Seth Meyers‘ Saturday Night Live bits ragging on the infamous Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark were brutal enough to catch the attention of Bono himself.
The Late Night host and The Lonely Island — consisting of fellow SNL alums Akiva Schaffer, Andy Samberg, and Jorma Taccone — launched their The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast on Monday (April 8). During the first installment, Meyers recalled that “in the early runs” of the Broadway show, “a lot of Spider-Men were falling from the rafters and hurting themselves.”
In turn, Meyers admitted that he “wrote too many sketches about it,” per Entertainment Weekly
“I was completely enamored with the story that people were hurting themselves — especially just people dressed like Spider-Man hurting themselves in Broadway theaters,” he added.
He recalled a sketch he crafted called “Gublin and Green,” starring Fred Armisen as a “lawyer who only dealt with personal injuries that happened in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”
Eventually, Meyers said he received an email from Bono, who wrote the score for the musical with The Edge. Meyers said the message “seemed like a joke email, but it wasn’t.”
“I got an email from Bono, this is not a joke, inviting me to the premiere of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” he recalled. “He said, something along the lines of, ‘You’ve had your fun, you’ve told your jokes, now come see the real thing.’”
Samberg chimed in, “Thinking like, once you see it, you’ll understand there’s nothing to joke about.”
Meyers took Bono up on the offer, highlighting that the performance “went smoothly and none of the Spider-Men, none of the Green Goblins, none of the audience — everybody walked out as they entered.”
“I will say, half of the audience, and I’m not gonna say which half I was in, I think was a little bummed out that nobody fell from the rafters,” he joked.
Samberg eventually recalled a Weekend Update feature he referred to as “Give Up The Smooches,” spoofing the franchise’s upside-down kiss made famous by Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst. The latter recently shed light on the not-so-magical moment, describing the experience as “kind of miserable.”
“It was pouring with rain, freezing, Tobey couldn’t breathe so it was almost like I was resuscitating him,” Dunst said on The Jonathan Ross Show, per The Independent.
New episodes of Meyers and The Lonely Island’s podcast air on Mondays.
