It's no secret by now that former Saturday Night Live cast members and writers have a tendency to continue working together, at least on occasion, after their time on the long-running sketch series is over. A lot of movies and TV shows have come to fruition with such post-SNL pairings, and now fans will be treated to yet another one, as Late Night with Seth Meyers has just welcomed comedian John Mulaney into the fold, for his new job as a staff writer. And, it promises to be a perfect pairing.
As SNL fans might already know, John Mulaney and Seth Meyers' time on the show overlapped for four years, while Mulaney was a part of the writing staff between 2008 and 2012. They must have enjoyed working together, because Late Night's showrunner, Mike Shoemaker, announced on Twitter this week that Mulaney had officially come aboard to join the writing staff. According to Shoemaker, Mulaney "likes to work," and took on the new gig despite having several other commitments already on his professional plate.
John Mulaney has been quite busy since leaving SNL, where he won an Emmy for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics in 2011 along with Justin Timberlake, Katreese Barnes, and Meyers for writing Timberlake's show opening monologue into a catchy tune. Aside from touring as a comedian, Mulaney has also released several stand up specials (winning another Emmy in 2018, this time for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special, for Kid Gorgeous at Radio City), and written for shows like Maya & Marty, Documentary Now!, Oh, Hello on Broadway, and his one-season Fox sitcom, Mulaney.
He's also working on two sequels for his 2019 children's variety special, John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch, and gearing up for the Season 4 release of Netflix's animated series Big Mouth, for which he provides one of the lead voices. In addition to all of that, John Mulaney has acted in series such as Kroll Show, Difficult People, Crashing, Dickinson, and The Jim Gaffigan Show. That's along with returning to SNL to host four times in recent years, famously lending his voice to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and appearing in the upcoming family film Cinderella.
Looking at all of the projects John Mulaney has managed to pack into his schedule since leaving Saturday Night Live, I can actually see why Seth Meyers and the team at Late Night would want him around as a staff writer. The man clearly knows his way around comedy, and talk shows such as the one Meyers heads up have been dealing with some difficult times in which to bring the funny, especially seeing as how they haven't had the energy of a live audience to help them out in several months.
In fact, you can take a look at his first official sketch as a Late Night staff writer, which goes into some truly weird territory:
You guys? John Mulaney is a national treasure, and we need to both protect him at all costs and support his work with Seth Meyers, if for no other reason than the hope that he'll continue to bring oddities like that sketch onto late night TV. Late Night with Seth Meyers airs every week night at 12:35 a.m. EST on NBC, but for more to watch, see what's coming up this fall and in early 2021!
