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00:00Pete Hammond here for Contenders, and boy, do I have a good one right now for you from
00:10Comedy Central.
00:12It comes The Daily Show, which is a staple at the Emmy Awards.
00:17It is nominated for four Emmy Awards for The Daily Show and seven overall nominations for
00:23The Daily Show franchise.
00:25So very big year.
00:26They're coming off a year where The Daily Show also won Outstanding Talk Series just
00:31in January at the last Emmys, and so pleased here to have some key members of the team
00:39who make it all possible in this crazy rollercoaster year of an election year.
00:45They've got their hands full, but it's a whole new kind of daily show that they've created
00:50with multiple hosts, The Return of Jon Stewart.
00:54Very pleased to have them to talk about the whole thing.
00:58First up, we have a director and supervising producer, David Paul Meyer.
01:02Hey, how's it going?
01:04Very good.
01:05Very good.
01:06We have a supervising producer, Elyse Terrell.
01:09Hi.
01:10Hi.
01:11Thanks so much for chatting with us today.
01:12And with the news team right here, Troy Awada.
01:15Hi, Troy.
01:16Hi.
01:17I do the least amount of work, but I get the most attention.
01:21Well, welcome all, and congratulations again.
01:25This is getting to be old hat for you guys, all this industry recognition for this show.
01:31So let's take a look at what The Daily Show has been up to this season so far.
01:40It's a dramatic way to kick off an event.
01:44Ooh, all right, playa.
01:47Yay!
01:49They are the oldest people ever to run for president, breaking by only four years the
01:56record that they set the last time they ran.
02:01Trump aside, I have a question for the actual religious conservatives.
02:05Trans Visibility Day had no effect on your Easter.
02:08Why are you so upset about this?
02:10Nobody was at church like, we were going to celebrate the resurrection, but instead everyone
02:15lined up for your gender reassignment surgery.
02:19I hate silk checkout lanes.
02:21What's next?
02:22They're going to ask us to slice our own deli meat, butcher our own cows, grow our own diet
02:26coke?
02:27What?
02:28I'm half Japanese and Jewish and gay and I look kind of white, so I've never been excluded
02:33from a party in my life.
02:34And I never will.
02:35Because that would be a hate crime.
02:37If we need to ask AI to decide between pronouns and a nuclear holocaust, then bring on the
02:44nuclear holocaust.
02:46It's democracy.
02:47Anything can happen.
03:00That is really funny stuff.
03:03And I don't know how you keep pulling it off in all of this.
03:07I want to ask David, though, because there's so many different moving parts to this show.
03:13Sketch stuff, field stuff, serious interviews, as well as mixing with wild comedy.
03:20How do you pull it off?
03:21What's your trick?
03:23It's a great place to work because there's so many people there who are all sort of performing
03:28at the top of their game, from the writers, the producers, the crew, our graphics team,
03:34our editors, post, every department.
03:37There's like 150 people at the show and everybody is sort of focusing on their process, whatever
03:45that thing may be, all treating it as just as important as the next thing.
03:51And it kind of is just this beautiful choreography, I think, of it all coming together.
03:57How careful are you in balancing the comedic stuff, the monologue, for lack of a better
04:02word, the opening of the show, for instance?
04:05And then you come back and you're doing a serious kind of political interview with Pete Buttigieg.
04:12You know, that episode you point out, that's John really having a strong grasp on the tone
04:19running through it.
04:20You know, watching him perform, you see he's sort of wrestling with the through line the
04:25whole time, knowing when to like go into a joke or lighten the mood a little bit and
04:29then swing into seriously.
04:30It's like very much a testament to his talent and the talent of our news team.
04:34Everybody there who's performing has that ability to do that, to walk that line.
04:39And I think that comes from having conversations throughout the day with the writers, working
04:43on this in rehearsal, kind of seeing what works, just the constant sort of re-evaluating
04:48of it throughout the day.
04:49One of the things that our team from our writers and our correspondents and our director, our
04:56segment directors, I think we really are able to tap into what our audience is feeling.
05:02And when we, you know, we see the hypocrisy, our audience sees it and we call it out.
05:06The, you know, things that are absurd, the absurdity of what's happening right now, we
05:11can lean into it.
05:12And we are, you know, one of the really beautiful things about our show is having that audience
05:18in the room with us.
05:19A lot of times we just find that energy because they they feel the same way.
05:24So we're able to tap into and balance, like David was saying, the comedy and the serious
05:32that's going on and the story that everyone is following.
05:36Yeah, Alyse, I wanted to ask you, too.
05:38You're in a category here, a talk series, where you're against single host shows.
05:43Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel.
05:46And this year has given you a whole new lease on life.
05:50This idea that you don't have a single host, that you're sharing that.
05:54How difficult is that to do from what you've done before?
06:00Well, it's incredible.
06:01It's it's a challenge for sure.
06:03But we've always been a show that is has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to talent.
06:10Our news team, our correspondents, they've always we've always been able to look at stories
06:16through their points of view.
06:17So that's always been something that we were really passionate about that really excited us.
06:20But now that we have the hosts, our correspondents at the desk as hosts, we are able to look
06:28at stories deeply through their point of view at the desk in a very different format.
06:33And then we still are able to use the rest of our news team out in the field, in the studio
06:39with them, you know, and we can really delve into so many different points of view from behind
06:45behind one desk.
06:46And so I think we are so grateful that we've had it's been a challenge trying to make sure
06:51that we're honoring everyone's voice and that we're seeing that we're seeing stories through
06:56the point of view of the person that's telling the story.
06:58I mean, as someone that at the end of this year will have been at the show for 20 years
07:02and has gone to.
07:04Yes.
07:05And it's gone to, you know, the conventions, especially with the conventions and telling
07:11political stories that this election cycle with this news team has been so refreshing,
07:17so exciting.
07:18And so it's just every day is a challenge, but in the best way.
07:21And we always we always find the funny and we always make it work.
07:25And you really are keeping up with it, because like when I said, this is an unpredictable
07:29this is a crazy political year when there was an assassination attempt against Trump
07:35and you were planning to go out and cover the convention in a different way and planning
07:40all this stuff.
07:41And you'd probably worked on it forever.
07:42And you had to just sort of throw it out the window and come up with something else.
07:46Yes, that was that was obviously an unexpected challenge.
07:51But being back at the home base felt like the right place to tell the story.
07:55And we pivoted very quickly.
07:58Our team is incredibly mobile.
08:00And we felt that being in a space that we're familiar with felt like the right approach,
08:08the right point of view to take at that point.
08:10Yeah.
08:11Now, Troy, talking about the correspondence and the talent out there, talk about this
08:16show, doing this show from your point of view, what it's offered you as a performer and contributor
08:22here, but also how you approach it.
08:25Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know how unique my story to this job was.
08:30But my background, like you said, is just in acting, specifically musical theater.
08:37Well, then you're a natural, you know.
08:40Being a correspondent on a political satire show was not in the cards for me.
08:44But I've been telling people it's the dream job I never knew that I wanted.
08:48And I guess like my own perspective that I would bring, I say this with the most love
08:53possible.
08:54I think that I bring the perspective of someone who is sort of socially and politically inept.
09:04I think a lot of platforms that tell the news, I think sometimes they tell it with the idea
09:12that the audience is already familiar with all of the jargon and is at the height of
09:18intellect when it comes to these stories.
09:22And the fact of the matter is sometimes you're watching the news and you're like, I'm
09:25confused.
09:26And I feel like what's great about us at The Daily Show, the opportunity that we have
09:32to make it funny is to, again, I say this with love, to play the idiot who's learning
09:40about it as we go.
09:42Yeah.
09:43So it's like an acting role for you.
09:45That's the way I'm treating it.
09:47That's a much smarter way of putting it.
09:48Thank you very much.
09:49Well, I don't think you're an idiot, so I'm assuming you're...
09:52We just met, Pete.
09:53We just met.
09:56What's been the biggest challenge for you?
09:59The practice of interviewing someone, because that's something I've never done before.
10:03And luckily, we have an incredible team of writers and producers and directors where
10:09from the very first time I stepped on camera, I felt safe and very supported.
10:15And the amount of prep work that goes before every single piece, I never felt like I was
10:20going in cold.
10:21It was more so we always have a very strong idea of the direction that we want to go with
10:26any piece.
10:27And it sort of feels like really just the challenge was like, oh, this was like a new
10:31medium of performance, interviewing someone, which, you know, and now I'm a pro.
10:36Indeed.
10:37No question.
10:39So, David, in terms of having Jon Stewart to work with again, what's that like?
10:46I mean, it's a blast.
10:48I was not with the show.
10:50I came to the show when Trevor started.
10:53He and I had a history of working together even before that.
10:56And so we had a shorthand.
10:58We knew each other.
10:59I knew his performance style.
11:00And so with Jon coming in, it's been really exciting just kind of learning him as a performer
11:06and sort of following his rhythm.
11:08And it's a blast.
11:10I love it.
11:11I really feel like there's so many things about his talent that kind of blow me away.
11:16But I love when we're taping.
11:19He knows the script.
11:20He's obviously been involved with the writing of it, and he performs the script very well.
11:24But he's also got his own sort of, in parallel to that, his sort of just like visceral feeling
11:30of like the performance itself and how he's engaged with the audience.
11:34And it's really interesting to see how he kind of jumps from the script into that and
11:40will kind of like improvise something or switch something.
11:44And the way he, I guess, we'll go through, we were talking about tone earlier, the tone
11:49of his voice and the way he performs.
11:51And so it's been really exciting to get to have a front row seat to that, study it, learn
11:57it, follow along, try not to mess him up or miss a cue.
12:04You know what I mean?
12:06And that's been exciting.
12:08And he's a very gracious person, really loves, I think, working with everybody at the show
12:14and has really like wanted it to be like a partnership coming back and like working
12:19with us, partnering with kind of like what Jen Flans, our showrunner, sort of like has
12:24the ship that we've really thought through and figured out, especially in the transition
12:29with the guest host, Trevor, and coming into John, like we really kind of figured out like
12:33all of these processes and really solidified them.
12:36And I think John coming in and wanting to partner with that has been great.
12:40It's a great partnership with the building and the people there and the staff and him.
12:45And then obviously having the full news team coverage of it with correspondence hosting
12:50and just, there's just more of a team environment, both in front of the camera, like on camera
12:55as well, you know, and that's been cool.
12:57Like it reflects behind the camera too.
13:00Definitely must see TV.
13:02And I know at least you worked with John before on it.
13:05So it's like old home week, I guess, for you.
13:08It's very funny because when he left, we were, you know, it was like losing a part
13:14of the team and then the team built up in different ways, you know, obviously a big
13:18part of the team and then the team built in different ways.
13:21And then when he returned, it was like we had this whole new arsenal with which we
13:29approached the show.
13:31So we do a lot more like scripted sketches now that we didn't do as much when John
13:36was the host.
13:38And he allows us to try new things and sort of let our team shine.
13:44And because, you know, we kept it afloat and we are so happy to have him back.
13:52But it's also, we also have a lot of new tricks up our sleeve that we've really been
13:56able to expand on, especially our digital team.
14:00We, back in the day, we did not have very much of a digital presence.
14:04And now we have a very engaged social media world.
14:08We have series.
14:10We have, you know, we are nominated for those.
14:13And we are very, very, very lucky to be able to expand the show in that way.
14:18And so that's been a new thing that has flourished in the last few years and
14:23continues to do so.
14:25There's so much to it.
14:27Well, our time is up.
14:29But let me end it.
14:31I always watch the show with my Daily Show mug, you know, because I like to look at,
14:37you know, they're at the desk and they've got these things sitting there.
14:40So it's fun to get merch.
14:42And it's fun to watch the Daily Show.
14:44And I wish you best of luck as you go through this roller coaster of an election
14:49season, to be sure.
14:51Thank you for joining us today on The Contenders and coming up another great show.
14:56Thank you very much.