Why Was Jon Stewart Going To Quit “The Daily Show” Within Days Of Joining?!

When you think of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart is the first face that comes to mind.  But could you have imagined if the legendary late night comedy host had quit just when he got started?

Stewart sat down with fellow show host Stephen Colbert Friday night at a fundraiser for the Montclair Film Festival in New Jersey for a dual interview about virtually anything, and when the topic hit his taking over the Daily Show back in 1999, he says the welcome wasn’t pretty:

“I walk in the door, into a room with the writers and producers, and the first thing they say is, ‘This isn’t some MTV bull—-.’ … And then I was told not to change the jokes or improvise,”

So what did Stewart do?  Tell his agent to “get me the f— out of this. These people are insane … I had to be talked down from a moderately high cliff … What I did not realize is, a lot of the people who worked there were a——-.”

Luckily for him (and for all of us, two and a half years later, the staff had changed, and the show was now his own.

Oh, and also lucky for Stephen Colbert, Steve Carrell, and a number of other comedians…just saying…