Comedian Seth Meyers performing at The Mirage

When is the mantle of political humor thrust upon a comedian? Perhaps when it's a big poofy helmet wig of John Kerry hair.

Seth Meyers returns to The Mirage with his stand-up act this weekend, but his drawing power is based on "Saturday Night Live"; both his visibility in the "Weekend Update" chair and his water-cooler moments as the show's head writer.

The 38-year-old comedian didn't start out in political comedy, but with years in Chicago's sketch comedy scene that led to "Saturday Night Live."

Playing Kerry during the 2004 presidential season was the turning point, he says. "When you do an impression of a politician, you pay attention to their speeches and their public appearances. You're just looking for any advantage you can exaggerate as an impressionist. In a weird way that sort of started it," he says.

The transition solidified when he became the mock news anchor in 2006. Two years later, he was head writer on the sketches with Tina Fey that defined Sarah Palin in pop culture almost before the real one could define herself in the campaign.

But Meyers says his stand-up act is only about half current events. "The news refreshes itself every day, and there's always a wealth of material," he says. With an hour onstage, though, "You have time to hit a lot of different topics, and that's what I think I like the most about stand-up. It's not one or the other.

"It's nice how, ultimately, even politicians are humans, and so you can sort of weave back and forth between what they're doing and what you're doing."

Neither comic sketches nor mock news anchoring leave room for personal observations. "Seeing anyone you know from television live, you want the part you can't get on television. People will definitely leave knowing more about me than when they came in."

To a degree. When he made his Las Vegas debut last July, Meyers says he met up with other comedians in town and "we got near trouble, but we avoided trouble. ... We mostly just played cards, but we stayed out of blotters."

In the age of camera-equipped cellphones, "It's not just Las Vegas now. You can't really get in trouble anywhere."

You can tell from the shifts in his voice that Meyers enjoys talking about "Saturday Night Live" more than himself. He's the show's veteran cast member and happy to agree that the cast owned the Republican debates last fall.

"In a weird way they were almost too crazy," he says. "To just quote them directly seemed like an ad hominem attack. That was a tricky thing for us.

"We were chomping at the bit when the season started, but they were almost so crazy you feel like people didn't quite pay attention to them," he adds. As the cast had a field day with Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, "the fun thing was watching the press take everyone seriously for a week."

"For a long time I was saying it was like watching 'Survivor' when no one got voted off the island."

Eventually, they could sense the public tuning out. "What we need for our stuff to work is for people to be paying attention to the politics," he says. "Once we end up with two candidates and their running mates and a summer of campaigning, I have a feeling it'll be really fun for us in the fall."

Though it's not as convenient for him as it is for West Coast-based comedians, Meyers hopes he can keep doing stand-up on the Strip.

"When you're headed down on an elevator in a Las Vegas casino about to do a show, it's a great feeling," he says. "You don't have to tell people in Las Vegas there's a little added energy in the air, but I felt that as well."

And while "Bridesmaids" won his "SNL" castmate Kristen Wiig a trip to the Oscars, Meyers declares a movie project called "Key Party" to be "long dead."

"Maybe one day," he says of the movie, "but it's not really my focus right now. ... We all know it's a lot harder than just watching 'Bridesmaids.' "

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.