Seth Meyers challenges his nice guy image

There was a hole in Seth Meyers’ office at “Saturday Night Live” for seven years.

A sketch he’d written was cut for someone else’s piece, and in a fit of what Meyers described as “door-slamming petulance,” he threw the dressing room entrance open so hard that the door handle went through the wall. Michael Shoemaker, a producer on the show who has become perhaps Meyers’ closest professional partner, refused to get the crater fixed.

“I want you to see it every day,” Meyers recalled Shoemaker telling him. “I want you to remember how small of a thing it was.””

Aggravated pettiness might seem at odds with the persona Meyers has crafted on television: 13 years on “SNL,” with the final eight as an anchor of Weekend Update, followed by a decade as the comedically precise but genial host of “Late Night With Seth Meyers.” He struck a similarly charming note in 2019 in his first stand-up special, “Lobby Baby,” about the birth of his second child in the unexpected location the title suggests.

However, Meyers’ new HBO special, “Dad Man Walking,” proposes the idea that he could be an antagonist — even if only of the most benign and humorous type. It’s about parenting, specifically the reality that “good parents have moments where they really hate what their kids are doing,” Meyers said.

While the broadly cantankerous tone seems like a departure, he said it actually reflects a facet of himself that has always been there.

It is the latest example of Meyers finding a way to channel the testier, less flattering aspects of his personality in more productive ways. And while he has occasionally struggled to control such impulses in the past — see: the hole-in-the-wall story — he now knows how to manage them and make them work for him.

In this case, they fueled both the material for “Dad Man Walking” and the somewhat spiteful reason to make the special in the first place.

“I do these specials to prove a thing that nobody has ever asked me to prove,” he said. “That I can also do stand-up, because I don’t think people see me as one.”

His desire to invalidate his imaginary detractors was one reason (the other being the writers’ strike) for beginning a residency with John Oliver last year at the Beacon Theater in New York City. Meyers developed the material that became “Dad Man Walking” during the monthly performances — the residency is scheduled to continue into 2025 — though he had to overcome initial nervousness about how it would be received.

“I’m worried that I’m not going out as the Seth they know from ‘Late Night.’” he said. That meant showing audiences a part of what Meyers called the “little bit of [expletive] in me.

Meyers focuses on the differences between him and his wife, Alexi Ashe, when it comes to parenting. He said Ashe, who reviews and is welcome to veto jokes that pertain to her, told him: “I don’t care how mean you make me sound, as long as you always make me right.” He obliges, describing the version of himself depicted in the special as “the home dope.”

Meyers has been the host of “Late Night” for 10 years. He has no plans to leave, but he knows he won’t be an affable host and boss forever. Which is another reason projects like “Dad Man Walking” appeal to him.

“When it’s over, I don’t want to say, ‘What am I going to do now?’” he said of “Late Night.” “I want to be able to say, ‘So I’ll keep doing these things now.’”

For the time being, he will continue the monthly shows with Oliver and look for new opportunities to expand the “Late Night” footprint. Things don’t always go the way he hopes, and sometimes he gets angry at himself, but he has learned how to keep a lid on things.

For starters, his office walls remain hole-free.