Roy Wood Jr. Says ‘Daily Show’ Hosting Gig ‘Still Could Happen’ – Even Though He Just Quit
Despite his decision last week to quit “The Daily Show,” longtime correspondent Roy Wood. Jr said on Monday that hosting the Comedy Central talk show “still could happen.”
He appeared on “Sherri” Monday, where host Sherri Shepherd asked, “I’m really upset because everybody was rooting for you to take over as the host of ‘The Daily Show’ … we wanted you to have this job. What happened?”
“Well, number one, it still could happen,” said Wood, who’s been a correspondent on the show for eight years and recently did a week as guest host. “I just don’t want to do work in the meantime.” He added, “I was shocked at the decision myself, because number one, we were in a strike. Who do you know [who] come[s] off strike and then quit the job?”
Wood added, “That wasn’t the plan. But … as you start looking at the lay of the land of late night and television as a whole, that’s going to be a long process figuring out who is going to be in that chair and I respect that process. But while you got your process, I need to have my process. So I’m going to be over here making sure all my ducks are in a row as well.”
He added that being a correspondent is “not easy… it’ not like hard labor but it is a mentally stressful job” and that he wanted to “have space to figure out what’s next for myself in case I’m not in that chair come January.”
Wood added that his quitting is “nothing personal… It’s like [asking the network], ‘Hey, do you want to get married?’ and then Comedy Central is like, ‘We gonna date around.'”
He also thanked previous host Trevor Noah “for giving me the opportunity to be there eight years.”
Comedian Hasan Minhaj was regarded as the frontrunner to replace Noah until he was criticized for “embellishing” several stories in his stand-up about racial harassment he claimed had happened to him personally.
As the search for a permanent host continues, Comedy Central is continuing to have different hosts each week. Its latest round includes Leslie Jones, Desus Nice, Sarah Silverman and Charlamagne tha God.
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