Following a report that he would take a 12-week hiatus from “The Daily Show” this summer, Jon Stewart on Tuesday elaborated on the film project that will consume his time while he’s away from the Comedy Central program he’s hosted since 1999.
Stewart will be taking a break from the “The Daily Show” beginning in June to direct the film “Rosewater,” an adaptation of the book And Then They Came For Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity and Survival, which chronicles author Maziar Bahari’s experience covering the 2009 Iranian presidential election. John Oliver, a regular on “The Daily Show,” will anchor the popular show in Stewart’s absence.
A journalist and documentarian, Bahari was held in a Tehran jail for four months in 2009. Stewart will be making his directorial debut in making the film, for which he also wrote the screenplay.
He conceded to the New York Times that the project frightens him.
“I am a television person who is accustomed to having a thought at 10 a.m. and having it out there at 6:30 p.m. and moving on, so this is a little scary, yes,” Stewart said.
Stewart said Bahari’s story resonated with him. Before his arrest by Iranian authorities, Bahari was involved in a sketch on “The Daily Show” in 2009.
“But one of the reasons we are in this business is to challenge ourselves and I really connected to Maziar’s story. It’s a personal story but one with universal appeal about what it means to be free,” Stewart said.
Read the entire interview here.
