Back in September 2023, Hasan Minhaj saw his chances of becoming the new The Daily Show host (and possibly his whole career) go up in flames after a damaging New Yorker article revealed that the comedian had embellished personal details about his life in his standup act. The most egregious instances were a story about his daughter receiving anthrax in the mail and a racist encounter involving his date to a homecoming dance.
At the time, Comedy Central simply said that the network was expanding its search “beyond Minhaj,” but a later report from Puck News claimed that Minhaj actually had the gig locked down until the New Yorker scandal stopped the process dead in its tracks. Now, former Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. is corroborating that story.
During a recent appearance on Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out podcast, Wood Jr. confirmed that the New Yorker article is “why everything fell apart.”
Via Entertainment Weekly:
“As far as I was told, Hasan was going to be the guy,” Wood said, noting that his initial reaction was, “Okay, cool, so I’ll hang out here the rest of the year, and we’ll see what Hasan wants to do, what his vision is, whether I fit in that. I’m still trying to sell my own sitcom, trying to write movies, there’s other s— I wanna do, but let’s see.”
“The New Yorker article comes out, and then the buzz is there’s a shift at Comedy Central in whether or not Hasan is still going to be the guy,” Wood said. “Which eventually turned into he’s not going to be the guy.”
Wood also revealed that the decision to abandon Minhaj led to Comedy Central having no idea what it was going to do with The Daily Show, and that’s when he decided to make his exit.
“In my opinion, they couldn’t articulate adequately enough for me what that process would be and whether or not I fit into that process,” he said.
We know that Comedy Central’s big move was to bring back Jon Stewart, but that surprise decision happened rather quickly after Stewart walked away from Apple TV. By that point, Wood was already gone and making moves for his post-Daily Show life.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
