Seth Meyers Honors Legendary Late-Night Guest and Fellow ‘Weekend Update’ Alum Norm Macdonald: ‘He was the Gold Standard’

Seth Meyers honored comedy legend and fellow “Weekend Update” alum Norm Macdonald, who passed away at 61 on Tuesday after a long and private battle with cancer.

The comedy world was quick to mourn Macdonald’s passing on Tuesday, flooding Twitter with personal memories of the former Saturday Night Live star along with his best late-night moments and their favorite jokes.

Instead of taking to Twitter to honor the late comic, Meyers dedicated a portion of his Tuesday night monologue to Macdonald, whom he called a “fantastic comedian.”

“He was the gold standard, and he will continue to be the gold standard,” Meyers said. “I would just suggest that everybody go watch him tell the moth story on Conan, go watch any number of Norm Macdonald things tonight, because they are really, truly timeless.”

Meyers recognized that Macdonald would probably not “want to hear anything sentimental,” so instead stuck to remembering the late comedian’s funniest and jokes and moments.

“I started at SNL in 2001, and I remember one time, Norm walked back into the studio to visit,” Meyers shared. “I don’t remember how old his son was at the time, but his son was young and someone said, ‘Hey Norm, how’s being a dad?’ And he said, ‘It’s going great. Still no abductions.’ That’s the first thing I ever heard him say in-person.”

Meyers later remembered “a perfect Norm joke” that Macdonald told while anchoring SNL‘s “Weekend Update”:

“The richest girl in the world, billionaire Athina Onassis, celebrated her 10th birthday this week. What’s it like to be the richest girl in the world? Well, to give you some idea, at the party, they had two cakes.”

Meyers, who first started anchoring “Weekend Update” in 2006, admitted that Macdonald was a large influence on his own comedy.

“I said to him, one of the hardest parts of doing ‘Update’ for me, was not telling every joke the way I thought Norm would tell it,” Meyers shared. “I had to beat Norm’s delivery out of me.”

The late-night host also praised Macdonald’s ability to not care “if he was bombing” on stage.

“If he thought the jokes were good, he had exactly as much fun telling them to a dead audience than to one who appreciated them,” Meyers said.

“And I think for so many of us, we came up watching Norm, and we thought that you were on the inside with him when you were watching him tell these jokes that you thought were great, and no one in the room thought was good and you just felt this connection to him — and that ability to just stare into an audience, unblinkingly telling the jokes that — that you believed in.”

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