Hasan Minhaj has confirmed that he was was going to be named The Daily Show ‘s new full-time host last year, but the controversy about his stand-up comedy act — namely, embellished tales told therein — cost him the job.
7th Heaven Stars Discuss Stephen Collins' History of Sexual Abuse in New Rewatch Podcast -- Watch Video
“We were in talks, and I had the gig, and we were pretty much good to go,” Minhaj says in a new Esquire profile . But in the wake of a now-infamous New Yorker article , published in September 2023, “It went away,” he affirmed. “That’s part of showbiz.”
Minhaj also told Esquire that in the wake of the brouhaha, assorted peers and mentors reached out to him, with Daily Show vet Jon Stewart himself reportedly remarking “Why the f–k are they doing this? And who does this benefit?”
TVLine has reached out to Comedy Central for comment.
Minhaj’s embellishment of stories told in stand-up comedy specials came to the fore in said New Yorker article , in which he was quoted as saying, “My comedy Arnold Palmer is 70% emotional truth — this happened — and then 30% hyperbole, exaggeration, fiction.”
Specific vignettes called into question — one about being rejected by a prom date because of the color of his skin, another about an FBI informant who infiltrated his family’s mosque in 2002, and a third about how Minhaj’s daughter needed to go to the hospital after someone sent an envelope of white powder to their apartment — raised the question about how much creative license can or should be taken when relating stories in a stand-up format.
Here's How Ellen DeGeneres Addresses Her Alleged Showbiz Exile in Netflix Special For Your Approval
In his initial response to the New Yorker piece, Minhaj said in a statement, “I use the tools of standup comedy — hyperbole, changing names and locations, and compressing timelines to tell entertaining stories. That’s inherent to the art form.”
About a month after the New Yorker article ran, Puck News reported that the former The Daily Show correspondent was out of the running to succeed Trevor Noah as the Comedy Central series’ host, though he had been the frontrunner.
In an October 2023 video shared via THR , Minhaj alleged that The New Yorker ‘s profile — written by Clare Malone, to whom the comedian did not refer by name — contained “omissions and factual errors” that “misrepresented my life story, so I wanted to give people the context and materials I provided The New Yorker with full transparency.”
He then went on to distinguish between his political comedy (like the type he did on Netflix’s Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj ) and his “storytelling” comedy, in which “I assumed the lines between truth and fiction were allowed to be a bit more blurry.”
Ultimately, Jon Stewart reclaimed his title as Daily Show host, anchoring Monday nights only — as of now, only through the November election — while correspondents Jordan Klepper, Desi Lydic, Michael Kosta and Ronny Chieng take turns hosting Tuesday-Thursday.
Ryan Murphy Responds to Erik Menendez's Criticism of Monsters
Local News
Comments / 0