TV Talk: Seth Meyers talks Steelers, state of late-night TV; ‘The Pitt’ on TNT

NBC’s “Late Night” host Seth Meyers, whose father grew up in East Liberty, makes no secret of his appreciation for Pittsburgh, whether he’s interviewing Pittsburgh native Michael Keaton, doing stand-up, writing a mockumentary or calling a politician a jagoff.

And Meyers is always keen to talk about the Steelers.

In a virtual press conference on Friday, Meyers addressed his love for the team and their performance this season.

“I’m feeling the way I always feel, which is insanely optimistic,” Meyers said before Sunday’s loss to the Chargers. “But more importantly, I’m bringing my two sons to their first game in a couple of weeks. I will tell you that, should the Steelers win, there is a 100% chance that I will cry in front of my children because I will be so happy that the Steelers won [for my kids’] first game.”

Meyers said his love for the Steelers has trickled down to his children.

“They’re so excited,” Meyers said. “I don’t think they even have the smallest concept of the rules of football. … I’ll be there with my dad and my mom and my brother. It’s as important a weekend as I have had on a calendar in a long time.”

No doubt Meyers also hopes it will be a weekend where he’s not forced to think too much about work and what the president of the United States thinks about the job he’s doing.

“I don’t try to live in the body of social media on the weekends,” Meyers said. “I try really hard and enjoy a great deal being with my family.”

The first weekend in November, Trump took to Truth Social to call Meyers “the least talented person to ‘perform’ live in the history of television” in response to the comedian mocking Trump’s interest in catapults during a trip to Asia.

“All of a sudden, I’m getting all these texts about the fact that the president has attacked me on social media, which I want to stress, I don’t care for, and yet, when I read that one, I had a moment of, ‘Well, this one has some inherent comedy to it,’ unlike past ones,” Meyers said. “The amount of projection that was happening within the body of his post accusing me of talking about catapults too much was really immediately pretty funny.”

On “Late Night,” Meyers made fun of Trump’s rant about the inferiority of electric catapults on aircraft carriers compared to steam catapults.

“Guy spends more time thinking about catapults than Wile E. Coyote,” Meyers joked on his show. “Next, he’s gonna start complaining about how our troops don’t tie themselves to rockets anymore.”

Six days after Trump’s Truth Social post, Meyers said he’d prefer not to be the topic of the president’s social media musings.

“Some people will say to me, ‘It’s a sign you’re doing something right,’ and that’s a very nice thing to hear, but I ultimately think it’s better if he’s focused on other stuff, although you can make an argument that when he’s focused on other stuff, that’s not the best outcome either,” Meyers said. “Maybe it’s a healthy way for the rest of us to live if he’s just attacking late-night shows.”

The current state of late-night programs is precarious at best, with the cancellation of CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and ABC’s suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Meyers said those incidents reminded him to enjoy what he’s doing while he can still do it.

“Not that I needed to have more of an appreciation for what a privilege it is to have a show like this, but I think it also hopefully reminds the audience how nice it is to have shows like these,” Meyers said. “Obviously, a lot’s been written about the future of late-night, and nobody seems particularly bullish on it, but I would say that the present for late-night is still really exciting and vital. … Every day when you do a show like this, especially one that’s responding in real time to news that’s happening faster than it’s ever happened before, these are really exciting jobs to have.”

Meyers said recent events, whether it’s the president’s social media posts or Colbert’s cancellation, don’t impact his approach to “Late Night” (12:35 a.m. weekdays, WPXI).

“I don’t think you can think 10 years into the future with a job like this, not that I ever did,” Meyers said. “There’s no real approach that you can take that would make you feel better or worse about the prospects of [late-night’s future]. Me and my colleagues, every one of us, were obviously making content that people are watching on TikTok, on Instagram Reels and on YouTube. It’s not like we’re not making content that isn’t thriving in the digital age, it’s just obviously based on a previous model and it’s not really in our wheelhouse to figure out how to marry [the old model and the new model], but hopefully somebody will figure it out.”

‘The Pitt’ on TNT

The Emmy-winning first season of HBO Max ER drama “The Pitt” will air on cable’s TNT with three consecutive episodes airing Mondays at 9 p.m. Dec. 1-29. Episodes will air with no edits, so profanity and “graphic medical imagery” will remain intact.

Season two of “The Pitt” will stream on HBO Max in January.

Channel surfing

Fred Rogers Productions’ “There Are Many Ways to Say I Love You” video featuring the late Fred Rogers singing alongside the stars of his successor shows — Daniel Tiger, Donkey Hodie, Alma Rivera — is now live on YouTube. … The eighth and final season of Starz’s “Outlander” will debut on March 6. … Netflix ordered a sequel series to 1987-93 NBC sitcom “A Different World” following the daughter (Maleah Joi Moon) of Hillman College alum Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison in the original series) and Whitney Gilbert (Jasmine Guy).