With two hour-long specials on Netflix—and another on Amazon Prime Video—Nate Bargatze is easily one of the most successful stand-up comedians working right now. But even he will admit he was surprised when Saturday Night Live booked him to host this weekend’s show.
“It’s insane, dude,” Bargatze told Seth Meyers on Tuesday’s episode of Late Night. “It’s almost like when they asked, you’re like, I don’t know if I’m famous enough to do that.” He joked that he considered turning the offer down with, “I appreciate it, but there’s some other people I think y’all should go after.”
“You’re like, ‘Your show has a legacy, you don't want to mess around with that,’” SNL alum Meyers riffed in response.
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When SNL producers got in touch with him this past Sunday to start talking about sketch ideas, that’s how he knew it was really “happening.” Bargatze said that he’s waiting for them to say, “‘We’re not gonna to air this,’ like I’m just some trial show where they wanted to make sure the cameras worked.” He imagined Vin Diesel waiting in the wings to take over for the real show.
Bargatze later told Meyers that his wife is mostly excited that Foo Fighters will be the musical guest for his episode, prompting the Late Night host to joke, “Oh, that’s how they can get away with you hosting!”
“It’s gonna be all Dave Grohl in every sketch, I’m just kind of on the show,” Bargatze replied.
While it may seem like Bargatze has come out of nowhere, it’s been a long road for the Tennessee native, who didn’t achieve any real notoriety as a comedian until he was 40 years old. And that’s a good thing. As he explained the first time he appeared on The Last Laugh podcast, he thinks he’d “probably be dead” if fame had found him sooner.
For more, listen to Nate Bargatze on The Last Laugh podcast.
