Jenny Hagel: … want, the news dropped as we’re filming, we do not film on Fridays. We don’t do shows on weekends. They’re like, “It’s been three whole days, and no word.” Do you think it’s because we’re at home? But [inaudible 00:20:10]-

Dan Amira: Yeah, people don’t understand.

Jenny Hagel: Right, people don’t understand the system. People don’t understand how the production cycle works. People don’t always understand how things get put together. And so you know there’s that pressure if big news breaks, if people are looking to you to see. Or to your show, they’re not looking to me personally. But they’re looking to your show to see, okay, well, what’s the official party line going to be?

Dan Amira: I’ll say that 95% of my experience with those events are all Donald Trump related events. I don’t know why, but it’s like, throughout his first term, and even now. If it’s a thing that breaks at 5:30 or six or whatever, that totally screws up your entire show, it’s always Donald Trump news. And his first term was like that constantly, and just scrambling right before you’re supposed to go start taping. It’s been a little more calm when he’s not president, but he is back in the news so it’s like, he’s still there. He’s still messing up the news cycle at the exact wrong time every so often.

Molly McNearney: Yeah, he’s caused more rewrites in the history of late night, any figure. I remember when he said “Very fine people on both sides,” in Charlottesville, that was around two o’clock as well. And we were West Coast, so you guys had already all missed it, but we totally rewrote the monologue again about him saying there were very fine people on both sides at a Nazi rally.

Felipe Torres Medina: And during COVID, he was doing his speaking, his weird, I’m going to throw out Fauci and make him win, so they say the stupidest shit possible at 5:00 PM every day. And for us in the East Coast, that’s when we taped, and this was during COVID. But that was injecting bleach was one of those, well, we got to go rewrite everything.

Jenny Hagel: I know, right? I remember with the Trump COVID news too, that when I woke up and had those 300 texts, I ran to my laptop. Thank God for like if it had been not Zoom times, I don’t even know how… The fact that I would’ve had to eat time on a commute. But I just ran to my laptop typed, and then when the production meeting started, I got on. And I was showrunner, so I had to run the meeting also. And I realized it wasn’t until the Zoom started that I looked and realized I was still in my pajamas [inaudible 00:22:25] for an entire staff. My hair is doing whatever the Lord did to it in the night. I was like, “Jenny, you can’t. I know it’s COVID times, but lady/ God, there’s got to be a baseline for your appearance.” I had-

Molly McNearney: That’s funny.

Jenny Hagel: … take the laptop screen and slowly do this so that I wasn’t revealing to the staff [inaudible 00:22:45] wearing a bra. I was just some late night animal who was like… Just-

Molly McNearney: No time, the President. Yeah. Similarly, on January 6th, that was COVID, we were doing the show from the house. And around 12 o’clock we realized, oh, everything’s about to change. We just said, “Everyone stop down on all the monologue right now. This whole thing’s going to get rewritten.” And we’re rewriting it all. And my daughter comes running in the room and she’s like, “I lost a tooth.” I was like, “There’s no time for this.” It was like she put it back in. I was like, “We’ve lost democracy. Who cares about your tooth?” I was like, “We have a show to do.” It wasn’t the best parenting I’ve ever had. But it was like, those moments you guys all know are so stressful. You’re like, you have to completely change the show and you have a matter of hours, and it’s such high pressure. It’s crazy.

Liz Hynes: I do also love the calculus of if you’re going first, this unofficial domino following that happens between all the late night shows. If you’re going first, you have to weigh that calculus of, are we going to be doing the same thing we’ve always been doing? Or, are we going to say this and then everyone else is going to be like, “You know what, let’s put aside our differences today.”? And then you look insane like the outlier.

But on that note of straddling what is funny for the community of writers and people making this show versus the audience. I feel like sometimes with late night shows unintentionally there becomes this playfully combative relationship with the audience because you are doing so many of the same kinds of jokes over and over and over again. And the kind of jokes that your audience is expecting are not necessarily your favorites, or the room’s favorites. How often, if ever, do you give into the impulse to put a joke in a script that’s mainly for the room? And is there a time you can think of where the room loved it and the audience despised it?

Dan Amira: We used to do this gag on the show during the Trevor era. We’d come up with a really good but really resistency joke. And by resistency, I mean resistance against Trump. And we weren’t really proud of that kind of joke, it was just too easy. But we’re like, but it is a good joke for that genre of resistance. So we would make the joke and then do this sting and a [inaudible 00:25:06] peak resistance, and we made fun of our joke. But the audience always liked the joke for what it was, they didn’t like the irony aspect of it. And it stopped working. We stopped doing it because they would laugh really hard at the joke. And then when we made fun of how resistency the joke was, they didn’t find that as funny because they had just enjoyed it a lot. So we were like, “Maybe this is not working.”

Liz Hynes: Hey, don’t do that, we liked it enough.

Molly McNearney: I would say lately there are definitely jokes that feel beneath us, but we know they drive Donald Trump crazy, so they’re worth it to us. Like making fun of him farting in court. We wouldn’t ordinarily make jokes about an alleged gas problem in court. It’s very blue and beneath us, but we take real pleasure in knowing that Donald Trump has allegedly been watching closely and comments on things that Jimmy says, and we like to just make fun of him for the dumb things we ordinarily wouldn’t. Like being overweight or addicted to fast food or farting. We’re not usually punching down like that, but with him, we really do take a sick pleasure in it.

Liz Hynes: Anything with him I think still counts as punching up, right?

Molly McNearney: Yes. Very true.

Dan Amira: I’ll say the other kind of joke that has a split between the studio audience and at home audience, is anything that’s really like gallows humor, sort of dark and edgy. The audience gets sad or they give you an ooh. But at home you don’t do that, at home you just laugh at it. But I guess when you’re in a room with 200 other people and you’re amped up to be watching a show, you’re ohh, aww. At home you’re just like, that was a funny dark joke. Sometimes we know we’re going to get that reaction from the studio audience, but we’re like, the people at home will just appreciate it as a joke.

Liz Hynes: Another thing that I think people often think of when it comes to late night writing, if they have any familiarity with it, is the packet process. And the way that I describe this to people who aren’t familiar with it, is it’s like a written audition. So you’re writing a sample episode of the show, whether that’s monologue jokes, desk bits, field pieces. Some people love this, some people think that’s a great meritocracy, especially if you do a blind reading. I think that’s a really great way to see whose voices really match up with the show. And some people, for whatever reason think there are other more efficient ways to build a room. I assume all of us have written packets, so for anyone who’s written them and also anyone who’s read them, are there things that you find particularly useful about the packet process? And what stands out to you if you’re building a room through a packet?

Jenny Hagel: I feel like the best piece of advice I got, because I did 35 packets for different shows before I got hired for late night. You want to know how to write a bad packet, come to me. I will tell you how. Went to a panel one time and some late night writers… A producer of a late night show was talking, and they really broke it down in a way that really helped me. I feel like I got much better after he said this. He said, “A good packet shows where the host voice and your voice intersect.” And I think before then I had thought that the job of a packet was for me to show that I can write in the host’s exact voice. And so I was trying to copy what they were already doing. To be like, “Look, I can do it. I can imitate them exactly.”

And probably what I was accidentally doing was cranking out packets that did not show I was able to bring anything new to the table. I would watch them… If I was doing a packet, I would watch that person do a monologue. I would transcribe a couple monologues, which I’m still a fan of as a writing exercise because it helps you see and get in your fingers what their speech patterns are and how they construct their jokes. Study them so hard that then when I wrote my packet, it would honestly sound exactly like stuff they were already doing. And I would come up with desk bits that felt like they could fit right in. I think my pendulum was swinging too much in that direction. But then when I was head writer at Amber Ruffin show, I read packets and sometimes I would get packets that were… I think the person, I don’t think they were trying to do a bad job at all.

I think their pendulum was swinging really far in the direction of, let me show them how unique I am, and show them my pure, unique voice. And every writer has one, and I think that’s great. But sometimes I would get packets that were so far afield of what we were trying to do, I couldn’t see how they could fit into our show. If you can think, when you’re writing your packet, what is like… Almost like you think of one of those line graphs that you see in economics or math class where it’s the two lines. I’m like, what’s the point where those two lines intersect? How could your voice fit into what that host is already doing? And what new twist could you bring within the structure of that existing show? To me, that’s a perfect packet. That’s me. And when I started approaching it that way, I started getting farther in the packet process.

Molly McNearney: I think that’s really smart. Good advice. And the only thing I’ll add to that is I think that making it topical, because we all know you have to be able to write quickly and on deadline. If I get a late night packet and there are jokes about a topic from three months ago, I’m less inclined to be impressed. If I get a packet and all the jokes are from that week’s news stories. I think, “Oh, this person started writing this packet on Monday, got it done.” They’ve proven that they can take the news every day, turn it around quickly, and I think that’s really important.

Felipe Torres Medina: I think I want to echo what you two are saying, obviously. But I think the example to me is I also wrote a bajillion packets that were not good. The one packet that got me hired at Colbert, I wrote, it was a week when Bill Barr was testifying about how he was like, JK, the Mueller report is nothing. And I was like, everyone’s going to write about that. And that’s great, that is what the show would end up being up on the air. But there was also this governor of Puerto Rico was getting basically impeached, and there were huge protests. And I was like, well, I am very interested in this story. Is there a way for me to tell this story? I was just writing this story thinking, “Well, if I were a writer on Colbert, I would want to pitch on this story.” So I’m just going to write that, trying to capture the voice of the show, but focusing on the thing that I’m interested in more than the thing that is going to be the big news of the week.

Obviously, you want to acknowledge the things and everything, but that story changed every day, every single day. It started on a Monday. I was like, oh, there’s some protest in Puerto Rico. Let’s explain the story. And I think by Thursday the guy had quit. And so every day I was rewriting my monologue for this packet, and it was great practice because I was aiming to capture the voice of the show, but only talking about something that I was interested in, and I stopped being precious with it. I wrote jokes and then I was like, “Well, but I’m going to have to change them because the story has changed.” And that’s the job, especially if you’re in a show that is daily, not in The Daily Show. But also in The Daily Show. You’re going to have to just not be precious with your jokes even when you love them and be like, “Well, maybe I’ll include this one.” But the whole point is you got to be up-to-date and with the best stuff every single day.

Dan Amira: I also think a great aspect of what you just said, Felipe, is that you wrote on a different topic. Because what people need to remember is that the people who are reading these submission packets are reading usually a lot of submission packets. If you want to stand out, you have to maybe zig or zag. What’s the phrase? You have to zig where the other people zag, or vice versa. If 500 people are writing Bill Barr jokes, if your Bill Barr jokes are pretty good, they are just going to blend into all the other Bill Barr jokes. And there will be a lot of good Bill Barr jokes because a lot of people, so many are good at writing jokes. But you have to make yourself memorable in some way, and different and stand out in some way.

And maybe that’s the story you choose to write about or the perspective that you bring to the story that’s different. But if you’re just going to write, hey, these are good… If you’re just going to write a bunch of good jokes, you’re going to have a hard time standing out because there’s going to be a lot of packets with good jokes.

Jenny Hagel: Yeah, I think the key to that though is like what Felipe… I agree exactly with what Dan was saying. And I think part of what makes story selection stand out is if you are choosing something that really resonates with you. It’s not choosing a unique story just because you’re trying to stand out for the sake of standing out. But if you’re like, well, everybody’s writing about Bill Barr, the thing I care about this week. Because I think those were the best. Overall, whether you’re writing a packet or whether you’re on staff, I think the best late night pieces come from a new story that resonates with you personally.

Because there’s always the facts of the story, but we’re all reading the same facts. But if you have a thing in your heart and your gut that really resonates with you about the story, then that’s where the best work comes from. If you’re writing your packet and you’re like, “Okay, there’s 10 headlines this week. I could choose from many of them.” If you have a strong feeling, if there’s a thing you’re talking about with your friends over beers or a thing you’re mad about in the shower, that’s where the good work will come from, I think.

Liz Hynes: Totally.

Felipe Torres Medina: 100%.

Liz Hynes: Definitely. It does feel like, oh, being “news junkie” is not necessarily conducive to writing a good packet or anything. Because I think there’s a really strong case for really being invested in the news and having an opinion on stuff. And not just succumbing to, what’s the algorithm showing for you today? Because you can make a monologue out of that, but it’s not really going to be the most compelling thing unless there’s some real heart behind it.

On the topic of deadlines, churning them based on the whim of the news. When you’re writing for yourself, do you find that you are able to operate without such a punishing deadline, or has late night broken all of our brains in a way where, no, this needs to be due tomorrow for me to do anything about it?

Felipe Torres Medina: I love a deadline. I love a deadline. And a self-imposed deadline whenever I’m writing anything myself is like, that’s how the stuff gets written. Every morning I have scripts written at a certain time, so when I’m writing for myself, it’s like, well, I still have to have a script due at this time. Obviously not a script, a couple pages, whatever it is. But yes, I love a deadline. And I think the discipline that late night, particularly writing every day gives you, is invaluable. Where it’s like, this is it. This is your job, sit down and write.

Liz Hynes: Are you saying that you take your self-imposed deadlines seriously?

Felipe Torres Medina: I try to. I try to.

Liz Hynes: That’s an amazing skill.

Felipe Torres Medina: I try to. I don’t always succeed. But yes, if I sit down and say I’m going to write for three hours, I probably write for an hour and a half and spend the other hour and a half dicking about on the computer, but I still have something for that 50% of the time.

Liz Hynes: That’s a good ratio.

Felipe Torres Medina: It’s not an exact science, Liz. In the podcast, I’ll say it’s 50/50. In real life, I don’t know.

Liz Hynes: Hearing that I’m like, that’s Stephen King to me. You get up every morning [inaudible 00:35:54]. Just, yeah, the idea of taking the discipline that late night teaches you and maintaining it outside of late night still eludes me, but I think that’s a great and invaluable skill, as you said.

Dan Amira: I would weigh in, but I don’t write for myself. I write so much for the show that when I’m off the clock… And I should write for myself because I’ve been intending to do it for 10 years now.

Molly McNearney: Same, Dan.

Dan Amira: Yeah. I’ve been writing all week, the last thing I want to do right now is write. I want to just chill. I want to turn my brain off for a few minutes.

Liz Hynes: I do think it’s important that we all leave this podcast feeling guilty. I think-

Molly McNearney: Yes.

Dan Amira: That’s [inaudible 00:36:35] the goal.

Molly McNearney: We wouldn’t be comedy writers [inaudible 00:36:38].

Felipe Torres Medina: Well, now I’m guilty for saying that I write outside. You know, [inaudible 00:36:44]-

Molly McNearney: No one likes you right now. No one likes you.

Felipe Torres Medina: I’m like…

Liz Hynes: I’m feeling validated and guilty in equal measure, which I think is the alchemy of a good conversation.

Molly McNearney: We were getting along so well until that point [inaudible 00:37:01].

Felipe Torres Medina: God dammit. Sorry.

Liz Hynes: Okay. I’m going to ask… Jenny, I know you have to jump off in a second. Before we go, I am going to… I’ll tee something up really quickly. Which is, during the strike I did a brief stint working at a bar where everyone was younger than me by 10 years. And they were very sweet, and we got to talk about how I was a writer. And they said, “What kind of writing do you do?” And I said, “Late night.” One of them said, “What is that?” I think of this often when I’m thinking about the future of late night. That’s its own podcast conversation. But is there anything that you’re noticing already that gives you an idea of where you think late night might land, what you think it might look like a couple years down the line?

Molly McNearney: I think our viewership has changed, a lot of it is online and a lot of it is on social media. I can certainly speak for our show, as a fan of all the other shows, I watch a lot of the content on social media. I watch it on Instagram. We all are putting up our best four or five minutes. I think attention spans have gotten a lot shorter. I don’t know where late night will be. We came from a world in which it was just on broadcast television, then cable, then streaming. I think it’s going to live on TikTok. I don’t know where it’s going to go. I love the format. I love the old-fashioned monologue, guest segments, music. I love it. I grew up with it. I don’t know if it’s conducive to current viewing habits. I don’t know.

Dan Amira: Yeah. The number of people who say, “Oh, I love The Daily Show,” but they don’t know that it’s even on Comedy Central or television, or whatever. They see clips wherever they get clips, it doesn’t really matter that it’s a TV show. It’s just content and you get it wherever you get it. Yeah, it probably doesn’t mean great things for the late night world, but that is definitely where we’re headed.

Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah, I think in a glass half full take of the same phenomenon, but seeing the same thing, is there is an appetite. People do want to see the stuff that we are doing on the shows. Whether it’s jokes about the news, whether it’s field pieces, man on the street kind of stuff, sketches. People do want to see it, they’re just not watching it at 11:35 PM or 11:00 on network television or cable. Whether it lives on social media or on TikTok as a new form, I think people do want the stuff we’re making. We’re just going to have to maybe package it differently.

Molly McNearney: I agree. And also, I think there’s so much saturation now with podcasts and so many shows that it used to be so special when you’d see an actor or actress on a late night show. You hadn’t seen them in months, you didn’t know where they’d been, and you’re waiting to hear what they have to say. And now by the time you get a guest on the couch, they’ve probably done three podcasts and two other shows. And you can see on your phone what they had for breakfast that morning. There’s not much excitement when guests come on the show in a traditional way. Yeah, I think it’s become really diluted and really competitive. But I agree, I think people have an appetite for it, and I do think it’s just going to be changing the way we present it.

Jenny Hagel: I think we live in insane times. I’m not saying anything new there. And I think that there will always be a desire to watch both. To process them with other people, to hear other people process it, because you have that human desire to be like, “Did I also see a bunch of people storm the capitol? That happened, right? I feel crazy. Do you feel crazy?”

And then I think there will also be a desire to hear comedians and satirists distill that and talk about it in ways where they’re both commenting on it in a smart way and also making jokes that help us relieve our tension a little bit. And so, I don’t know. To echo what everybody else is saying, I don’t know that the current format will be the thing that lives on forever. But hopefully, my hope, because I love the spirit of late night so much, my hope is that it evolves into something that allows it to keep going so that we can all keep doing what that thing is at the core of looking at each other and be grabbing each other by the shoulders and be like, “We’re going to be okay, right?”

Liz Hynes: I should clarify that once I listed the hosts of those shows, this person did know what late night was.

Molly McNearney: Okay, that’s good.

Liz Hynes: “Oh, right. Oh, wait, the guy in the suit with the glasses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right.”

Jenny Hagel: No, the other guy with the suit with the other glasses.

Felipe Torres Medina: No, no, the guy in the suit without the glasses.

Molly McNearney: Hey. Or the guy without the suit. Hey.

Felipe Torres Medina: Oh, yeah.

Jenny Hagel: It clarified that when they said, “What is that?” They were asking, what is TV? That the really big phone in my parents’ living room, doesn’t make calls.

Liz Hynes: I guess I will close this out on, is there a topic that you had to tackle that, whether because of how much it crashed or how much it emotionally impacted you, or any other big challenges? What is something that you were most proud of having tackled in your work?

Felipe Torres Medina: I think for me, if I may take the first stab at this, there was one day during COVID where the big news broke at eight or 9:00 PM, the Trump administration had lost the parents of 450 migrant children they had separated. And that we had no idea where those people were because they were in Mexico and the children are here. And just one of the most horrible, most harrowing things ever. And I’m like, well, I’m an immigrant. That’s my thing, so I’m going to sit down and write jokes about this. And I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to do it. And I wrote some jokes. I remember telling my wife, “I’m going to write some jokes. I have to process this somehow, so I’m going to go to the other room and write some jokes that will probably won’t be on TV.”

Because it’s so sad. It’s such a sad thing. And this was not said with any contempt. It was just like, it’s just too sad. And then the next morning we pitching and everything, and it ended up on TV. And everyone was great, and everyone understood that it was a great story, that it was a thing that we had to address, that we had to talk about because it was so horrible. And I don’t think any of the jokes that I wrote that night ended up on TV, but the ones that together or that I wrote the next morning or whatever, we came up with as a show, we ended up with a monologue that was very heartfelt, but also I think was still funny and trying to make light or bring some light to truly one of the darkest things that happened during the Trump administration. And I was very proud that we talked about something that needed to be talked about, even though anyone’s initial reaction to, “Hey, we lost 500 parents,” is “Jesus fucking Christ.” So that’s mine.

Molly McNearney: I love that story.

Liz Hynes: Yeah, that’s an impossible thing to mine something meaningful out of, but you definitely did.

Jenny Hagel: That’s also impossible to follow. What if after that I was like, one time I…

Felipe Torres Medina: God, they like me even less now.

Molly McNearney: I got to meet Ryan Gosling once.

Liz Hynes: Writes every morning, poignant answers.

Molly McNearney: Yeah. [inaudible 00:44:17].

Felipe Torres Medina: I’m just going to go.

Jenny Hagel: I think the thing that’s the thing about this job, is that it accidentally ends up being free therapy. Because when the news is the hardest, everybody else has to have those same feelings, but then go to work and be an accountant. And at least we can write about it, and we don’t have to push all those feelings down and then go have a regular… You can at least channel that into some writing.

And exactly what you said. I have also written plenty of jokes where I’m like, “This will go nowhere, but at least it’s getting these feelings out of my body.” I know exactly what you mean. I’ve definitely written things like that where I’m like, “Man, at this point, this is just for my mental health.” And then I’ll hit send on it [inaudible 00:44:57] it was work, but really this was for my survival.

Molly McNearney: I feel such a comradery with other late night writers, because I think that… Make no mistake, the job takes a psychological toll when you are ingesting news every day that is truly disturbing. Also, your rights are being taken away. You’re reading it, you’re ingesting it. We don’t have the luxury like people in our lives to turn it off. I’ve been told by friends and therapists, “You just need to not turn on the news for a few days.” I’m like, “Well, that’s [inaudible 00:45:30]. I can’t do my job.”

Felipe Torres Medina: Literally impossible.

Molly McNearney: Yeah. I have a real comradery. And actually, the days that news breaks, I always am giving an invisible fist bump to people at the other shows. I’m like, yes, I can’t wait to see how they’re doing it and how they’re attacking it. And when I see a great piece, another late night show that speaks to the same anger and sadness I woke up with, I’m so incredibly proud of it. And I feel like a part of it, and I feel so less alone in it. And I just truly want to thank you guys for all the work you do, because I’m such a fan of it. And it does make it feel a little more tolerable knowing there’s other people struggling with the same stuff. For me personally, the times that I felt like I was emotionally fulfilled was probably attacking reproductive freedom.

And our son, Billy, was born with a congenital heart defect right as the Affordable Care Act was about to be struck down. And Jimmy and I made a decision to talk about it. I didn’t talk about it, he talked about it on air. And I think it really did change the conversation. I think it made people much more aware of preexisting conditions and how those were on the chopping block if the Affordable Care Act went away. That was a moment where we took our personal lives and put it out there and hope to just raise awareness and make people sympathetic to other people in the country who are vulnerable. Those parts of the job are fulfilling to me, it makes it all worthwhile. Take that, Felipe.

Felipe Torres Medina: I was about to say it was a great monologue. Whatever.

Molly McNearney: I’m kidding.

Jenny Hagel: Look, I’m just a joke slinger. I think that does make me feel good about my job that I feel really humbled and lucky to get to do is just be an out queer person on TV. Because when I was growing up, I feel like there weren’t a lot of out queer people. Or if they were out on TV, there were the butt of a lot of jokes that the straight lead character was making. I just really like getting to be on TV and saying the phrase, “I’m gay.” Even if the thing I do doesn’t end up being gay.

Sometimes I comment on queer related news. Sometimes there’s some sad gay news we got to talk about, and then I do that. But one time, a weird thing happened when I took my son to the zoo. And I was like, it was such a weird thing that happened at the zoo. And I came in and I was like, “Look, man, this weird thing happened when I took my son to the zoo. I got to talk about it.” And then I wrote a piece and we ended up doing it on the show, and I just sat on the couch and told Seth the story. But I loved getting to say, “Hey, my son,” blah, blah, blah. I was like, okay, there is some girl out there who’s like, “Okay, but what if I’m gay and then I don’t get to grow up and have a family?”

And I just whispering into her ear from the television, “I’m a regular-ass lady in a shirt from Ann Taylor Loft, and I have a son and I take him to the zoo. This fancy life could be yours.” But I just getting to be like, “I’m a regular-ass lady with a job and a kid.” And it’s all going to, hopefully, maybe you see that and it makes you feel a little bit okay. I think I feel very humbled and lucky to be able to get to do that. Other than writing jokes, that’s my other favorite thing about work.

Liz Hynes: I love that. Everybody deserves to go to the zoo.

Jenny Hagel: These two ladies ahead of me pretended to be a lesbian couple so they could get an $8 family discount.

Liz Hynes: Awesome.

Jenny Hagel: The person at the cash register could tell they weren’t a couple, and said, “Ladies, you are not a couple.” And then that lady was embarrassed she got caught and started yelling this zoo was homophobic.

Liz Hynes: Oh, that’s great.

Jenny Hagel: I was just standing there with my son and I was like… And I didn’t know what to do.

Liz Hynes: Okay, sorry. There’s two people who don’t deserve to go to the zoo anymore.

Jenny Hagel: The red pandas are not for you. Step aside. Anyway, but just again… Because then I was like, what is happening? And I remember texting a friend of mine who also worked at late night, and being like, “You’re not going to believe what just fucking happened at the zoo.” And then she was like, “You got to write something for the show.” And again, it was like I got to put all my weird little feelings about the zoo into, thank God we have this job. Otherwise, I’d still [inaudible 00:49:39] work in a bar sometime telling somebody the story.

Dan Amira: Well, I’m a white guy from Long Island, so I’m not inspiring anybody or any of that stuff. This story is going to pale in comparison. But one piece that I was proud of is that back when Trump was running the first time, I took it upon myself to do a very deep dive into his past and try to find a great archival clip that no one had found yet to really get him on. And I came across this interview he did on… It was with Robin Leach or something, and he made a really, really gross comment about his one-year-old daughter. I guess it was Tiffany.

And this had not been unearthed. So not only were we able to make jokes about this horrible thing, but we were able to be the ones to bring it to people’s attention. And it gets picked up and stuff and you’re like, I didn’t just comment on this, I created news. And your show becomes part of the news cycle for however long news cycles lasted back then, just 45 minutes or something and then people move on. But it was cool to be like, oh, I contributed to the conversation in a way that wasn’t just aggregation.

Liz Hynes: Yeah. I’m so glad we know who to thank for having those words with [inaudible 00:50:59].

Dan Amira: If you ever come across the clip of Trump speculating about whether this 1-year-old daughter will be well-endowed when she grows up, you can thank me. I found that. Isn’t that great?

Molly McNearney: Congratulations.

Dan Amira: Yeah.

Felipe Torres Medina: Thank you, Dan.

Dan Amira: I’m responsible for that vomit in your mouth.

Liz Hynes: I’m picturing you, you’re like Rosalind Franklin late in the lab one night like, this is going to change [inaudible 00:51:23]. Because it really did. It really did impact the conversation. That’s an amazing and horrible [inaudible 00:51:29]-

Dan Amira: And it worked. He disappeared and we never heard from him again.

Liz Hynes: Ultimately, yes, comedy can save everything. [inaudible 00:51:38]-

Dan Amira: Changes the world.

Liz Hynes: … fine. Everything is going to be fine.

Dan Amira: That’s the lesson, everything’s going to be fine if we make enough jokes.

Liz Hynes: Exactly. But I really do think that the work can be meaningful, and it’s such a gift to do it, as everyone has said. And I just want to echo what you’ve all said, that it is always really, really inspiring to see all the different directions that every different show takes it. And it is comforting to know that there are a couple dozen people who are all in this insane little corner of the world, and it’s just motivating to see how everyone continues to mine the same difficult things in ways that I think are really meaningful. And thank you so much for taking the time to talk today. And there’s going to be a lot of stuff ahead, so I can’t wait to see where everybody takes it.

Dan Amira: Thanks for having us.

Felipe Torres Medina: [inaudible 00:52:25] Thanks for having me.

Molly McNearney: … rings will we attack next?

Liz Hynes: Thank you all so, so much. Really, really appreciate it. And, Dan, good luck next week with the news.

Dan Amira: Thank you.

Molly McNearney: Yeah.

Felipe Torres Medina: Thank you.

Dan Amira: Whoever that’s going to be.

Molly McNearney: It’s going to [inaudible 00:52:43] here.

Liz Hynes: Nice to meet you all you and seeing all of you. Thank you.

Dan Amira: Yeah. Nice meeting you guys.

Felipe Torres Medina: So nice to meet you all.

Speaker 6: On writing is a production of the Writer’s Guild of America East. This series was created and is produced by Jason Gordon. Our associate producer and designer is Molly Beer. Tech production and original music by Taylor Bradshaw and Stockboy Creative. You can learn more about the Writer’s Guild of America East online at wgaeast.org. You can follow the Guild on all social media platforms @WGAEast. If you like this podcast, please subscribe and rate us. Thank you for listening, and write on.