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Seth Meyers is among the most charming men on earth.
Don’t take my word for it. Ask one of the hundreds of guests he’s had on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Or one of the millions of viewers who watched him on Saturday Night Live during his 13-year tenure. Perhaps the surest proof Meyers is a charmer? He can sling back worrying amounts of liquor on camera and remain utterly amicable—the picture of a great drinking buddy. That’s the magic of Day Drinking, a semi-regular on-location segment on Meyers’ show in which he devises deranged cocktails and absurd drinking games for him and a celebrity drinking buddy.
Now in its 10th year, the format has proved a success—albeit a pyrrhic one for Meyers’ liver. We caught up with Meyers to reflect on a decade of Day Drinking, the best kind of hangovers, and what it’s like to drink with Rihanna.
How does it feel to have 10 years of Day Drinking under your belt?
It goes by—blurry memories. Wonderful, blurry memories. It’s funny because we stumbled into it. We were trying to figure out a way to do something with my brother. We were like ‘what should we do? A bar crawl?’ That was the first one, and then we did one with my mom next, but we never thought we'd do it with guests. And then Retta said she wanted to do it. That’s when it became its own thing. We realized pretty quickly nobody actually wants to see different bars. It was about drinking, as opposed to drinking establishments.
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To be clear, you do drink all the alcohol, right? Do you promise it's real?
Let me stress: I'm not proud of this, and I don't think anybody who's reading this right now should try to replicate it, but in deference to honesty I will say if we make any edits, it's that we cut out drinks I've had.
Do you do anything to prepare for the segment? Do you line your stomach?
The last one with Paul Rudd was the first time I took something ahead of time: a charcoal pill. I was maybe a little bit less hungover. There's not much you can do. About an hour into shooting, we start to eat some greasy food.
Wasn't it hard to convince guests to come on Day Drinking? Were you pitching celebrities to come do the segment?
After Retta we pitched people we thought would be game. I think Kelly Clarkson was pretty early, and the Barefoot Contessa. Our white whale was always Rihanna. Post-Rihanna, the floodgates opened.
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Rihanna was the game changer. Could you sense something special happening while you were filming?
I was definitely nervous about just talking to Rihanna, really. We said hello to each other a couple times when she was a musical guest on SNL. But the funny thing is, you have a few drinks and you're like, ‘Hey, Rihanna, we’ve really got a thing going here.’
I am a control freak about comedy, and yet, you have a couple drinks and then that part of you is like, ‘All right, ’bye. I leave you to your instincts.’ The next morning, the worst part is not the hangover, the worst part is waking up and the shame of like, ‘what did I do?’ Oh, and also, we definitely filmed it.
Do you think Rihanna got drunk during that segment?
I think she drank a lot. I don't think she got drunk.
Obviously people have different alcohol tolerances. Was there anyone who surprised you with how hard they were going?
Kevin Hart went really hard. Paul Rudd and I both went equally hard. You want somebody who wants to go for it? With Ina Garten, I'm drunk, she's fine, and that's fun. But it's more fun when we're both drunk.
What is the aftermath of a Day Drinking segment? Do you get those crazy hangovers?
The worst part is figuring out how to go to sleep, because you can't go to sleep at six. I’m pretty sure after Dua Lipa left, I went home and it was like four in the afternoon. I immediately fell asleep and then I woke up at like seven. I slept for three hours, and then I couldn't fall asleep until like two in the morning. So it's not great.
How much are you drinking when you’re not doing a Day Drinking segment?
I've really scaled it down. It’s hard enough waking up early in the morning with kids to not have a little bit of a hangover. I did get a little worried when we started Day Drinking, but I think having grown up going to a Midwestern school in the binge-drinking ‘90s, it’s worked out.
How has the morning after Day Drinking changed since episode one 10 years ago?
I definitely recover a little bit more slowly, but I want to shout myself out: The Kevin Hart day was the day before the first day of school, and I still brought my kids to the first day.
You know that hungover where you're still kind of having a little bit of fun? So I had that kind of hangover where my kids were really delighting me on the walk to school, because I still had a little bit of buzz on. Legally, I’m capable of getting them to their school, so we were just having a laugh riot. I was a perfect amount of hungover to talk to my kids, and way too hung over to talk to parents.