Six TDS Guest Hosts Open Up About Their Journey | The Daily Show

[Music] was there ever a time when you felt like this might not have been the thing for you oh comedy comedy never okay never never if if anything if anything you have a bad night you don't get a gig or something's not happening in your career you may feel like hesitant and like oh man like you know but I was always funny so it was always no for real like I always it was never a option like yeah you I go nah I'm quitting I'm quitting but then I go home watch TV smoke a joint wake up the next morning and be like let's it's not an option this is what you do so well so yeah I can't say no yo let me tell you something about that though let me tell you something about that yo stop lying to yourself like like stop stop being your worst block like like you know what I'm saying it you can always go you know what happened you know what happened to me I was working at rasco's chicken and waffles as a waitress right and there was this comedian named Mother Love and I waited on her and she was like didn't you open up for me like a couple of nights before she was like I couldn't even follow you she was like the you doing here at rosos and I was like [ __ ] paying bills and she was like no put your faith in your and and what you do and go after it because you can always come back to Rosco you can always come back to this job so stop stop blocking yourself and go for what you can always go back to I mean if you make a mistake you can always just do something else stop being so hard on yourself give yourself some Grace because if you're thinking about something that you want to do that's something you are in control of your happiness not everybody else you are so if you know if you know you're unhappy sit your ass down and have a conversation with yourself and see what the is making making you unhappy and take care of that stop being complacent and sitting in misery that's [Applause] stupid I remember my first night on the show it was wild I auditioned on I think a Friday and they told me come back 4 days later with a suit uh cuz they had no money to pay for the suits uh and luckily I had one suit because I had gotten married a few months earlier and I came back with a suit and the day was Bonkers uh I arrived and oddly enough it was the day uh Crimea was invaded and I know uh we actually know where that place is now because I didn't that morning and I showed up uh and I went to this morning meeting which is an amazing thing at The Daily Show um so many funny thoughtful people in a room and I get thrown in there and it's such a welcoming place and there's John Stewart somebody I've watched since I was very little uh he's very old and decrepit also very short small man uh wise Beyond his years but many years uh um and we were talking about Crimea and all of these things and they're like Jordan you're going to do a chat uh you're going to do that tonight we're going to talk about this let's go and you brainstorm some ideas for the chat and remember they bring me into John's office like right after the meeting and I'm very nervous I don't know how this day works and we sit down and John starts talking about not only what happened but essentially he's talking about the um the commentary that's been written in the morning about what already happened in that room and I'm sitting across from him with a few other people Jen flans is over there right now EP showrunner she's in that room as well she's the best and there's there's a reason these shows can still run like they do with a a different host every week and it's because of the team that we have here at The Daily Show and uh I remember uh John's he's talking about all these things with Crimea and I just keep thinking I don't know where Crimea is I don't know and then we Usher off and we we we brainstorm jokes and uh bits around the uh Crimea Invasion and it's fun it's a wild day uh the chat comes up and you go into a rewrite right before you come on out there and you you you go one last time over it and the process for a chat essentially the the idea of this chat was John is throwing to their first-time correspondent who's in Crimea and he's overwhelmed uh by The Experience truth and comedy it's always the best way to go um and I remember in the rewrite you're in this small room and you're throwing jokes out there and uh John opened up of like how would you react here and I said I'd say like uh I don't want to disappoint you Dad uh and it made him laugh because that's how I was feeling in that room at that moment I don't want to disappoint you Dad uh and he was like that's good I'm like that was the first joke I got on the show and he was like all right we ready to do this and you don't waste time at The Daily Show when you like print the script it's like great we're on in 20 minutes and so he comes out I go back my brain is spinning I've been doing comedy and entertainment for 15 years but never had to break anyone near this been living in poverty up until till this point I'm like holy [ __ ] I'm on The Daily Show I'm about to be on The Daily Show I'm looking through the script looking through the script um John comes out I'm right back there and I'm looking through script looking through the script he says like we have uh something special happening today we have a new correspondent we don't have that very often I'm getting nervous and uh Bor to run starts to play which was the song he always played before he came out and then he's like you guys ready for a good show they say yes he says welcome to the Daily Show and he runs back and we just had this little one one-on-one moment he just says don't [ __ ] it up and I remember like he came back out there and and right back there like tears because it was so much this industry is it's it's hard it's tough and you're rarely in such supportive rooms like this and for every break that you get 10 other people don't get it who uh are worthy of that exact same break and in that moment I was like there's so much emotion right now in this space and I remember like tears I'm like you can't cry you're on TV in 3 minutes pulling it all together coming on out and nervously doing my first chat from right over there so to get a chance to be here on a day like today with you guys and share that uh it's real special thank [Applause] you does anyone have any questions yes how did you get started and make your way to the Daily Show because that's like a dream of mine um W well it all I was born uh in 1981 I'll start from the very beginning um I I I grew up well actually I'm sitting here looking at my Uncle who's right here my Uncle Jay not to it's his birthday today too 35 years young um he uh actually Uncle Jay was truly one of my hugest uh comedic uh Role Models Uncle Jay would make me laugh growing up until I completely pee my pants I still do often but that's more because I had a baby but um I I I loved I was obsessed with SNL I watched a lot of Carol Bernett growing up my dad used to show me a lot of reruns of Carol and the women on SNL and Tina and Amy and I there was something in me that really wanted to do comedy but I grew up in Louisville Kentucky so that's not a sensible thing to do when you grow up there but for some reason I've got really great parents who are very supportive and supported this insane idea that at 19 I would move to Los Angeles and take classes so I threw myself into improv uh scene study and I just I started getting small roles one at a time one line and Pilots that never went anywhere but uh when I reached my 20s I was obsessed with The Daily Show I loved John Stewart I watch watched religiously it was my dream to be on the show I auditioned for the show three times over the years um and finally the third time I I got the call come out to New York and this was right after they hired Trevor and I just gotten married and I spent my whole career trying to plan pick okay I can't go on vacation because I might get that Burger King call back and I got to I got to be there for the work and um and I had just gotten married and we wanted to start a family and I thought you know what it I I'm going to live my life and whatever happens happens and when I got the call to come here I was four months pregnant living in Los Angeles I thought oh boy do I tell them do I keep it to myself and I would be starting the job six months pregnant so I I pulled Jen flans who's sitting right over here our showrunner executive producer all things I pulled her aside after the audition and she had this look on her face like oh God what are you going to ask me like did you do a good job what a needy actor and I said um I said this is my dream job and I will move here tomorrow but you should know I am I am pregnant so I'd be starting the job pregnant she goes great we can talk about it or we won't talk about it whatever you want whatever you're comfortable with W and uh 7 and 1 half years later I'm I'm here and my seven and a half-year-old is sitting upstairs probably not watching this right now he's eating snacks I just wanted to know what if no uh I just want to know what if somebody actually wanted to audition to be a uh um be on the show as a correspondent let me see what happened with me was uh I was doing shitty open mics in Australia and then and then uh Trevor asked me to audition for it so if you can find Trevor I think he can help you anyway anyone else got any questions anyone else any questions anybody questions are not like job offers please in the back there yeah yeah over if you were a kitchen you cancel which one what I'd rather you ask me for a job is any I don't know potato peeler I don't know what's what's the least most useful uh over there yeah uh do you think that you coming to New York affected like your comedy and everything rather than going to LA or something oh yeah hell yeah hell yeah definitely for sure New York um I actually I when I first got my uh Visa I was in I went to LA my agent told me to come to LA and do pilot season and that's a that's an industry term for everyone there one guy in the industry laughing already yeah my agent was like hey come to La do a pilot season pilot season means you go into audition room with 20 Asian dudes who look like you who all went to like Yale drama school and they're auditioning for like you know sidekick 2 on a whatever and I and I was I was in that I was in that for one I did that one time and as in I was in that season one time and I knew like man I'm not going to outa all these actual trained talented people the only thing I can do with my limited skill set is go to New York and be a huge [ __ ] and so and it worked out L better so New York definitely New York is yeah New York New York for Life what is what would you say your biggest challenge has been getting you to where you are currently oh uh hope people don't talk about how hard hope is to live in that place where you're like it's going to happen tomorrow it's going to happen tomorrow it's going to happen tomorrow is a very hard place for people because sometimes it lets you go I can't I I quit so a lot of the so I've been doing standup since 2009 but I've been acting since I was a kid and I've been singing since I was a kid and I have a theater degree but y'all know me as a comic so now all this work that I did and I used to do musicals I've done Children's shows I sang I was in an improv group I did all of these other things but y'all know me as a comic and a correspondent on the show so now all of these things I did since I was seven years old I have to now reintroduce everybody too but if I had lost hope and didn't start because I started doing stand up because somebody told me I was a comic it wasn't something I chose to do I just happened to be good at something so someone saw something in me that I didn't see in myself and so that was the biggest challenge for me to go okay I have a theater degree I've never been on stage and been myself and said my own words so getting into standup was one of the hardest things for me because I'd never been myself on stage I knew how to perform I knew how to find my light I knew how to plant my feet I didn't had to do I knew all of the trappings i' done on stage 900 seat theater with no microphone and sang to the back of a room I can perform but it not as me so that was the hardest part of the whole process going oh okay I have to be D say never done that before so that was the hardest part into that and also listening to my mother because a comic told me in 2007 that I should do standup and I didn't listen to him but I started when I was supposed to you see what I'm saying so you get things when you're supposed to which is always hard to hear but in 2009 I once again on an unemployment look at God and I was taking a sketch comedy class and I got laid off from a job and the comic Big Kenny is like again come take my standup class and I was like un I don't have a job I can't afford the $300 class and he's like you're supposed to do this I won't charge you for the class and then I couldn't decide what to do and my mother told me cuz Big Kenny had been inviting us to shows for two years he's like you have to do this you have to do this I was like nah nah n I'm good and then my mother came up to me one day before the class started and she said she had a dream that the whole world was laughing at me and she didn't understand what it meant she was like why are people laughing at my daughter I don't understand what's going on what did she do and then she said she prayed on it and she was like oh my daughter's a comedian so because of my mother and I didn't talk about this for a long time because he used to piss Comics off um when I took a standup class and my mother supported my choice to do stand up uh a lot of comics don't get that feedback from their family um and so I did it and so May 12th will be my standup anniversary and if someone can do math that's what 14 15 years thank you gracias I went to school in Georgia so I don't know what you want from me um but gwet County so the you know I did okay but you know I can't the sixes and multiplication are funky um and so yeah on the 12th it'll be 14 years but I there were a lot of things I'm just like um I'm not sure I moved to LA with suitcases I moved here with suitcases and now I'm moving you know and it's like so now you're it's you have to just go I will be okay but for me the hardest part is hoping is I want to be a mother and have children and I don't have that in my life so the same hope that I applied to work I now have to figure out to apply to this other thing and that's even harder cuz I knew what to do to be successful in my career I don't know how to hog tie some man so and that's when I uh the lord gave me my Ministry um of no more broke dick and um so yeah I'm the hardest part of any of this is Hope because you have to believe in you more than anybody else and you have to love you more than anybody else quick question you went from being ranked 864th in tennis and teaching tennis to stand up comic yeah so for those of you that don't know I I played tennis at University of Illinois and then I played professional tennis for around around three years with a career high ranking of 864 in the world thank you I made $11,000 over three years um you're out there alone in tennis you're problem solving if you if you win it feels like triumphant if you lose it feels very personal that could also be standup comedy everything I just described I come from a big family four kids uh we joked we teased that's how you said I love you in our family so I think I'm probably doing all this just to get Mom and Dad to say I love you to me um but I still love tennis great great Sport and uhis Kel could I beat Travis Kelce in what tennis I think Travis Kel's winning life right [Music] [Applause] now

Channel: The Daily Show

Views: 89,521

Keywords: the daily show, the daily show episodes, comedy central, comedians, comedian, funny video, comedy videos, funny clips, daily show, news, politics, leslie jones, jordan klepper, desi lydic, ronny chieng, dulce sloan, michael kosta

Id: ddvtZeYyLao

Length: 17min 54sec (1074 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 20 2023