On the one hand, Nicole Byer should be a permanent late-night host. She’s fun, spontaneous, glamorous, and can have good banter with a brick wall. On the other, it would suck if Byer was stuck behind a late-night desk every night because she deserves to be freed up for more exciting projects. This internal debate will eat at you when watching Byer fill in on Jimmy Kimmel Live! interviewing Aubrey Plaza. Byer just has entertaining, believably authentic reactions to Plaza’s stories about filming The White Lotus season two and the ensemble comedy Spin Me Round in Italy.
One of those stories is about Plaza’s favorite activity while filming White Lotus and living in Sicily for five months. “I got really into going into town in the old little Italian village and buying weird grandma lamps and putting them in my room,†she describes our dream life. “But we were staying in a five-star hotel and the staff would be like, ‘You know, we can give you a lamp, if you ask. We can give you anything.’ And I was like, ‘Well I’ll just buy my own lamps, thank you very much.’ She even says that local police were suspicious of her “double-fisting lamps.†The whole interview is a lot of lamp talk — Plaza doesn’t even bring a picture of one of the lamps! — but Byer somehow manages to keep the vibes sparkling and sexy. That’s late-night panache.