‘SNL’ Star Michael Che Is Prepping a Late Night Show
Michael Che has been pulling double duty, shuttling between Saturday Night Live, where he’s now celebrating 10 years as a “Weekend Update” anchor, and Manhattan’s City Winery, where he’s workshopping a new late night show.
Don’t Sleep With Michael Che is his working title, mostly, he says, because he gets a kick out of the turn of phrase. As for everything else, Che is still sorting it out. “Sometimes you just got to motivate yourself to get onstage and try things, especially me because I’ll come up with an idea and then I’ll get bored and it dies in my imagination,” he told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this month. “So, I have no idea where this goes, but you never know, maybe NBC will put it on at 3 in the morning.”
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According to Late Nighter, which was on site for his first show in late August, it has a real exploratory feel to it — more John Mulaney’s Everybody Loves LA than The Tonight Show. In fact, the highlights from test show No. 1 included a seemingly unplanned Dating Game-style panel featuring a few audience members and some fake ad reads that Che layered throughout. Still, there were some familiar late night trappings, including his makeshift desk and couch along with the show’s comedy-followed-by-guest-interviews format, though the latter ultimately were more “freewheeling and unstructured” than those of a traditional late night show. (Per the City Winery website, tickets range from $30-$35, and phones are banned.)
Che has already discussed the project with his SNL boss and mentor Lorne Michaels, who produces late night shows for both Seth Meyers (Late Night) and Jimmy Fallon (Tonight Show). But he’s stopped short of shopping the format to buyers around town, however, suggesting that he’d like to keep testing it with audiences at this stage. “I always think comedy fans select what they want to see,” Che explained, “and so, ideally, I’d just do it live for a while and listen to what the response is and find the identity of the show that way and then have something to sell.”
It’s too early to know whether this will evolve into his SNL exit strategy. For now, Che says he still loves being part of the long-running sketch comedy show, even if, he admitted, “you get moments where you love it so much that it drives you crazy and you want to be as far away from it as possible.” When asked if he intended to be there for the show’s 51st season as part of THR’s recent cover story, pegged to SNL‘s 50th, Che responded: “I try not to think about it because then I think it ruins the morale for the rest of the year. I just, I don’t know, you never know.”
In the meantime, he’s enjoying his side gig, and he’s tickled that audiences seem to be liking it, too. “I’m having fun, but it’s like any relationship that’s new,” he joked, “you can’t start talking marriage too soon.”
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