Coming on the heels of their victory for Outstanding Talk Series at the Emmys held in January, The Daily Show is looking for more success even after the departure of host Trevor Noah for this crucial season, which is heavily focused on a presidential election that is turning out to be like no other. It also is a season like no other for the show itself, which saw the return of Jon Stewart to the anchor chair on Mondays, rotating with several other hosts on other nights.
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It is a format that seems to be working brilliantly in lieu of the single host the show has used since its inception. Joining me to talk about all of it at Saturday’s virtual Contenders Television: The Nominees event were director and supervising producer David Paul Meyer, supervising producer Elise Terrell and Daily Show news team member Troy Iwata.
Meyer, who also is nominated for his direction of the series, talked about why the show is still running on all cylinders. “It’s a great place to work because there’s so many people there who are all sort of performing at the top of their game — from the writers, the producers, the crew, our graphics team, our editors, post,” he said. “There’s like 150 people at the show, and everybody is sort of focusing on their process, whatever that thing may be, all treating it just as important as the next thing. It kind of is just this beautiful choreography, I think, of it all coming together.”
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Terrell, who has seen it all in her 20 years working on The Daily Show, explains the magic from her POV. “One of the things that our team, from our writers and our correspondents and our segment directors, I think we really are able to tap into what our audience is feeling,” she said. “When we see the hypocrisy, our audience sees it, and we call it out. You know, things that are absurd. The absurdity of what’s happening right now — we can lean into it, and one of the really beautiful things about our show is having that audience in a room with us a lot of times, we just find that energy because they feel the same way. So we’re able to tap into and balance the comedy and the serious stuff that’s going on and the story that everyone is following.”
She also talked about the new value of having multiple hosts, including the legendary Stewart rejoining for this election season. “Now that we have the correspondents at the desk as hosts, we are able to look at stories deeply through their point of view at the desk in a very different format,” she said. “We still are able to use the rest of our news team out in the field in the studio with them, and we can really delve into so many different points of view from behind one desk. It’s been a challenge trying to make sure that we’re honoring everyone’s voice and that we’re seeing stories through the point of view of the person that’s telling the story. This election cycle with this news team has been so refreshing, so exciting, and so every day is a challenge but in the best way. We always find the funny, and we always make it work.”
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Iwata is new to the show in the correspondent’s role. His background is musical theater, but he is finding he really fits in here. “I say this with the most love possible: I think that I bring the perspective of someone who is sort of socially and politically inept,” he said. “I think a lot of platforms that tell the news, I think sometimes they tell it with the idea that the audience is already familiar with all of the jargon and is at the height of intellect when it comes to these stories. The fact of the matter is, sometimes you’re watching the news and you’re like, ‘I’m confused.’ What’s great about us at The Daily Show, the opportunity that we have to make it funny is to, again I say this with love, to play the idiot who’s learning about it as we go.”
Check out the panel video above.