Seth Meyers shares how he handles stress on ‘Late Night’

Fans know Seth Meyers as having an affable nature, but the Late Night host admitted that he can lose his cool when making the show.

In a recent episode of Talk Easy With Sam Fragoso, Meyers shared that he uses Late Night producer Michael Shoemaker’s office to blow off steam.

“I think when you have a show like mine, it’s really important not to lose your temper in front of everybody,” Meyers said. “It’s impossible to never lose your temper, so what I like to do is I like to just walk into his office, which is right next door, and then I will just sort of yell at him, usually about someone else for about 30 seconds, and then I feel way better.”

Meyers and Shoemaker have been working together since Meyers joined Saturday Night Live in 2001, so the producer has seen his fair share of the host’s outbursts.

The former “Weekend Update” anchor previously told the New York Times that he put a hole in the wall of his dressing room at SNL after getting a sketch cut from the show. Meyers had opened his door with such force that the handle penetrated the wall.

He told Fragoso that Shoemaker refused to get the damage fixed so that Meyers would be reminded of how “petulant” he was.

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But what happens when Shoemaker isn’t there to talk Meyers off the ledge? Well, the comedian recently created a new monument to his stress in his office.

When Shoemaker was out for two weeks recovering from knee surgery, Meyers admitted that a minor inconvenience pushed him to his “breaking point.” While he was working on a “Corrections” segment for Late Night, Meyers was asked to try on new pants, but he was feeling “fully taxed mentally.”

Meyers continued, “I took a Uniball pen when I was reminded of the pants thing, and I threw it across the room, and it exploded on the wall. And it’s a great Rorschach. You couldn’t ask for a better inkblot.”

Instead of cleaning the mess up, though, Shoemaker has once again turned the outburst into a reminder for Meyers.

“We’re gonna leave it as a memory of what happens when Shoemaker is gone,” Meyers said. “And there’s gonna be a plaque: ‘This commemorates the eight days that Seth had to work without Shoemaker.'”

Listen to Seth Meyers’ entire interview on Talk Easy With Sam Fragoso below.