Seth Meyers, who was a Saturday Night Live fixture and host of the Weekend Update segment prior to leaving to host his own late-night show, recently revealed aborted plans for a Stefon movie, based on the character Bill Hader used to play on the Update sketches. In the movie, Meyers would reportedly have had a small role, with his Update anchor being killed off in the cold open, ending up in a body bag after a long night out with Stefon. There would have had to be another straight man for the rest of the movie — somebody “like James Franco” for Stefon to bounce off of — according to Meyers.
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This is the first confirmation that there were discussions of a movie based on the character, although Hader has admitted over the years that he “felt pressure” to take Stefon to the next level. That would have put the character into rarefied air, with features like Wayne’s World, The Blues Brothers, and The Coneheads.
“There was a moment in time where the idea of a Stefon script was being discussed,” Meyers said on Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers’ Las Culturistas podcast. “This was not a scene that was written, but I did have a pitch for myself and Stefon, because I knew it was going to be Stefon and James Franco, or whoever. It wasn’t going to be me and Stefon.”
“I said, here’s how I think it should start: It should start with Stefon at Weekend Update, and when it’s over, I’m once again disappointed that as the city correspondent he did not bring whatever St. Patrick’s Day tips,” Meyers explained. “And he says, ‘To make it up to you, just come out, have a night me and you together, Stefon’s New York.’ And I’m like, ‘All right, one night.’ And then you would do these super fast cuts of he and I at all these crazy clubs. That would be the opening montage, and then it would end with me in a body bag, and Stefon would say, ‘He’s dead!’ Then the splash: Stefon: The Movie.”
Hader told The New Yorker earlier this year, as his fourth and final season on Barry was wrapping up, that he never really thought Stefon could work as a movie. The comedian and writer said that the whole reason Stefon ended up on Weekend Update is that it “didn’t work as a sketch” on its own.
Be that as it may, Meyers’ take is pretty inspired. Maybe now that both he and Hader are bigger celebrities, they could come back and do that cold open as a fake movie trailer one of these days…!
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