-Really tragic news
that we found out just a couple hours before we started taping.
Norm Macdonald, the fantastic comedian, passed away
at the age of 61.
We are very sad to hear it.
I do not think that
Norm would want to hear anything sentimental,
but I would like to say
a few of my favorite things that I heard Norm say
that I was lucky enough to hear Norm say over the years.
I started "SNL" in 2001, and I remember one time
Norm walked back in the studio to visit.
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."
[ Laughter ]
That's the first thing I ever heard him say in person.
I always think about this.
I wrote it down 'cause I wanted to make sure I got it right.
This is my favorite "Weekend Update" joke of all time
that I think about often.
It is a perfect Norm joke.
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.
[ Laughter ]
"SNL 40th" was a few years ago.
I got to stand on stage
with Colin Quinn and Kevin Nealon,
and Norm and the "SNL 40th"
was a night where everyone...
just got a couple things to say.
There were so many people there, and it was really limited.
And I remember the four of us each had a little thing to say.
I believe, if memory serves, before we introduced Chevy --
I think that was the role we were serving --
and I remember we all said our line --
myself and Colin and Kevin --
and then Norm just started talking,
and none of it was what he was supposed to say.
Wally, you were holding the cards.
I will say I haven't seen as much in my years with Wally,
but you did a thing where you actually looked --
you looked at the cards in an effort to find --
and I remember laughing really hard
not at what Norm was saying as much as the idea
that any of us thought
Norm would play by anyone else's rules
on any night.
He told me once that his favorite thing about "SNL"
is you can still -- it's like the last place on TV
where you can bomb.
And, you know, there's a warm-up comedian
at the beginning of the night at "SNL" --
usually a cast member or a writer.
But the commercials, it's not like going to a sitcom taping
or other tapings where anyone is trying to
keep the energy up during the course of the show.
And Norm said that was so great
because by the time "Update" rolled around,
if the show was bad,
you could literally just go out there and bomb.
And that both made that level of difficulty
something that I think he really respected and also he loved --
or I should say he just didn't care if he was bombing.
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.
And I think for so many of us, we came up watching Norm
and we thought that 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 you believed in.
He also told me that...
his son...
I said to him
one of the hardest parts about doing "Update" for me
was not telling every joke
the way I thought Norm would tell it.
Like, I had to beat Norm's delivery out me.
It still sneaks in all the time,
but I really had to keep an eye on it
and I told him how hard that part was to me.
And he said, "I'm so glad to hear you say that,
because my son was watching you on 'Update'
and said to me, 'You talk like Seth Meyers.'"
[ Laughter ]
And he told me that when he said that, he said, "Oh, no.
My son doesn't know how time works."
[ Laughter ]
He was the gold standard,
and he will continue to be the gold standard,
and 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.
Rest in peace, Norm.
I will be right back with more "Late Night."