Weeks after former Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. mouthed “hire a host” while onstage accepting the show’s Emmy for outstanding variety talk show, Comedy Central has heeded his advice—sort of. Jon Stewart, who hosted The Daily Show for an esteemed 16-year run from 1999 to 2015, is returning to the desk as host, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
However, his reinstatement comes with a wrinkle.
Starting on February 12, Stewart will only host on Monday nights through the 2024 election. The rest of the week’s shows, which will also be executive produced by Stewart, are to be emceed by its correspondents and frequent guest hosts like Jordan Klepper, Desi Lydic, Ronny Chieng, Michael Kosta, and Dulce Sloan.
Stewart became something of a free agent after he exited his AppleTV+ series The Problem with Jon Stewart last October following “creative differences” between the comedian and the streamer, reportedly over third-season topics including AI, China, and the election.
“Jon Stewart is the voice of our generation, and we are honored to have him return to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show to help us all make sense of the insanity and division roiling the country as we enter the election season,” Chris McCarthy, President/CEO of Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios, said in a statement to the publication. “In our age of staggering hypocrisy and performative politics, Jon is the perfect person to puncture the empty rhetoric and provide much-needed clarity with his brilliant wit.”
The search for a permanent replacement for Trevor Noah, who inherited the job from Stewart in 2015 and announced his departure in December 2022 after seven years, has been a frustrating one.
After months spent cycling through guest hosts, Comedy Central appeared to settle on comedian and former correspondent Hasan Minhaj as next to get the gig. But after a New Yorker article examined Minhaj’s history of embellishing stories involving Islamophobia, he was reportedly dropped from the running. (Minhaj has repeatedly denied the allegations against him.)
Wood, a longtime and popular 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,” he 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.” Earlier this month, sources told Variety that The Daily Show would go hostless for the foreseeable future, continuing to rely on correspondents and a series of celebrity guest hosts instead.
But that report made no mention of Stewart’s impending homecoming. While speaking with Vanity Fair in 2022, the comedian spoke about the commitment required to take on such a role. “If you want to do it to its highest excellence, which I think Trevor did, it’s a sole focus,” Stewart said.
“He’s an incredibly creative and varied performer. Going on the road, producing, writing, all those things—there’s no way you could achieve both and have them live up to the standards that I’m sure he sets for himself.” Stewart added, “Hosting that show was an incredible honor, but there is kind of a dog-years quality to it.”
While the latest announcement does nothing to move the needle on a permanent host, it buys Comedy Central a “Moment of Zen” as another presidential election looms.
