Bullskin native entertains people all over the world
Bullskin Township native Seth Reiss has come a long way from playing on the local Little League fields as a child to entertaining people all over the world.
Reiss resides in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, N.Y., about a 30-minute subway ride from 30 Rockefeller Center, where he works as the supervising writer on NBC's “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”
The show, executive produced by Lorne Michaels (“The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” “Saturday Night Live”) and produced by Michael Shoemaker (“Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” “Saturday Night Live”), can be viewed nationally weeknights on NBC at 12:35 a.m. It is hosted by Emmy Award-winning writer and “Saturday Night Live” alumni Seth Meyers.
Reiss, son of David and Sharon Reiss of Connellsville, said he grew up in Bullskin.
“I am a very proud member of the 12-year-old Bullskin All-Star team that won the 1995 District 9 Championship. Not because of anything I did, but because of excellent pitching by Todd Bell and coaching by Kevin Henry. And if there is anyone else from that team that reads this, we may have eventually lost to Latrobe, but we had more heart and character than that team ever had,” Reiss said.
Got his start in fifth grade
While he enjoyed baseball, it was a performance as the “Genie” in “Aladdin” when he was in fifth grade that set him on his path as a writer and performer.
“As soon as I got that first laugh, it was a pretty great rush that I had never ever experienced. Then again, I was 10, so there was a lot I hadn't experienced.
“Either way, after that I was pretty hooked,” Reiss said.
Reiss said his first experience writing for publication came in seventh or eighth grade when he wrote for The Daily Courier, which at the time had a page run by students. He also wrote for the Connellsville Junior High East paper, The Fledgling.
In high school, Reiss said he performed in the school's annual musicals under the direction of Merle Stutzman.
“There really was, and I'm sure there continues to be, a consistent batch of extremely talented people who come through that system. And the commitment to making those shows as great as they can possibly be has stuck with me in nearly every creative project I've taken on,” Reiss said.
After graduating from Connellsville Area High School in 2001, Reiss attended Boston University where he continued to perform in plays.
He said he considers himself very lucky that he always knew he wanted to be a comedy writer.
“That said, when I first got to college I convinced myself for a second that I wanted to be a journalist. But after one internship where I wrote obituaries for a newspaper all day, I knew that was never going to happen,” Reiss said. “Then over one Thanksgiving break, I read ‘Live From New York,' which is an oral history of Saturday Night Live. I think I read that book in one night. And as I was reading it, I thought, ‘Who the hell am I kidding. I want to do comedy.'”
While at Boston University, Reiss said there were two things that really helped hone his comedic voice. As a humor columnist for the school paper, he had to write a weekly column.
“It really forced me to write. I did that column for two-and-a-half years, and I would say, looking back, for two years it was complete garbage. But the last semester I wrote it, after reading more work by Steve Martin, Woody Allen and Jack Handey, I started to realize what I was doing wrong and what I could do right,” Reiss said.
Join sketch comedy group
He said he also was in Boston University's sketch comedy group along with several other guys who wanted to do comedy professionally after college.
“We took the group extremely seriously. In fact, college was pretty much just infrastructure to do sketch comedy,” Reiss said.
After graduation in 2005, he and the other members of the group all moved to New York City to continue doing sketch comedy together. They formed a new group called Pangea 3000, and began performing at a place in New York City called the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.
“At that point, it was just all comedy all the time. Everyone in that group has gone on to do comedy professionally, whether it's writing for ‘The Onion,' ‘Funny or Die,' ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,' the new ‘Wet Hot American Summer' series on Netflix and a very funny show on IFC called ‘Comedy Bang! Bang!,'” Reiss said.
Also after college Reiss did some acting in off-off Broadway plays and “I was in a children's theater touring play.”
He was the head writer of “The Onion,” a digital media company and news satire organization, for about two-and-a-half years, and worked there for a total of eight years.
Interned for several TV shows
Additionally, he interned for several top TV shows including: “The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn,” “Late Night with Conan O'Brien,” “The Daily Show,” and he was a page at the “Late Show with David Letterman.”
“The highlight of that last one is that I was able to get my parents tickets to the show where Letterman had Oprah on for the first time in like 20 years or something,” Reiss said.
When it was announced Jimmy Fallon would leave “Late Night” to take over the “Tonight Show,” Reiss saw an opportunity.
“I badgered and pestered like an annoying mosquito. When I heard that Seth was taking over ‘Late Night' I felt that, just based on my comedic sensibility and what I knew from what Seth had done on ‘Saturday Night Live,' that I could potentially be a good fit. So, yeah, I badgered and pestered, and put together a packet of segment ideas, and luckily I was hired,” Reiss said.
Reiss is enjoying working on the show and said he really likes having so many opportunities to present big ideas to an audience.
“It's a playground in that way. I love spectacle. Do you want to have a person fly in the studio while they sing ‘Defying Gravity' from Wicked? Done. Do you want to digitally insert a walrus into the audience? Done. Do you want to do a sketch where we reveal that Jake Gyllenhaal is bald? We can do that,” Reiss said.
While there is a lot of fun, writing for a five-day-a-week show also has its challenges.
Reiss said the biggest challenge is to be on the lookout for ways to constantly make it special, whether by doing something new with a guest or unveiling a new comedy bit.
“The show is a grind, and when you are in a grind, it can be easy to settle into a rhythm. It's hard, but absolutely necessary, to find ways here and there to bust out of that rhythm. I think Seth (Meyers) would agree that it's a privilege to be on network television every night of the week, and it's kind of incumbent upon us to really make that time count,” Reiss said.
Enjoys the people, his work
He said Seth Meyers is really great to work with.
“He is a writer and he understands ideas and the integrity behind them. That doesn't mean he'll like every single one of your ideas, but it's comforting to know that when we pitch ideas, he gets the impetus of what's behind them. Also, he makes our work better. More times than I can count, he's added a line here or there that takes your script from a B+ to an A. He just has a penchant for adding that small touch that makes your sketch memorable. It also doesn't hurt that Seth is naturally a good and funny human being,” Reiss said.
In addition to writing for the show, Reiss also gets to utilize his acting skills on the show.
“I love acting in sketches. I mean, I get to act in sketches on a late night show on NBC. It's friggin' incredible,” he said.
Reiss said there are several skits he is proud of, including: “The Sorkin Sketch,” “Seth Brings Jon Snow to a Dinner Party,” “Hannah Horvath Joins the Late Night Writing Staff,” “Anna Wintour: Comedy Icon,” and “Crew Poetry.”
“And all of them wouldn't be possible without the great team of people who work in every department — graphics, costumes, art, production — really, I can't stress enough that on shows like these, you are only as good as everyone else around you who help make the final product. And we have such an excellent, excellent team,” Reiss said.
Mom, Dad proud of son's success
David Reiss said he and his wife Sharon knew at an early age their son was funny and they are very proud of their son's success.
“All of his accomplishments he did on his own. It was his work and his perseverance,” David Reiss said.
David Reiss said he enjoys watching the show, but a special memory was seeing the show live while visiting New York City for Father's Day.
Seth Reiss surprised his father with a skit called “Numbers,” with number one being the number of writers who will surprise their dad with a Father's Day message.
“He did a shtick. I was almost in tears due to the emotional aspect of it and the bit was very funny,” David Reiss said.
Former CAHS librarian Becky Halfhill of Mt. Pleasant said she is not at all surprised by Reiss' success after seeing him in action as emcee for his senior year's homecoming assembly of which she was in charge.
“He was obviously very much at home on the stage. I remember telling him after the assembly that I have a feeling that we would be seeing him on TV someday,” Halfhill said.
Halfhill thinks her former student is a brilliant young man and she has followed his career and enjoyed reading his articles in “The Onion.”
“It has been so much fun watching him do sketches on the Seth Myers Show,” Halfhill said.
Thanks to Reiss, Halfhill and her husband John were able to see the show during a trip to New York City for their 20th anniversary.
“It was so exciting to be there knowing all the input Seth has in the production. It was fun to be in the audience and see how a live show is run so precisely. After the show, we enjoyed a nice dinner in Uptown Manhattan with Seth and plan to see him again on our next trip,” she said.
Reiss said he comes back to the area three or four times a year.
“I love it. There is definitely something rejuvenating about it,” Reiss said.
He said he loves playing golf at Pleasant Valley Country Club, eating at the Italian Oven and visiting with CAHS band director Tim Martin who is one of his best friends from high school.
Linda Harkcom is a contributing writer for Trib Total Media.
