Late Night Last Week: Nicole Byer Crushes Guest Hosting

Late Night Last Week: Nicole Byer Crushes Guest Hosting Duties, John Oliver Tackles MAHA, and More

Each week, Late Night Last Week highlights some of the best late night TV from the previous week. This week, we cover Nicole Byer guest-hosting for Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers’ surprise inspection of his writers, Margaret Qualley on Jimmy Fallon, and John Oliver on the MAHA movement.

Jimmy Kimmel is still on vacation. But thankfully, his show soldiers on, offering the chance for new voices to take a spin behind the host’s desk. Last week, it was Nicole Byer’s turn—and she did not disappoint.

The guest began her final monologue with a friendly dig at a late night legend. In talking about the recent meteor showers that delighted non-light-polluted areas, Byer bemoaned not being able to see the beauty of the natural world from Los Angeles.

“The only stars I can see are the ones that cut me off in traffic,” she said. “And yes, I’m talking to you, Jay Leno. Driving your old-ass, steam-powered jalopy. Get the f-ck off the freeway, you double-denim wearing bitch!”

Byer, whose stand-up special, Nicole Byer: BBW (2021) is one of the best of recent years, proved once again to be a natural fit for late night. She shone behind the desk, interviewing the likes of Tracee Ellis Ross, Terry Crews, and Timothy Olyphant, but it was in the monologue where Byer truly distinguished herself.

“Congratulations, white women, you’re finally back on top!” Byer declared on the day Taylor Swift announced her new album. “This is such a big news story, Fox News even took a break from bashing Jimmy Kimmel to talk about it.”

The same day, Byer, noted, also happened to be International Youth Day. “Or as R. Kelly calls it,” she observed, “Christmas in August.”

While many may see August as a time to kick back, relax, and take some time off, Seth Meyers clearly disagrees. On August 13, Meyers held a surprise inspection of his writing staff. Here, in one of the show’s most reliable bits, Meyers reads jokes by his staff that just didn’t quite make it.

The jokes in the bit range from just plain bad to offensive. See, for example, the following from inspection stalwart Mike Scollins: “It would have been pilot Amelia Earhart’s 128th birthday, if she’d just asked a guy for directions.”

When it comes to missing, the man does not miss.

Staying with the NBC family for a moment, on The Tonight Show, Margaret Qualley proved herself to be both an A-list actor and talk show guest. At one moment, she even got Jimmy Fallon to, seemingly, go off script. If it wasn’,t she (and Fallon) are even better actors than I previously thought.

“Wanna play truth or dare?” she suddenly asked the host.

Fallon seemed, for a moment, rattled, saying he would “not be good at that.”

She asked again.

“Truth,” he responded.

Both seemed surprised by his willingness to go along.

Qualley pauses.

“How many people have you slept with?”

The audience roars. Fallon (shockingly) seems to give a genuine laugh.

She bails him out and quickly gives him the option to switch to dare. Far less exciting. But the moment of actual (I think) spontaneity on a late-night network show was thrilling! Thank you, Margaret Qualley. We salute you.

Finally, we end with John Oliver, whose August 17 broadcast focused on the so-called MAHA movement. For the uninitiated, the acronym stands for “Make America Healthy Again,” and it’s the movement championed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In case you were blissfully unaware, he now heads the Department of Health & Human Services. My apologies.

The MAHA movement is a big tent. As Oliver describes, there is no singular set of beliefs about health, or even a single political affiliation. He highlighted one New Jersey mom, for example, who is a member of the MAHA movement, only serves her children organic food, and is a registered Democrat.

“Look, I admire her commitment to serving only organic food,” Oliver said. “But I will say, the day her kids get given a Gusher by a neighborhood kid, their lives are going to change forever.”

Oliver was characteristically fair in his monologue on MAHA. There are some good ideas, the host observed, like a focus on tackling the rise in chronic illness among children. And then, there are horrible ideas. Like, uh, all the anti-vaccine stuff.

Much of Oliver’s take on the movement centered on two influencers, the brother and sister team of Casey and Calley Means. Despite their, well, questionable backgrounds. Calley is a key advisor to RFK Jr. And Casey, believe it or not, is poised to become the next Surgeon General.

Part of their work concerns connecting a series of dots between the food we eat and a host of health problems. To some, these connections may at first sound legitimate, but they do not, in fact, have the backing of, well, solid science. This includes promoting a list of foods and questionable practices in order to avoid disease.

“I’m not a scientist, despite my glasses and the many hours I spend doing surgical procedures on mice,” Oliver said. “But I don’t think it’s quite that simple.”

It never is, Mr. Oliver. It never is.

Will DiGravio is a Brooklyn-based critic, researcher, and late night comedy columnist, who first contributed to Paste in 2022. He is an assistant editor at Cineaste, a GALECA member, and since 2019 has hosted The Video Essay Podcast. You can follow and/or unfollow him on Twitter and learn more about him via his website.

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