Late Night Last Week: No One Knows Ronny Chieng's Birthday

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Every Monday, Late Night Last Week highlights some of the more notable segments from the previous week of late night television. This week, Seth Meyers and his team give thanks, Jake Byrd visits a football game, D.J. Demers delivers a hilarious set, and Ronny Chieng refuses to share his birthday.

It was Thanksgiving in America and a long, dark week in late night television. Last Week Tonight remained on break. Sitcom reruns filled the void left by The Daily Show—I assume all the correspondents eat together? Bill Maher was off yelling at a cloud. On CBS, all was quiet. Stephen Colbert previewed the holiday on a show the previous week with his wife, Evie. And in Los Angeles, no ironic prizes were awarded on After Midnight.

NBC, the most venerated home for late night television, and ABC, which once aired eight episodes of The Alec Baldwin Show, stood alone. Fun fact: one of the 10 guests on that show was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who Baldwin now plays on Saturday Night Live. What a country.

But ABC and the folks over at Jimmy Kimmel Live! have one of the best, most under-utilized assets in all of late night, a fellow by the name of Jake Byrd, a recurring character played by long-time Kimmel writer Tony Barbieri. Some of my favorite Jake Byrd appearances include when he shows up at political rallies, like one in 2017 held by then-Alabama Senate Candidate Roy Moore, and another by then-Georgia Senate Candidate and ex-footballer Herschel Walker in 2022.

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Football was the theme of this most recent Byrd appearance, as the intrepid correspondent set out to chat with fans outside SoFi Stadium, home of the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers, for his segment, “Breaking the News!” There’s one mic drop moment that made me laugh out loud.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! benefited directly from The Daily Show’s absence. The program’s November 26 broadcast included a conversation with correspondent Ronny Chieng, who joined to talk about the fake news program and the new television series on which he stars, Interior Chinatown.

Chieng was grateful, he said, to be the only celebrity free to book in the lead up to Thanksgiving. “Thanksgiving means nothing to me,” Chieng said. “When your life is awesome like mine, every day is a [bleep] holiday.”

This led to a discussion of his resistance to birthday celebrations. He shared that the November birthday someone listed for him online is, in fact, fake. “So, now I get two birthdays I have to not celebrate,” he said. Chieng then asked Kimmel to look at his ID and, without saying the real date, publicly verify, as a trusted member of the media, that he was not, in fact, born last month.

“Is that enough for you Wikipedia?” Chieng yelled to the camera, a fist raised. At the time of this column’s writing, no birthdate is currently listed on Wikipedia. The mystery endures.

While Ronny Chieng rejected any impulse to get personal on television, Seth Meyers and the team over at Late Night had other plans as the Thanksgiving holiday neared. Meyers, looking dapper in a purple sweater, invited Amber Ruffin to say what she was thankful for this year. “Family,” she replied. Simple enough.

But things soon got off the rails as, one by one, the staff began to offer the same answer: family. By the time they reached crew member Kenny Coyle, Meyers had enough. “It’s different,” Coyle insisted. “I mean it like they mean it on Fast & Furious.” They then began to swear at one another, before show regular John Lutz chimed in, sending Meyers over the edge as he once again insisted that he was thankful for family, though, in this case, Meyers’ own. “Oh my God, your wife is right,” Lutz said, “you don’t pick up on anything.”

Ruffin then took over the show, noting that all the cast and crew were, in fact, a family unto themselves. “It’s been 10 years of becoming so comfortable with one another that we will cuss each other out on national television,” she said. “And if that’s not family, I don’t know what is. So from everyone here at the show, we wish you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving.”

Finally, we end on a hilarious set from D.J. Demers, who joined The Tonight Show on Tuesday, November 26. Demers, who wears hearing aids, appears on stage with an interpreter. “It’s important to me for my deaf brothers and sisters to be able to enjoy the show,” he said.

But Demers soon got honest about another reason. He noted that having an interpreter is actually a great move for his self-esteem. Once the joke is communicated by the interpreter, he gets a second wave of laughter. “I can even get a third wave of laughter if there’s enough stupid people in the audience,” he said. “The Holy Grail is the fourth wave, but you got to have a lot of stupid, deaf people for that one.”

Demer then joked about the tedious process of checking into a hotel. When the person behind the check-in counter asks how many keys he would like, Demer’s ego forces him to ask for two, even when he is staying alone. “Sometimes I get carried away. I say, You know what, make it three keys,” he said. “I say, cut one for yourself too, playboy.”

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.

Late Night Last Week: No One Knows Ronny Chieng’s Birthday