Roy Wood Jr. Is Looking Beyond ‘The Daily Show’

When I reach Roy Wood Jr. by phone, he’s resting in a hotel room in Napa, California, where he’s in town for a corporate gig. The comedian relishes these quiet moments in between jobs, where he’s able to turn his mind off and “not do shit.” He’s been going full bore for the past year, touring the country performing stand-up shows, hosting the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, serving as a Daily Show correspondent, and auditioning to be its next host in the wake of Trevor Noah’s sudden departure. But right now, the biggest question on his mind is whether he should take a 20-minute Uber to Sonic for a milkshake or DoorDash it.

“So … it’s one of those scenarios!” he says with a laugh.

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In the eyes of his fans, Wood Jr. did everything he could to be the next Daily Show host. He put in eight years as a correspondent, aced his guest-hosting stint, and delivered such an expertly crafted White House Correspondents’ Dinner set that the chuckleheads over at Fox News couldn’t so much as muster a rebuttal. And yet, it was his ex-colleague, Hasan Minhaj, who emerged as the frontrunner for the job. That seemed to change, however, following a New Yorker story that exposed Minhaj’s history of lying in his stand-up sets, on his Netflix show, and elsewhere. While Comedy Central hasn’t yet made a decision on who will succeed Noah (who was hand-selected by Jon Stewart to succeed him), Wood Jr. made waves by announcing his departure as Daily Show correspondent in early October.

He spoke to Rolling Stone all about it.

I saw you were on the picket lines during the writers’ strike. What have the past five-ish months been like for you during the strike and how do you feel now that a deal’s been reached?
I’m happy that a deal’s been reached, and I’m anxious that the actors will get something really soon. I don’t imagine one thing not happening if the next thing isn’t around the corner. I got out on the picket lines, but not as much as some of the others who I feel like are doing the real work. It’ll be interesting to get back into television, but more interesting to see is what kind of stuff starts getting approved. I think there’s always a creative molting on the other side of a strike. Reality TV exploded on the other side of the ’07 strike, so I’m curious what 2024 brings. They’re going to have to pay more to make shows now, and I wonder if that’s going to affect the production budgets and the type of shows we see.

I feel streaming was going to contract anyway and now the studios will use the strike deals as a pretense for cutting jobs and shows.
That’s correct. In my opinion, the hand was already starting to come down because they were cutting the episode counts for sitcoms. And take Bob Hearts Abishola on CBS. They took it from six or seven series regulars down to two series regulars. Everyone had to agree to a pay cut on Bob Hearts, and that’s an established show entering its fifth season. If they’re trimming fat there, the new shows will have to be lean. Actors will be getting more money, but now there will be four primary actors when there were eight.

How has the writers’ strike changed your view of the industry?
People said, “Content is king,” but now I think, “Audience is king.” And the ones who will find an audience will be more in control of their fate. People used to say, “You’re talented, let’s find you an audience,” but now you’re expected to have an audience. Ziwe is a great example from a couple of years ago. A lot of what became Ziwe’s show was because she built an audience for herself and then Showtime came. The Pat McAfee deal with ESPN is a very telling sign. He essentially started a podcast, found an audience, and then ESPN said, “That’s a nice audience you have. We can bring them over here.” The writers’ strike forced a lot of people into looking at, “What can I do in the meantime till my job comes back?” And I think a lot of people are going to discover that they are happier doing other things than their old job.

Are you describing yourself there?
Oh yeah. You can tell me whatever you want to tell me about late night, but if CBS has chosen to replace their 12:30 a.m. show with something cheaper, that says something. It doesn’t mean that @midnight isn’t entertaining, but it means that networks are looking for cheaper ways to engage people in the same medium. The thing that’s dangerous for late night is that the cheaper they’re going to make late night, the more affordable you’re making it for regular people to compete in the space. The audience numbers are already starting to approach that in terms of YouTube versus streaming. I spent some time this summer thinking, “What would I want to do in this space?” “What would actually get greenlit?” “And of what would be greenlit, what could I actually do my damn self and pull a Ziwe?”

How difficult of a decision was it to step away from your main gig as a correspondent on The Daily Show, and what led you to make it?
Think of it like football. The job of correspondent is the wide receiver, and the host is the quarterback. And I don’t know that I’m going to be chosen to host. And if I’m not chosen to host, I don’t know if the new host A) will want me, or B) is running an offense that fits me as a wide receiver. There’s a world where I still get offered the show, and there’s a world where I get offered something else. But I just know that to figure out what I want to do next, just as a contingency and cover my own ass, I can’t do that while I’m doing my job as correspondent. It would disrespect the job of correspondent.

Did they tell you that you didn’t get The Daily Show hosting job?
When I saw the Hasan [Minhaj] stuff out, I think it was pretty clear that Hasan was the frontrunner. I haven’t heard that it’s for sure Hasan. All I’ve heard is that they’re still deciding.

You killed your guest-hosting “audition” and the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and you’ve put in your time on the show. Do you feel like you’ve been treated fairly in this casting process? Do you think you deserve the job and did everything you could to get it?
I don’t feel like that. To quote The Wire, “Deserve got nothing to do with it.” They said Trevor [Noah] didn’t deserve it, and he proved everybody wrong. The network is going to do what’s best for them, and I respect that. My job is to be as good as possible so that if somebody else needs a quarterback, they know what I can do. There’s also a world where I can create my own expansion team. The thing that I’m grateful for is that I don’t ever need to question if I can do that job, because it’s a lot to sit in that chair. It’s given me a great deal of confidence to prep my host week and prep the White House Correspondents’ Dinner concurrently. And when I was hosting The Daily Show, I was still out till midnight [at comedy clubs] prepping my White House Correspondents’ Dinner set. I’ve never looked at the chair as anything that I deserve. I got eight years of, as Ronny Chieng calls it, the best job in comedy. As weird as it sounds, I am thankful. Because now everyone knows that I can do the thing, and there are many channels.

Have you seen the love online for you? You emerged as The People’s Champ for Daily Show host.
The love online has been very kind, very dope, and very genuine. It’s weird when people are angrier than you are about something. [Laughs] There’s love for me and vitriol toward [The Daily Show], and it’s also hard because you’re trying to get people to understand that Comedy Central has the final say and not The Daily Show. But it’s been very touching to have people appreciate what I do enough to voice an opinion about it. Traveling the last four days straight and talking to strangers in airports about it has been a little — difficult isn’t the word, but people don’t know how to approach me because they don’t know what state I’m in. Some people will come up and say, “Man, go do your thing!” and others will come up and they’re almost in mourning, like I posted about my dog dying or something. I’m fine. I’m thankful. I had a job for eight years, bro. That’s an excellent run.

I wanted to ask you about the recent New Yorker piece about Hasan Minhaj. He’s a former colleague of yours and a leading candidate to host The Daily Show. I’m aware that comedians stretch the truth in their sets, but this seems like something different.
I hope the lesson that Hasan learns is that for people, the line where you can embellish is seemingly a little more vague. It may have been clear to him, but for a lot of people, it’s like, no, you did something that made me feel something. When you stretch the truth for the sake of laughter it’s one thing, but when you do it for the sake of feeling, that’s when people start taking offense. I understand the integrity issue that people are bringing up with regard to Hasan and his stand-up. Do I think that the things that happened within his stand-up make him incapable of being a Daily Show host? Nah. I think he would still be a perfectly fine host and a perfectly fine candidate to host The Daily Show. There’s a gang of people who are never going to forgive him for what he’s done, and I think that goes against the whole concept of forgiveness. Comedy Central is between a rock and a hard place. If Hasan was their frontrunner, there’s a lot of atonement that would have to probably happen with regard to Hasan. To a degree, this whole thing with Hasan is like taking comedian’s jokes and flipping them over to read the nutritional facts. It’s like when you find out that orange juice you were drinking is only 10 percent juice, and you’re infuriated. But you’ve been drinking it for years, so why is it an issue now?

For me and my comedy, it’s not something that I’ve ever done. There’s a joke that I’ve told about my time working at Golden Corral. I tell a story about a customer I was extremely kind to even though the customer never said a word to me, never tipped me, and never did anything to even suggest that he and I had a modicum of a friendship. And part of why I was kind to him was because I was encouraged to be kind to him by another coworker that I had who was a bit of a mentor. And the customer that I was always kind to, but who was always rude, ended up being the same person when I got arrested who kept somebody from beating me up while I was in jail because he remembered me being kind to him. Now, the man in that story who I worked with happened at Golden Corral. The customer part of it was someone I met before at another restaurant I’d worked called Shoney’s. I combined the two things. So for me, that’s fine.

The thing with Hasan that struck me as different is that the jokes — or stories — Hasan made that stretched the truth or were outright lies were ones that painted him as the victim or the hero because he was being targeted for his race. 
Correct.

He flashed a blurry image of a woman during his special who he claimed rejected him for prom because of his race, she was identified from the photo [and doxxed], and it was revealed that that didn’t happen and she in fact had an Indian partner. Or his claim that he confronted Jared Kushner at a Time event for taking a chair reserved for a Saudi activist. Or getting sent anthrax and having some of it fall on his baby. It was a pattern of mistruths that elicited sympathy for him as the victim of racist behavior, or making himself out to be a hero in the case of calling out Kushner to his face.
A lot of what Hasan did put him at the center of things, which gave the appearance that he’s self-centered. And so, when you take a brand like The Daily Show, the question becomes: With someone who views himself as that within their personal stand-up, can you trust them to not do that as the host of a news program? My thing is that, during the time Hasan was telling all these lies, he was hosting Patriot Act. And there was nothing in Patriot Act that pointed to that. The question of whether or not Hasan can concurrently do whatever the hell it is that he’s doing onstage and host an honest and true news program has already been answered.

The New Yorker story had Hasan airing doctored hate tweets aimed at him in Patriot Act.
Oh geez. OK, back to the self-centered shit. If it’s about him? Then we can question it. But if it’s about the world? I think there’s a way through that. I don’t agree with the comparisons to [Jussie] Smollett or Steve Rannazzisi, and [Bill] Maher comparing him to Trump in the sense that a lie is a lie to manipulate the opinions of others. Here’s a bigger question: As it was originally told to me, the host of The Daily Show was supposed to be announced in June. The strike hit; they can’t announce. If the strike never happened and they named Hasan, would this be enough for Comedy Central to take the job away from him? I personally don’t think they would have.

Also buried in The New Yorker story was that Hasan had reached a workplace misconduct settlement with some female writers on Patriot Act.
But the workplace harassment stuff with Hasan was already documented and public knowledge, and Comedy Central was still considering him for the job. So, that tells you how much they thought about that part of his backstory. I don’t think they would’ve taken the job, but is it enough to keep them from giving him the job? It looks like it.

I wanted to ask you about the way Trevor Noah left The Daily Show. He basically announced he was quitting and then stepped out with Dua Lipa. An incredible flex.
[Laughs] I’m gonna quit, then I’m gonna go host the Grammys, and then I’m gonna date pop stars. I mean, god bless him. The man got to quit, his employer sent him home sooner than he planned, and he walked right onto a jet to go on a global comedy tour. He and I talk every now and then, and he’s definitely happy. So, in that regard, I’m happy for him. I think he left at the right time, in hindsight.

What’s a big lesson you learned from working with Trevor Noah?
Knowing when to leave. Just recognizing when it’s time for you to try and do something else. When it’s time to level up into something bigger. Whether it be with Comedy Central or not, I need to take that time to home in on exactly what that is that I want to do. Trevor never really got upset. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him mad. Ever. He’s definitely diplomatic and definitely knows how to lead by example. He’s not a general like, say, Jon Stewart was. Trevor’s more Cool Hand Luke with it.

Late night is now all white men. Why does it keep going back to that?
I don’t know why it keeps going back to white dudes in the seat. I do think now they’re going to use economics to justify cuts. It’s an easier way to say that something isn’t racist when you just go, “Oh, we don’t have the money!” I will say that women have it worse than men. Every woman late-night host you can name in the last five to eight years, the show was created. They did not inherit anybody’s chair. Other than Jade Catta-Preta and The Soup, and that’s not necessarily late night, I can’t think of another woman who took over for a man. I think women are in a really fucked position.

Your mom was a college administrator, so I’m curious how you feel about the right’s bizarre war on “wokeness” in schools and their desire to censor African American history?
I think that there’s just a lot of counterprotesting happening because one side is getting something. There are, like, 11 people that are responsible for half the books that are banned in this country. Maybe everybody shouldn’t have a voice. Some people should shut the fuck up.

Your father was a pioneering journalist who covered the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and a number of other big historical moments. What did he instill in you?
My father was not very funny, but he was quick to call out anything that was bullshit. The thing my father did well was that he was a leader in his community, and he made sure everybody felt heard. A lot of his shows were call-in shows and he spoke to people. I think a lot of that was passed down to me. I love talking with people and man-on-the-street stuff. Understanding the responsibility of a journalist — that you are the mouthpiece for people who don’t have an opportunity to be heard — and doing something with that. As long as I have that opportunity somewhere down the road then I think I’m in a good place.

What’s next for you?
My Comedy Central [first-look] deal died about a year and a half ago, so I’m a free agent across the board. I have the opportunity right now to talk to any network about any show, and do some more writing as well — stand-up, sitcoms, and movies. I’m open to anything. Right now, I have a couple of tour dates in January with Jordan Klepper. We’re doing a silly live town hall thing in a number of towns, and I’ve always enjoyed working with Klepper, so it’ll be fun to still do that in some capacity. I don’t feel a sense of urgency with late night. What’s the right idea? And what will the market bear? OK, so you’ve left The Daily Show, now what are the paths? You could go Steve Carrell and do TV. You can go Sam Bee or John Oliver and do another show. You could pull a Jason Jones and do TV/movies. Same thing with Olivia Munn. It’s fun to have options.

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