Back when Jon Stewart announced his retirement, and up until Trevor Noah was announced as his successor, the world went temporarily crazy trying to figure out who be the next host of The Daily Show. Tina Fey? Amy Poehler? Chris Rock? A DIFFERENT FAMOUS PERSON WHO WAS FAR TOO BUSY AND SUCCESSFUL TO COMMIT TO A LONG-TERM GIG FOLLOWING IN A COLLEAGUE’S FOOTSTEPS?
Hmm. About that last thing. There’s a long story about Comedy Central in the latest New York Times Magazine, and right up at the top of it we find out that at least one of those names actually toyed with the idea on one condition…
Comedy Central contemplated hiring several bigger stars. The network made a call to Amy Poehler, for instance, to gauge her interest. (As someone outside the company with knowledge of the exchange put it, “They were pretty much expecting her to say no, and it was the quickest no in history.”) Chris Rock considered signing on, but not past Nov. 8, 2016: He wanted to cede the desk to a more permanent replacement after the next election. [Head of original programming Kent Alterman] acknowledged that Comedy Central had a lot of conversations with different people,” but Noah, who had appeared several times on The Daily Show, was a favorite of Stewart’s, and he won the network over. “Trevor’s the only person we made an offer to,” Alterman said.
Well, that would have been interesting. It wouldn’t have really done much to solve Comedy Central’s larger problem of finding a permanent host, unless Rock kind of fell in love with the gig, but still. Interesting.
One of the concerns about the timing of Noah’s takeover is that this young, largely unproven new host will be thrust straight into the 2016 election. (The flip side of that coin is that he’ll be walking into the gig with plenty of material to work with.) Maybe it could have saved Comedy Central some potential headaches, and bought them some more host searching time, to have Rock come in like a comedy mercenary and just lob bombs at the American election process for 12 months. We’ll never know now, obviously, but that could have really been something.
(Via NY Times Magazine)
