Jon Stewart Details Edgy Early-Career Bit That ‘Will Never See the Light of Day'

On the latest episode of the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, Jon Stewart recalled an edgy bit from his MTV show which will “never see the light of day.”

Prior to his time on The Daily Show , Stewart hosted The Jon Stewart Show on MTV from 1993 until 1995. “Two weeks into it, we do a bit,” Stewart explained. “I thought it would be funny if we have Dave Attell, one of our writers at the time, dress up as Hitler and come out like he’s a guest on the show. Like, ‘Hey, everybody is wondering what happened to Hitler. I think you brought a clip!’ and it’s him at Nuremberg.”

Stewart said that he and Attell, who are both Jewish, “didn’t think anything of” the provocative sketch. “We’re laughing our balls off because every idea you come up with…it’s two o’clock in the morning and you think it’s hilarious because you’re sleep-deprived,” Stewart explained.

When it came time to introduce the bit, Stewart played it straight. “Our first guest is very surprising. Nobody’s heard from him for many, many years,” he told the audience. “We are just so honored that he chose to do this show first. Ladies and gentlemen, Adolf Hitler!”

At that point, Attell entered dressed in the traditional Nazi uniform and doing the Sieg Heil salute while eating a bagel slathered with a thick layer of cream cheese. “I don’t know what I was so afraid of, these are delicious!” Attell as Hitler told Stewart.

“What I didn’t realize is that the crowd would rightfully boo the shit out of him,” Stewart told O’Brien more than 30 years later. It’s Hitler!” From there, “the whole thing devolves,” Stewart said. “I see in the control room, there’s an immediate break. The stage manager comes out and goes, ‘Uh, they need to see you in the control room.'”

Unbeknownst to Stewart, executives at Paramount were watching the taping from a live feed. “The phone rings. It’s just one guy, and he goes, ‘That will never see the light of day. That will never air. You will never do that again,'” Stewart recalled.

While the phone call succeeded in curbing the show’s more outrageous concepts, Stewart regrets caving to the pressure. He called the incident “revelatory” because it made him realize he should “enjoy the sh-t out of” his career rather than spend it trying to please producers.

“The blow of the story is they canceled the show pretty soon thereafter,” Stewart laughed to O’Brien .

You can listen to Stewart’s full Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend interview here .