Seth Meyers Reveals How SNL Made Him Think Obama Could Win

Seth Meyers just described the moment he realized Barack Obama would win the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.

In the latest episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast, Meyers looked back to the crowd’s response to then presidential hopeful Obama in 2007, when he appeared briefly in Saturday Night Live’s cold open sketch.

“The thing I remember is the way the audience reacted when he was there,” Meyers said on the podcast, which he hosts alongside Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone. “It was the first time I thought, oh—he’s gonna win.”

As Obama and Hillary Clinton battled it out for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate nomination, Obama appeared on the show to don a mask of his own face and say a few lines in a sketch parodying a Halloween party at the Clintons’ house. He also got to say those iconic words, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”

Meyers recalled describing the sketch to Obama initially. “He comes in wearing a Barack Obama Halloween mask and takes it off to reveal he’s Barack Obama. And I said to him, ‘So that’s the idea. And if it’s too hard to get off the mask, we’ll come up with something easier.’ And he said some version of, ‘I think you’ll find I can take off a Halloween mask’”—a response Meyers remembered fondly for the former president’s sense of humor.

Meyers said he wasn’t prepared for was the crowd’s enthusiasm for Obama when he took the stage, as many believed Hillary Clinton, who had been a frontrunner in the race, would get the nomination.

“I think the conventional wisdom back then was it was Hillary’s [to win] and I would’ve been very happy with that,” he said. “But there was a real magnetic energy in the room when he showed up.” And while Meyers called meeting Obama one of the “greatest things about being at the show,” Samberg revealed that he was not particularly excited at the time.

“I do vividly remember him being there and everyone meeting him and someone was like, ‘Did you meet Obama?’” Samberg recalled. “And I remember being like, ‘Nah man, I don’t care about that. I don’t care about politics, I don’t wanna, whatever.’ And then he became president and I was like, f—, I should have met him.”