Looking ahead to his contract expiring, Jon Stewart hinted to NPR’s Terry Gross late last year that he may be ready to leave “The Daily Show.”
“[T]he minute I say I’m not going to do it anymore, I will miss it like crazy,” Stewart said in an interview in November. “And I will consider that to be a terrible mistake that I have just made, and I will want to grab it back. “
Gross told Stewart she was a fan of the show, but understood that the host may want to try something else.
“Maybe you’re a little, you know, restless,” Gross said. “On the other hand, you’re so darn good at doing ‘The Daily Show.'”
“I don’t know that there will ever be anything that I will ever be as well suited for as this show,” Stewart said, “That being said, I think there are moments when you realize that that’s not enough anymore, or that maybe it’s time for some discomfort.”
Stewart said it came down to choosing between familiarity and healthy discomfort.
“You know, there are — you can’t just stay in the same place because it feels like you’ve built a nice house there. And that’s really the thing that I struggle with,” he said. “And it is unclear to me.”
Listen to the interview below, at 14:00:
He said close to the same thing to Howard Stern around the same time, so the only thing surprising about this was the timing.
Ah yes, this was the interview I was thinking of in my comment yesterday. The fact that he mentioned that there was any possibility at all of him leaving at the end of this contract made me think he almost certainly would. He sounded like he was aware that despite how good it is, it’s not quite as good as it was and he really is starting to get tired of it.
I’ve been getting this impression ever since he returned from directing Rosewater, that he was no longer as enthusiastic for the job as he once was. Heck, there have even been jokes about it having been too long for him, told by both him and some of his guests.
I guess the real questions will be whether Comedy Central will continue The Daily Show (my guess is they will) and if so, who will be the new host.