For the past 25 years, the best political satire in America hasn’t been found in newspapers, or in comedy clubs, or on movie screens or live theater stages. Its home has been Comedy Central‘s “The Daily Show,” which premiered in 1996 and, under the leadership of host Jon Stewart in the early 2000s, became an astonishingly perceptive, enlightening, and (most importantly) hilarious forum for processing the daily news.
The program has gone through several iterations over the years, including a nine-year period during which Stewart left the show and was replaced first by Trevor Noah and then a series of guest hosts. Stewart came back at the beginning of 2024 under the condition that he would only host Mondays, with the rest of the week anchored by a different host from a rotating bench of senior correspondents that includes Ronny Chieng, Jordan Klepper, Michael Kosta, and Desi Lydic (Josh Johnson was promoted to the lineup just a few weeks ago).
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The result has been the most consistently smart and funny year-and-a-half in the history of “The Daily Show” as well as the most honored, with a dozen Emmy nominations this year. Stewart’s guiding principles for the show remain in place, but the perspective has been broadened and deepened by the addition of new hosts. Without losing any of its wit, “The Daily Show” has sneakily become a source not only for comedy but catharsis, as the empathetic, razor-sharp ensemble finds ways every single night of making sense out of some of the most senseless, horrifying, and sometimes merely stupefying events most of us have encountered in our lifetimes.
IndieWire sat down for a roundtable discussion with Chieng, Klepper, Kosta, and Lydic to discuss their approach to blending comedy and information, how they respond to the speed of the Trump-era news cycle, and their feelings about the state of late night comedy in the wake of Stephen Colbert (a former “Daily Show” correspondent himself) getting cancelled by CBS.
This following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
IndieWire: One of the things that amazes me about “The Daily Show” is that every episode is a finely crafted jewel of satire — yet by its very nature you must come into the office every morning with no idea of what you’re going to be covering that night. How do you create each episode on such a tight turnaround?
Jordan Klepper: There is a rigorous system in place to get us moving and moving fast. We’ve had chaotic times in the last couple of years where Trevor stepped down, we had guest hosts, we had a pandemic, we had a strike, we had all sorts of things. There’s been a lot of change, which meant the show had to figure out its structure and the ways in which it worked best so that you could have somebody come in and hit the ground running. And I feel like with the Trump news cycle and how everything changes so quickly, the structure has been solidified and evolved to a place that’s really effective right now.
Starting a day, I get up with some ideas. I’m watching the news and reading the news, and I have a general sense of what the world is talking about. But as soon as you arrive, there’s a meeting with Justin Melkmann and a few of the other producers just to get a sense of the news they’ve collected, so there are the five or six stories you have in your head and you immediately get 30 other stories thrown at you. We have a quick conversation and pick a handful from that, then we watch clips and get a better sense of not only here’s what’s happening, but here’s what’s interesting, here’s what’s funny.
Ronny Chieng: These are processes which have been developed over 25 years of making a show, and they’ve been refined constantly to the point where even lunchtime is optimized for comedy writing. “The Daily Show” developed its own language for joke writing. Everyone has shorthand for what we need to insert at any given time.
Desi Lydic: The team is so incredible in terms of gathering all of the stories and the footage, so you’re armed with everything that you could possibly want to talk about. We have a studio production team that’s watching stuff throughout the weekend, leading up to the week. And then you have the digital expansion team that’s also doing the same thing. If there’s something that Trump continues to talk about, like water pressure or something, if studio production doesn’t have it, the digital team has it. It’s a testament to the machine and how everyone is so accustomed to collaborating and working with each other.
Michael Kosta: When I host, I remind the audience every day that we showed up that morning with a blinking cursor on a blank computer screen. That’s the magic of late night. It was written today. It happened today. We don’t go to some writing retreat for seven months and come up with the show. The machine is so calibrated that when you are the host, if you step out for 10 minutes and take a call, it fucks up the machine. If I’m not on time to my morning meeting, we’re rushing all day until 5:00 p.m. So you do have to be very aware of that machine. It’s important that it’s moving correctly.
Jordan alluded to the speed with which the Trump news cycle moves. How often do you have a show prepared and then have to pivot at the last minute because of some piece of late-breaking news?
Lydic: I would say it happens at least once a week, and it happens often enough so that the machine has evolved to accommodate for it. We’ll try to get down to rehearsal a little quicker knowing that there’s a high likelihood that some story is going to drop right after rehearsal, and we’re going to have to do a page one rewrite starting at 4:30 for a 6:00 taping. It happened the last time Trump was in office, but it’s definitely happening a lot more often now.
Kosta: You can’t be as precious with the words when you’re coming up with things a lot quicker, but I think it’s really fun. When we do a quick change of the whole first act, it reminds me of when we do our live shows, which we do after presidential debates and midterms. Those live shows have a different energy and a different intensity. If a light falls and hits us in the head, that’s going to be on the show that night.
Klepper: The rotating host thing also allows us some freedom in our narrative structures. A lot of times Jon comes in on Monday and gives an overarching editorial take on what’s happened over the last week or the last couple days, which opens up our Tuesday response and gives us more flexibility in responding to Trump news that breaks. It also gives you space to create something that is more of a narrative arc later in the week that allows you to take a break from that news and see something else that’s going on. The news is constantly changing and you can never catch up to it, and I think everybody has to figure out a way in which they can adapt and improvise. But we have built into our structure variations that allow us to bring in that inspiration and play with something that maybe another host wouldn’t. It gives you the freedom to find something new, and that’s been really exciting in this past year.
What about the interview portion of the show? I’m guessing that for many of you the interview aspect was new, what was the learning curve like for that final section of each episode?
Lydic: I did not have experience doing that before other than going out into the field and interviewing in character, which is a whole other thing. I think when you do that you’re looking for tension, and you’re provoking and you’re living in the awkward silences. That can be really fun comedically, but when someone comes into the studio you generally want to be a little more welcoming and supportive. We all got advice from Jon on that, and his very simple advice was that you have to find something that you’re interested in about your guest. You have to find something that you’re curious about. I’ve found that the more research I can do, the more I can become a fan of something, then the better it’ll go and the more comfortable they’ll feel.
Kosta: I would say the interview is the part that makes me feel the most nervous. I want to make sure our guest gets promoted and the audience really understands what it is that they’ve done. Some of these people that come on have done tremendous things like climbed Mount Everest or passed gun legislation, really difficult things that need to be promoted and shared. I want to make sure they’re welcomed and celebrated.
Chieng: I feel like I’m still learning how to do it. Every wannabe amateur dumbass podcast out there is essentially doing an interview show, so what are you bringing that’s different? We’re doing a six- or seven-minute interview, so we have to summarize why we’re talking to this person. We have to get jokes in there, but he have to showcase them so that if they’re saying something important, people will read their book or watch their documentary. It’s a difficult skill to be entertaining and get enough out of the guests for people to want to continue the conversation, because we can’t possibly cover all their expertise in the segment.
What about the interviews you do out in the field for comedy bits? For example, Jordan, you go deep into MAGA country and strike a really interesting balance of poking fun at people’s contradictions and absurdities without actually looking down at them. It’s an unbelievably tricky thing to pull off.
Klepper: I do find a lot of humor and hypocrisy out there, but I am genuinely curious and I have built up relationships with a lot of people I’ve seen on the road. I go back to Trump rallies and say hi to people I’ve talked to. I’ve been invited to officiate weddings of MAGA people I’ve interviewed. So I am a part of this world. Again, I go out there looking for hypocrisy, looking for humor, but the thing I get to do that traditional journalism doesn’t is I get to wear my bias on my sleeve, and I also get to repeat my question over and over and over again.
I come from improv, and the whole purpose of improv is start from nothing. Listen to somebody and build off of what they’re saying. Create something, create a space where people want to share so you can build something more. And that’s the same philosophy out in the field. The most interesting moments are not making a joke about something somebody says. The most interesting moments are where you give them the space to say that thing that is contradictory to the thing they said just a few minutes ago. And it also happens to be the thing that they tell their buddies at the bar, but they won’t tell CNN. So our job is to go out there and create a space that feels different than CNN, that feels like they’re not fighting and trying to win but that they’re trying to communicate something to their buddy at the bar.
That leads to a broader question for all of you, which is how much you find your own beliefs and positions challenged or broadened by the work you do on the show.
Kosta: Every time I come back from a field piece, I’m a different person. They convince me half the time. I remember I met with this water dowser, this old man who had these antennas and he walked around and he would find wells of water. And I’d say, “How are you finding the wells?” And he would say, “I’m feeling for the vibrations underneath the ground.” Then we met with a scientific geologist who finds water for a living. And I said, “How do you find it?” He goes, “We feel for vibrations in the ground.” I’m like, “That’s the same shit as that guy!” Then that opened my mind like, is this dowser shit real? So all I can say is I am malleable. I’m open-minded, and lots of times I come home hardened and lots of times I come home and my mind’s a little more open.
Lydic: I think my perspective has definitely shifted in terms of what I think we can mine comedy from. I think that the news has become increasingly more frightening and overwhelming and anxiety inducing, and this show has forced me to find the humor in all of it. There are so many days when I read a story and head into a week of work and think, I don’t know how we’re going to make this funny. And somehow there is some hypocrisy exposed or some politician or legislator that does something that we can laugh about. Somehow there’s a take that I find or the room finds and we figure out a way, because we have to, it’s our job. So it’s been really great for me in terms of trusting that we can find the humor and the joy and the catharsis somewhere along the way, even when it feels really hopeless.
Sorry, I just treated this like a therapy session.
Chieng: When Jon Stewart came back, he told everybody, “Our allegiance is to the comedy. We’re not trying to get anyone elected or not elected. We’re just here to do comedy and make fun of the hypocrisy.” That was a very clarifying thing for me, and I think that’s when the show is at its best — when it’s making fun of institutions and hypocrisy on either side. I guess everyone assumes the show has a certain point of view, but I’m willing to bet money that whatever people think our point of view is is actually wrong. It’s always fun when we are able to make jokes on both sides that people don’t expect, because a lot of comedy comes from doing the unexpected.
Have my views shifted? I’m not sure if my political view has shifted, but my view towards comedy has definitely evolved to be more fearless and to have less of an allegiance to any one side. Which, by the way, makes it more impactful when we do go after people. Because they know that we’re not doing this because we’re biased. We’re doing this because this is literally insane. Objectively, this is insane. You can have your political bias, but what is happening right here over my shoulder is objectively stupid and insane.
Klepper: Times are dark. They’re different than they were four years ago. They’re different than they were two years ago. And we’re constantly dealing with images of ICE deportations and what’s happening in the Middle East, mixed with the chaos and the dumbfuckery of a Donald Trump press conference. So it is a fascinating conversation each morning: what do we think we can comment on and should comment on and where is it the right place for us to add humor? We’re constantly in a conversation not only with ourselves, but also with the audience that we perform this in front of. They are scared, they are in need of laughter, they’re in need of community, they’re in need of being challenged. And so when we get these stories, we have to calibrate the things that we’re showing, the ways in which we’re talking them, and the amount of time, because we want to keep that trust with an audience.
Speaking of scary times, a few weeks ago the entire landscape of late night lost a major component when Stephen Colbert’s show was canceled. How do you see the future of late night comedy? Are you optimistic? Pessimistic?
Klepper: I grew up as such a big fan of Colbert. He’s part of our family here at “The Daily Show,” and the idea of that show ending is heartbreaking. We’re all super big fans of that show, we’re all huge fans of late night, the genre. It’s been such a part of my life being a fan of it and a purveyor of it as well. I will say this: I talk to people. “The Daily Show” has grown and expanded and we’re getting more viewers than in the last decade. We’re not just doing a late night show, we’re also doing specials. We’re also doing side series. We also do field pieces. In many ways, more people are engaging with “The Daily Show” than ever have before, and the show itself has figured out ways to connect with people beyond just the 30 minutes that it’s on television. It connects in all these other ways, and frankly, I think it’s more important to do that now in this chaotic time where people want to look to a source who can have a conversation with them in real time. I think “The Daily Show” has been doing that for 30 years.
Lydic: Yeah, I think the thing that gives me hope is knowing that “The Daily Show” has been around for almost 30 years and has been through a number of historical changes, cultural changes, a pandemic, strikes, host changes, presidencies, elections, and so far we’ve been able to maintain our point of view and our service to comedy and I sure hope that we get to continue to do that. I’m hopeful that we will one way or another.
Chieng: I think that it’s a very American form, late night. Late night is woven into the American aesthetic. And so there are traditional reasons, there are cultural reasons, to keep it going. If America — where we have the craziest politics, the most money in entertainment, the most talented comedy writers — if America can’t do political satire, no one can. This is the only country that has the most freedom of speech combined with the most insane politics and the best comedy talent. I have a lot of faith in the quality of American comedy right now.
“The Daily Show” airs weeknights on Comedy Central and streams on Paramount+.
