Seth Meyers says he was too stressed — and engaged — to act on Jennifer Lawrence’s crush.
On Monday’s broadcast of “The Howard Stern Show,” a happily married Meyers said he felt “flattered” years ago when the actor revealed on his “Late Night” program that she was once infatuated with him.
“I was very flattered,” Meyers recalled. “And my wife was so happy. She was just: ‘I’m so happy Jennifer Lawrence told you that story! I’m so glad that you have that in your back pocket every single day.’”
The “Hunger Games” star said she’d developed an interest in Meyers during a 2013 hosting gig on “Saturday Night Live,” where he served as head writer and anchored “Weekend Update.”
“I was engaged, so obviously I would never have a flirt radar up,” he said on “Howard Stern.”
Meyers joined the sketch show in 2001 and later met human rights attorney Alexi Ashe at the 2008 wedding of “SNL” alum Chris Kattan. The pair got engaged in 2013 and married the same year that Lawrence hosted.
“When I worked at ‘SNL,’ I never had the bandwidth to flirt with anyone,” Meyers remembered. The native Illinoisan added that he always felt “filthy and sweaty and stressed,” joking that Lawrence’s past crush “reflects poorly” on her taste.
Left: Will Sanjuan/Invision/Associated Press; Right: Stephane Cardinale/Corbis/Getty Images
Lawrence appeared on “Late Night” in 2015 to promote “Mockingjay — Part 2,” but she had other things in mind.
“You probably know this by now because I told everybody at NBC,” she told Meyers at the time. “But years ago, I did ‘SNL.’ You were working there, I don’t know what you did. I had a really big crush on you. So I had this whole plan — all week I was like, ‘He’s going to ask me out.’”
Lawrence explained that she eventually decided to take matters into her own hands. Fortunately, she mentioned her intentions to an “SNL” wardrobe employee, who told her, “Honey, he’s engaged.”
The actor, who herself got married in 2019, hilariously noted on “Late Night” that Meyers wasn’t her only celebrity crush, as she’d also given “Curb Your Enthusiasm” creator Larry David her number. Meyers had some thoughts about that.
“I’m feeling a little less awesome about the crush,” he told her.