The late-night field is getting even thinner—at least for the next couple of months.
Following the end of Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show and the start of Jimmy Kimmel’s usual summer break, Seth Meyers is reportedly also exiting the field. According to a report from Late Nighter, Meyers will take the longest planned break of his show’s history following his sign-off on Thursday. The Daily Beast has reached out to NBC for comment.
No reason was reported for the unprecedented hiatus, but the site reports the show will return with new installments on September 21. NBC will air repeats in place of new episodes.
Meyers won’t be off the grid during the seven-week break, as he has several scheduled performances, including standup shows and live editions of his Family Trips podcast.
News of the production shutdown follows Meyers’ feud with Donald Trump last year. Meyers had previously been lower on Trump’s list of late-night TV foes to target after Kimmel and Colbert, though the president did take time out from his rants against those hosts in January to call Meyers “Marble Mouth Meyers” and “merely a slot filler for the Scum that runs Comcast.”
The back and forth became more heated after Trump apparently caught an October clip of Late Night in which Meyers said, “If anyone dares to say anything less than glowing, Trump loses his s--t.” Trump then played the part by blasting the host in response on social media, writing that Meyers “may be the least talented person to ‘perform’ live in the history of television.”
Trump continued, “In fact, he may be the WORST to perform, live or otherwise…Why does NBC waste its time and money on a guy like this???”
The president also suggested that Meyers’ criticisms of him may be against the law: “NO TALENT, NO RATINGS, 100% ANTI TRUMP, WHICH IS PROBABLY ILLEGAL!!!”
Meyers’s anti-Trump predecessor David Letterman weighed in on the posts on his podcast, saying, “The president of the United States now wants to fire Seth Meyers... I thought, ‘This is just delightful. How do you think that’s going to go? So anyway, I’ve never been more proud of Seth Meyers.”
Meyers brushed off Trump’s insults and continued to hammer him during his segments, including his last before the hiatus on Thursday. He quipped, mocking the awkward silence during the jokes in Trump’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech, “Even the crickets in attendance sat quietly wondering when the jokes were gonna start.”
