‘The Daily Show’ Is Going Host-less, for Now
Apparently, the powers that be at Paramount Global have decided not to heed the message Roy Wood Jr. mouthed while onstage accepting the Daily Show’s Emmy for outstanding variety talk show: “Hire a host.”
Per Variety, Comedy Central is pivoting away from its search for a new, permanent Daily Show host to replace Trevor Noah. Instead, the network is choosing to rely on its team of Daily Show correspondents and a series of celebrity guest hosts to lead the show in the coming months.
According to Variety’s sources, when The Daily Show returns from its hiatus, there will not be a permanent host replacing Noah, who left The Daily Show after seven years in December of 2022. Instead, the Emmy-winning talk series will rely on its cast of correspondents—which include Desi Lydic, Ronny Chieng, Michael Kosta, and Dulce Sloan—to alternate hosting duties, along with celebrity guest stars. Wood, a longtime and beloved correspondent on The Daily Show, left the series last year because he was passed over for the permanent hosting gig.
“I can’t come up with plan B while still working with plan A,” Wood told NPR in October. “The job of correspondent—it’s not really one where you can juggle multiple things. [And] I think eight years is a good run.”
The search for a permanent replacement for Noah, who took over the job from longtime and beloved Daily Show host Jon Stewart in 2015, has been fraught, to say the least. In the summer of 2023, The Daily Show seemed as if it were coalescing behind comedian and former correspondent Hasan Minhaj. But after a New Yorker article questioned the veracity of Minhaj’s stand-up material and accused Minhaj of elaborating stories involving Islamophobia, Minhaj was reportedly dropped from the running for the Daily Show gig. (Minhaj has vehemently denied the allegations against him.)
In the meantime, celebrity guest hosts including Sarah Silverman, Leslie Jones, Chelsea Handler, Kal Penn, and Charlamagne Tha God have all taken turns behind the desk. But rather than bump one of them up to full-time Daily Show host, according to Variety, Paramount Global executives have decided they “don’t feel ready to choose one at this time” and will instead rely on a “newsroom” concept that relies on a group of correspondents leading the program. Per Variety, they’ll still have their eye out for a permanent host to start…sometime.
Vanity Fair has reached out to Comedy Central for comment.
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