NEW YORK – Seth Meyers and Michael Shoemaker first began plotting The Awesomes, their new comic animated superhero series, in 2006, when Meyers was ascending to the Weekend Update desk at Saturday Night Live.
“Time-wise, this was a way better idea in 2006,” says Meyers. “That summer was glacial for Seth Meyers. I couldn’t get arrested in 2006.”
The summer of 2013, however, is an entirely different matter. Meyers is preparing to take over Late Night early next year, leaving Saturday Night Live after the fall. (Soon thereafter, current Late Night host Jimmy Fallon will inherit the Tonight Show.) Shoemaker, who oversaw Weekend Update at SNL before leaving to produce Late Night with Fallon, is staying on to remake the show with Meyers.
So the timing for the long-gestating The Awesomes, arrives awkwardly in the midst of the biggest transition of Meyers’ burgeoning career, a dive into the frenzy of late-night television. Asked in a joint interview how The Awesomes is fitting into their lives now, Shoemaker responds quickly: “Oh, not very well.”
“Mike and I always said The Awesomes was our way to make sure we got to work together after SNL,” says Meyers. “If we had any idea about Late Night …”
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“We wouldn’t have bothered,” chimes Shoemaker.
They kept at it, though, because the series is something of a labour of love, Meyers says. He and Shoemaker first met in 2001 when Meyers was hired as a cast member on SNL, where Shoemaker started in 1990. The two bonded in midtown trips to the comic book store, eventually coming up with the idea for their own funny, skewed gang of superheroes. After a brainstorming flurry, though, the idea receded behind the weekly demands of SNL.
“For a long time, the way we talked about it was, ‘It’s a shame nothing ever happened with The Awesomes,’ laughs Meyers.
In it, Meyers voices the lead character Prock, whose unspectacular superpower (being able to pause time, which leaves him with a nosebleed) has made him the scrawny disappointment of his father, Mr. Awesome (Steve Higgins, an SNL writer and the announcer for Late Night). When Mr. Awesome retires, Prock vows to preserve his father’s superhero team. After they all desert, he’s left to collect more bizarre, unpolished talents.
Prock’s intrepid casting call mirrors that of SNL. Both Meyers and Shoemaker assisted in hiring cast members for the sketch show, many of whom voice characters in The Awesomes. Bill Hader, Kenan Thompson, Taran Killam and Rachel Dratch lend their voices to the 10-episode season.
“This would not have come about had Mike and I had not met at a place like Saturday Night Live, which is a collection of really talented people, all of whom have their personality quirks and are very unique people, but who when you put the right group together do things that no other group of people can do,” says Meyers.
The show was hyped recently at Comic-Con in San Diego.
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