Michael Kosta: Daily Show‘s Guest Host Period Led Show to Look Inward

With Jon Stewart back in the saddle Monday nights and  the “Best F**king News Team” sharing anchor duties the rest of the week, The Daily Show has once again hit its stride, but as Michael Kosta recalls, the show was in a very different place a couple of years ago as it muddled through an uneven guest host period that had some on the show’s staff shaking their heads.

Appearing on The Daily Beast’s The Last Laugh podcast, Kosta recounted the period of “uncertainty” at The Daily Show following Trevor Noah’s departure in December 2022, acknowledging that some people didn’t think the franchise would continue.

“Then we did this guest hosting thing where every celebrity came in and hosted,” he explained. “ We really learned that so many celebrities can’t read a teleprompter.”

The Daily Show began a format of rotating guest hosts each week—some of which served as on-air tryouts—in January 2023. The format continued through that December (with a long break for the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike), but according to Kosta, the challenges of having different hosts each week went beyond issues with the prompter.

“We were  having these guest hosts, and some were great and some were drunk,” quipped Kosta.

“I mean, some were just not treating it as what we felt is a very important, funny, coveted position,” he clarified. “And by the way, nobody was like, mean or terrible. But you’re just going, ‘Man, I grew up on this show. This show is a foundation of who I am. Don’t just half-ass this, please.’”

In the mix of guest hosts were several of the show’s current correspondents, all of whom took the assignment seriously, which may be what led Comedy Central to ultimately shift its hosting strategy. “I think, thankfully, the network finally said, ‘You know, these correspondents really give a sh*t about this show,’” Kosta noted.

And so when Jon Stewart returned to host the show on Mondays starting in February 2024, instead of bringing in outside hosts to fill the rest of the week, Comedy Central tapped the show’s veteran correspondents to take rotating weekly gigs at the desk, leading to a creative rennaisance and a ratings rebound for the long-running show.