-Our next guest is a very funny actor and comedian
you know from his work on "Saturday Night Live."
He stars in "Mr. Mayor,"
which airs Tuesday nights at 8:30 here on NBC.
Let's take a look.
-Sir, I need your advice. -Jayden...
-My friend works at the discotheque,
but he just got invited to play at the Olympics.
But the owner of the discotheque is his husband,
and he's going to be so mad at --
-Jayden. Jayden!
I'm on live TV right --
[ Chuckling ] Right now.
-Oh [bleep] Did I say [bleep]
-No, no. -I'm [bleep] sorry.
I'm sorry! [Bleep] [Bleep]
[Bleep] [bleep] your [bleep] I'm sorry!
-Now get out. -[Bleep]
[ Door closes ] -Oh, boy.
Where was I? Um, I don't recall.
And neither should you, Los Angeles.
-Please welcome back to the show
our very good friend Bobby Moynihan!
[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪
Welcome back, my friend.
-Hello! It's so good to see you.
-It's so nice to have you back in New York City for a few days.
-Yes, it's wonderful.
-Are you enjoying being back out here on the East Coast?
-It's weird to be back.
I haven't been back in like two years.
-That's nuts. -Very different.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-A lot's different.
You've got -- Your daughter is 4.
-Is she? -Yeah.
We did some -- We checked Wikipedia, yeah.
-I got to check in with her. Yeah, yeah.
I hope she's doing well.
No.
Yeah, no, she's 4. She's the best.
-What's she into?
-Everything that I am. -Alright.
I mean, you have -- I will say this.
I say this lovingly.
I feel like you have a lot of tastes
you were just waiting for a child to share with you.
-Correct. I realize what I'm best at is
playing with the toys.
Yeah, a lot of trolls right now.
A lot -- She, like, had a little spooky phase.
-Okay. -A lot of monsters like Dracula.
-Oh, that's fun to be inside of that.
-Yeah. What every little girl loves -- mummies.
She's the best. -That's really exciting.
And the birthday's coming up, right?
-Yes. Once a year.
-Is that what they're doing now?
Wow. Kids. -Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-Does she, like, have any theme requests
for her birthday or is...
-Every year, she asks for a theme request,
and every year, it ends up being "Toy Story" somehow.
I don't know why or how, but it does.
Maybe because we don't buy new decorations.
No, yeah, I think this year, it's probably going --
Right now, very heavy into Sonic.
Sonic and Knuckles right now. -Oh, okay. Alright.
Oh, that's exciting.
-Yeah, it'll change in like 14 hours.
-You have a fantastic cast. We saw Ted Danson in the clip.
Holly Hunter, as well. A couple of legends.
-Yes. Yeah.
-What are they like to work with?
-The best.
I've learned so much about acting from watching
Holly Hunter for 40 seconds, and from Ted Danson,
I learned that you should have
turkey and apples like every hour.
-Really? -Yeah.
-'Cause he looks outstanding. He looks really good.
-Yeah, he's a really healthy man.
-Yeah. And it's just turkey and apples on the hour?
-It's just 7 feet filled with turkey and apples.
-You got to eat a lot of turkey.
Yeah, you don't want to go higher than the -- Yeah.
-You can't, you can't. It'll come out the top.
-You do -- I know you're doing a lot of V.O. stuff,
and during the pandemic, people who were smart
built sort of makeshift home studios.
Did you do that?
-Yes, almost instantly.
-Okay. -Yeah.
The first V.O. job I got, I said, "Can I keep this?
Can I pay you to keep all of this stuff?"
-Because they sent you the gear.
-Because they sent, like, a setup
and they said "yes," and I did.
And I haven't -- I've been in my closet for two years
doing voices, like every other 45-year-old man.
-You come out to play trolls and then you go back in.
-I play and then I go play in the closet.
Yeah, yeah.
-You have a show you're doing a voice on, "Lightning Wolves."
-Yes. Yes.
-So, explain "Lightning Wolves" real quick.
-"Lightning Wolves" is a cartoon,
a bunch of shorts that I wrote.
It's based on -- loosely based on those, like,
'80s cartoons -- "ThunderCats," "He-Man,"
"Voltron," "G.I. Joe."
And -- But this version is --
You know, it was all about teaching people life lessons
or teaching children life lessons,
but it was really just there to sell them toys.
-Yeah. -And that's what this is.
It's just a bunch of '80s characters realizing
that they mean nothing and they're just toys.
-You also -- Welcome to the children's-book-author game.
-Yes, congratulations. -Thank you very much, yeah.
It's fun to write a kid's book.
-I just read your children's book
to my daughter and her whole class.
-How'd it go? -Not great.
No, I'm just kidding!
They didn't get it. They were sad after I read it.
-Oh, no! That doesn't -- That's not good.
-Two of the kids said, "I don't want to do school anymore."
-What?! It made him stop wanting --
-Yeah. One said, "What's a bear?"
-What's a bear?
Well, they should probably go back to school.
-That kid's not great.
-Should probably do double school.
-No, it went great. I did your voice.
-Oh, good.
-It was great. It was fun. It's so crazy.
You will read my book to my daughter's class soon.
-Yes. And your book is called?
-"Not All Sheep Are Boring!"
-That's great.
Is that the take, that a lot of kids think sheep are boring?
-Yeah. It's about a little toad who says, you know,
"People count sheep to fall asleep,
but not all sheep are boring.
I can prove it."
And, by the end, you realize he's wrong.
All sheep are boring.
-And then -- and then the butcher comes?
-And then -- Yeah. Kids need to learn.
-Hey, so, you -- You've -- Again, I've known you
to do animated voices for a long time.
You did one in our show, "The Awesomes."
-Yeah, I was Teleportation Larry.
-Yeah, a very famous,
a very important character to the canon.
You also played a -- The Penguin in
"Batman: The Audio Adventures."
-Yeah, our friend Dennis McNicholas.
-Yep. I did a little voice work in this, as well.
The Penguin, though, I couldn't help but notice,
does feel to, like, sort of complete the circle,
because you played Danny DeVito on the show a couple times.
-Correct, yes.
I was lucky enough when they let me to play Danny DeVito.
-Here's you and Taran as George Clooney and Danny DeVito.
-Aww, my Taran.
-Yeah.
Were you -- Are you pointing 'cause you were worried --
-I just like tickling this little guy.
-I thought you were like that, "Now, this one's me."
-No, I just saw it and went, "He's adorable!"
-You also -- This was "'Star Wars' Auditions,"
and this was Danny DeVito auditioning to play BB-8.
-Yeah, that was all Colin Jost.
Colin Jost was like, "Would you mind dressing up as
Danny DeVito and just rolling around?"
And I was like, "Yes." I go, "Should I say anything?"
And he goes, "When you're done, just go, 'Right?'"
-Perfect. -That was all Jost.
-And then you were lucky enough to meet the legend,
Mr. Danny DeVito.
-Yeah. Right after I played him on the show --
I don't remember if it was the "Star Wars" one
or the Nespresso one, but that night, like,
directly after the show, I had two of my buddies,
Mike and Rob, from high school, like, with me.
Like, I had two buddies from high school with me,
because you want to look cool.
And I get them to the party
and we pull up to the party, and it's the coolest.
And you're on "SNL,"
and your buddies from high school are there.
And I walk past a car and I get, like, yanked like --
And I'm like, "I'm being assaulted,"
and it's Danny DeVito.
He's like, "You think it's funny playing me?!"
And he immediately let go and was like, "I love you, kid."
And I was like, "Well, that was the greatest mo--
I just got attacked by Danny DeVito
in front of my high-school buddies."
-I mean, that's really the dream.
-I've made it.
-So, I was recently -- I was a guest on
"The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon" recently,
and we were talking about bombing.
-Yeah.
-Especially specifically bombing at charity gigs.
-Yes.
-And I was talking -- And I think you know where I'm going.
-Yeah. Oh, no, I saw this. Yeah.
-You and I together bombed worse
than I've ever bombed in my life.
-It was...the worst. -Yeah.
-It was the absolute worst.
-It was at Madison Square Garden.
-Madison Square Garden,
the 12-12-12 Sandy concert, benefit concert.
-Yeah.
-It had been going on for hours at this point?
-It was an incredible list of bands and musicians.
-Like a seven-hour concert, I think.
And we went on like hour 5 1/2, 6?
-Yep. -You recounted it wrong.
We went on after Kanye West... -Okay.
-...who was in a kilt and screaming.
-Yeah.
-And then threw his mic into the audience.
And then when -- And then Chris Rock went,
"Are you going out there?"
-Yeah. -And I was like, "Yeah."
He's like, "In that costume?"
-Now, we should note that Bobby and I --
what we did at the hurricane -- a concert for Hurricane Sandy,
which was all music -- Arcade Fire, The Who, Kanye --
-We went in between Kanye West and Billy Joel.
-Yeah. So imagine you've just seen --
You've just seen Kanye West.
You see them roll out Billy Joel's piano.
Before that... -But before that...
-...I walk out as me, and he walks out as Drunk Uncle.
-Yeah, in costume, which, by the way,
they made me wear to Madison Square Garden.
I said, "Can I get dressed when I get there?"
They said, "There's nowhere to dress."
I said, "Inside that tiny building?"
So, I showed up in costume and sat in a room
with The Rolling Stones in a wig.
-And I -- Well, 'cause the thing Chris Rock said
that I remember is, he goes,
"You're going to go do sketches?"
Because he knew.
-He said, "Are you in a costume?"
I was like, "I'm not that terrible, please."
And we went out there, and the second we got there,
everyone got up to get a beer.
-Yeah. It was amazing, because I do feel like
we were doing Drunk Uncle for maybe
the biggest collection of drunk uncles
that had ever been -- Yeah.
-It was -- Do you know what happened after that?
-No, what happened after that? -I...left.
-Okay. You just went home.
-I walked out and I didn't go to the greenroom.
I walked through Madison Square Garden.
I went down, like, you know, the regular way,
through the be-- like, through the beginning.
You know, the opening. The beginning of a building.
-Have you ever been to the beginning of
Madison Square Garden?
-I got almost to the end.
And I walked out the front doors of Madison Square Garden
and I walked home 13 blocks dressed as Drunk Uncle.
-Yeah. The other thing --
-And they called me and they said, "Your car is here."
And I said, "I'm home."
-I will say this, as well.
I feel like I've done a lot of --
Like, comedy charity events always is, like, a lower --
Like, it's going to go worse than comedy
for people who pay to see comedy -- always.
But when you walk off, more often than not,
people are like, "That was great."
Like, the people backstage are like,
"We're here for a good cause."
Like, the sea parted for you and I.
No one made eye contact. It was just like...
-No handler came near me. -No, nobody.
-I walked home alone. -Yeah.
People, like, would see us, and just, with their beers,
would be like, "Ooh."
-I believe -- It was Katie Holmes.
Katie Holmes went, "I'm so sorry."
-The other thing is that, afterwards,
do you remember, this was a really cool thing.
Because all the money was going to Hurricane Sandy,
but then they -- Half of it they gave to us
because of how -- They were like, "We want to raise money."
They were like, "That was a disaster, Hurricane Sandy,
but not..."
-This is a Hurricane Sandy suit. -Oh, yeah.
-This is a Hurricane Sandy suit. They gave me this.
-Well, it was an honor --
It was an honor to bomb with you that night.
-If you're gonna bomb with Seth Meyers,
do it at Madison Square Garden.
-Yeah, that's it.
We played Madison Square -- We didn't do anything worse than
the Knicks do on almost...
Bobby Moynihan, everybody!
"Mr. Mayor" airs Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. here on NBC.