If you’ve been watching The Daily Show on the 2025 TV schedule, you know that the show continuing the format of having Jon Stewart host the satirical news program on Mondays, and then correspondents Michael Kosta, Desi Lydia, Ronny Chieng or Jordan Klepper hosting the rest of the week’s shows. However, there was a period in 2023 when former Daily Show talent Hasan Minhaj was being lined up to take over as permanent host, only to lose that job in the wake of controversy surrounding his standup material. Minhaj has once again opened about about the firing, but this time it’s Roy Wood Jr.’s comments about what the cast knew at that time that really caught my attention.
Like Minhaj, Roy Wood Jr. also used to be a correspondent on The Daily Show, beginning when Trevor Noah took over hosting the series in September 2015 and leaving in October 2023. He and Minhaj were part of a THR roundtable that included fellow comics Seth Meyers, Jamie Foxx, Chelsea Handler and Sarah Silverman, and when asked when he found the “comedic potential” about his experience having the hosting job taken away, Minhaj answered:
One of the first jokes that came to me was when I called a buddy, and I was like, ‘How bad is it?’ And he was like, ‘The article is bad, but the photos are good.’ I was like, ‘That’s fucking hilarious.’ It’s also very funny to fail so bad that you bring back Jon Stewart. That’s objectively funny.
Hasan Minhaj started out as correspondent on The Daily Show in 2014, the year before Jon Stewart left the first time. He stuck around until 2018, when he departed to host his short-lived Netflix comedy talk show Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, but then came back to his old stomping grounds in early 2023 to guest host for a week. Then later that year, it was reported he was the frontrunner to become the permanent host.
However, that September, a New Yorker article was published claiming that Minhaj had embellished certain stories in his standup acts. So despite the fact that his deal was supposedly “all but done” by the end of the summer, the combination of that controversy and the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes sidelining plans to introduce a new Daily Show host by the fall resulted in the deal being scrapped. Roy Wood Jr. later chimed with his experience of learning the news:
Can I also say from The Daily Show side, when that came out and they were like, ‘Yeah, Hasan’s not going to be the host,’ nobody would give any details and we were all trying to figure out, ‘Well, if it’s not going to be Hasan, who’s it going to be? Should I stay? Well, what happened to Hasan?’ It was just, ‘We’re going to reopen the search.’ Nobody could even put into words what it was you were being accused of.
Although Roy Wood Jr. made his last appearance on The Daily Show in May 2023, it wasn’t until the following October that he officially departed. So although the series was off the air that summer and early fall, he and the others working on the show were in communication about the Hasan Minhaj situation, but couldn’t get a clear answer on what was exactly happening. That’s so bizarre to me, as you’d think that of all people in the world, the actors, writers and crew on The Daily Show would be made privy to why the shakeup was occurring.
This roundtable wasn’t the first time Hasan Minhaj has noted how his misfortune paved the way for Jon Stewart to return to The Daily Show. But this time, he also compared it to if Seth Meyers had died and the ghost of Johnny Carson was brought back for Late Night (even though he hosted The Tonight Show). Stewart coming back clearly worked out considering he’s continuing in his current position until December, and maybe he’ll extend his contract again for a 2026 run.
The Daily Show airs Mondays through Thursdays at 11 p.m. ET on Comedy Central, and episodes can be streamed afterwards with a Paramount+ subscription. Hasn’t Minhaj can be seen next in the 2025 movie release of Tron: Ares, and Roy Wood Jr. will resume hosting CNN’s Have I Got News for You in September.
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