On Late Night, an emotional Seth Meyers relates the twisting tale of his new son's arrival
Seth Meyers got to work at Late Night late on Monday, he explained, a fact that also helped explain the absence of his usual “A Closer Look” segment. Since Monday saw the afternoon bombshell that Donald Trump’s personal attorney, porn star fixer, and RNC Deputy National Finance Chair Michael Cohen’s home, office, and hotel room have all been raided by the FBI, one might ask what the hell could keep noted comedy news hound Meyers from his self-appointed rounds. Well, he had a pretty good excuse, as it turns out—the unexpectedly dramatic birth of his second child on Sunday.
Meyers spent the first ten minutes of his Monday show expertly spinning the tale of wife Alexi’s surprise delivery of the couple’s new son Axel, a blessed event that took place in the lobby of their New York apartment building. As Meyers tells it, Alexi’s labor is traditionally a speedy process, with the 2016 birth of their first son, Ashe, happening just as they hurried into the hospital. Well, despite that preparation, the pair (thankfully accompanied by their doula friend at the time) found themselves caught even more unawares by son number two, when Alexi, waiting on the sidewalk for their Uber, suddenly told the unbelieving Meyers, “The baby is out.” Discovering that that wasn’t an exaggeration, Meyers described the sight as someone trying to smuggle a baby onto a plane inside their sweatpants. Holy crap. Again luckily, Meyers, Alexi, and the impatient Axel were soon joined in the impromptu lobby delivery suite by medical professionals—and the 911 operator, whose involvement went from “an emergency to sharing good news with a stranger.”
Meyers, thanking the EMTs, firefighters, his doorman, his neighbors, that New York driver who impatiently waited for Alexi to be loaded into an ambulance, and the Uber driver (who charged them for the messy near-miss), choked up when talking about his wife’s courage. Calling her “a rock star,” Meyers went on to express gratitude for his wife’s extended family, including her Holocaust survivor grandparents, whose surname the couple chose for baby Axel’s middle name. Citing his thankfulness to “everyone in your lineage who lived so you can have this moment,” the overcome Meyers showed pictures of the blissfully unruffled little guy, and got back to work.