Richard Branson launched himself into low earth orbit this week, but don’t count Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler among the people excited about it.
Meyers and Poehler resurrected a bit they first started when they were on “Saturday Night Live” called “Really!?! with Seth and Amy.” It was the perfect format for them to air out their grievances related to Branson, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and SpaceX’s Elon Musk, all of whom are obscenely rich and trying to beat each other to space.
Since they first created the bit, Meyers has had Poehler join him on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” to revive it a few times over the years. Spoiler alert: although it’s been awhile since Meyers and Poehler did the bit, they’ve still got it.
“I miss the old billionaires, the ones that wore top hats and ate caviar with their hands,” Poehler joked. “Now all these new guys do his intermittent fasting and they learn Krav Maga so they can dodge all those taxes… like they don’t have 12 layers of security at all times.”
Poehler then pointed out, “you know who isn’t going into space? Any women. Really? Yeah, we’re staying down here because we have to fix all the things we have to do down here. Really,” she said.
Meyers picked it up from there and made a joke about how Branson really didn’t go that far up anyway. Branson completed a suborbital flight to about a 50-mile high altitude before descending. The threshold is what Branson’s aerospace company Virgin Galactic considers “the threshold of space,” according to SpaceNews.
“Also, Richard Branson didn’t go to outer space. He just went pretty high for a plane. You went to outer sky. I mean, really?” Meyers said. “You did the astronaut equivalent of driving by your ex’s house to see if the lights were on? What was the best thing you saw out the window, a kite? Really.”
After dunking on Branson for a bit, the two “SNL” alums took turns taking shots at Bezos, who plans to launch into space alongside his brother and several other wealthy passengers July 20. Bezos auctioned off a ticket to the ride worth $28 million, a figure Meyers and Poehler just couldn’t fathom.
“Really, somebody paid $28 million to join Jeff Bezos on his flight. I mean, that takes calling shotgun to a whole new level,” Poehler said. “Really, that’s like that parent at your kid’s school fundraiser who outbid you on the free blowout. We get it Linda, we know you’re a billionaire.”
Poehler and Meyers also predicted (they might actually be right here) that billionaires and people wealthy enough to afford private space travel might cause some kind of catastrophic issue in the cosmos. “They’re going to go up to space, they’re going to be showing it off and they’re gonna accidentally poke a hole in space — and we’re all going to get sucked up or the aliens will get in. Have we learned nothing from ‘Independence Day’?” an exasperated Poehler asked.
Meyers said he thought that if that did happen, the space racing billionaires would be the first to point the finger at the taxpayer to foot the bill, as they have time and again.
He and the “Parks and Recreation” star also figure that at some point billionaires will start blaming jet lag on space travel and talking in a “space accent, which I think is just how Elon Musk sounds,” Meyers said
“We’ll try to get them to pay for the space hole they made (and) you know, they’re just going to say that seems like something the taxpayer should cover,” Meyers joked.
Check out the full clip above.