Compared to some of his contemporaries, NBC’s Late Night host Seth Meyers hasn’t weathered as many controversies during his time hosting a post-primetime talk show on broadcast TV. But those that have sprung up have ranged from all-too-serious — existential threats from the White House and the Federal Communications Commission, for instance — to arguably silly — like the debate over whether Meyers stands or sits for his monologue.
Below, read about the biggest Late Night With Seth Meyers controversies of which we’ve caught wind:
2011–present: Seth Meyers’ jokes anger Donald Trump — and, perhaps, fuel his presidential ambitions
Meyers has been in Donald Trump’s crosshairs ever since he dedicated much of his 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech to jokes about the former Apprentice boss. “Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for president as a Republican, which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke,” Meyers said.
And as the Los Angeles Times reports, many observers pinpoint that 2011 WHCD event as the moment Trump decided to get serious about running for president.
On Late Night, Meyers has continued his Trump criticism — accusing him of bigotry and misogyny and even banning him from the show, per the Times — and the POTUS has responded with name-calling.
In August 2025, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Meyers “has no ratings, talent, or intelligence, and the personality of an insecure child.” Weeks later, he claimed in a Truth Social post that Meyers may be “the least talented person” to perform on television in history and said Meyers’ “100% ant-Trump” stance was “probably illegal.” Two weeks after that, Trump called for NBC to fire Meyers in a post that FCC Chair Brendan Carr, no stranger to controversy himself, reposted on X.
2015: Meyers’ seated monologues spur controversy
Meyers’ 2015 decision to start delivering his opening monologues while sitting at his desk — instead of standing before the in-studio audience, like other late-night comedians — was “unexpectedly controversial” and incited a “strong reaction” from viewers, as Vulture and Variety reported at the time.
At that year’s New York Comic Con, Meyers explained he initially went with stand-up monologues to differentiate Late Night from his “Weekend Update” segments on Saturday Night Live before realizing he excelled at telling jokes from the desk with onscreen graphics. “Oh, I’m so much better at that thing I was doing,” he recalled thinking, per Variety. “This is my strength.”
2016: The politicization of Late Nightturns some viewers off
Meyers opted to make Late Night more political in 2015 after late-night rabble-rousers David Letterman and Jon Stewart went off air, as he told Vulture at the time. But by 2016, that shift had alienated some viewers.
In an LA Weekly column that year, Jonny Coleman wrote, “Provocateurs and dime-store Howard Beales such as Seth Meyers, John Oliver, Lena Dunham, and Andy Richter have demonstrated zero political efficacy. If anything, we’ll never know how much their smugness ostracized potential allies and inflamed the opposition’s base. No one — even the undereducated and marginalized — enjoys being condescended to.”
That same year, Mockingbird’s Scott Jones took issue with a viral “Closer Look” segment from Late Night. “It just wasn’t funny,” Jones wrote. “It was something you’d see on MSNBC or Fox News. Seth Meyers has every right to go on his show and do political op-ed pieces that don’t quite fit the genre of traditional late night and don’t really tickle my funny bone. But to say that if you’re not doing that, you’re not doing real late night is a cure that’s worse than the disease.”
2024: NBC budget cuts take the 8G Band off air
Viewers and critics expressed dismay in 2024 when Late Night returned for Season 12 without the 8G Band, which had been the talk show’s house band since day one. 8G Band keyboardist and associate musical director Eli Janney told Vulture that the band was leaving the show due to budget cuts at NBC.
“Basically, Seth Meyers and Mike Shoemaker, the showrunner, brought us in in person to talk about it. They expressed their regret and frustration about it,” Janney said. “There’s a lot of strong emotions. No one is happy about it. Seth has been a big champion of ours from the get-go.”
Fans rued the news on social media. “Imagining [Late Night] without the 8G band is so weird and terrible to me, and I know it’s a terrible thing all around, and it’s so f***ed up that NBC had to get rid of something that means so much to everyone involved with the show and the fanbase that watches,” one X user wrote.
2025: Blake Lively critics blast Meyers for hosting the actor
As her legal war against It Ends With Us costar and director Justin Baldoni raged on, Blake Lively sat down for a Late Night interview in May 2025. During that chat, Lively didn’t get into the nitty-gritty of the dispute but did reference her “fight for the world to be safer for women and girls.”
But Lively’s mere appearance on Late Night was enough for viewers to rage against both her and Meyers in the YouTube comments before the show’s social media team turned off comments on the upload, according to Cracked. And the backlash continued on X, too. “That’s why [you] should be cancelled, too, @sethmeyers. Another Hollywood bully,” wrote one user. “She ruined someone’s career and life, and she gets to go on as if nothing has happened. I thought she was traumatized? Why the f*** did Seth Meyers let her on his show?” said someone else.
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