Jon Stewart answers questions from EW Online
before asking his own on The Daily Show
Monday night at 11 p.m., Jon Stewart will
grab the baton of sarcasm from Craig Kilborn: The 36-year-old
comic takes over as anchor of Comedy Central's satiric The
Daily Show. EW Online talked to the incoming wiseass as
he prepared for his debut.
EW: How will The Daily Show be
different with you in the anchor chair?
Stewart: I don't have Craig's Aryan diction. Also, I'll
be writing, so there will be more arguments in the writers'
room.... It's a different kind of writing than I'm used to.
I'm used to more monologue-type jokes. Here, there's no
setup at all. It's "Today in Montana..." not "Anybody
here from Montana?"
EW: Are you worried about the reviews?
Stewart: That's the beauty of television, you can be
terrible and still be accepted. If it doesn't work, we can call
it Three Guys, a Desk, and a Pizza. Or we'll hire a pixie
girl to spit out sarcastic wit. Or having a baby on the show
has saved many a show, like in the later years of Family
Ties. Or an alien baby -- how can you not win with that?
One that used to be a rapper.
EW: Did guesting on The Larry Sanders
Show ever make you want to try your own sitcom?
Stewart: Working on Larry Sanders brought back
how much I liked going to work every day. But I felt like I
had to get some of the other stuff out of my system, like doing
some of the smaller film stuff (with roles in The Faculty
and Adam Sandler's upcoming Big Daddy). If I had an idea
as strong as what Garry (Shandling) started with, maybe I'd
be more hell-bent on going in that direction. It was like I
was deciding between an egg-salad sandwich and a tuna-salad
sandwich and they walked in with flank steak. Did I really just
use that analogy? I apologize wholeheartedly, I just ate lunch.
EW: So why did you decide to go back
to hosting a talk show?
Stewart: The kind of show it was, the creative environment,
being in New York. All those factors made it so obvious that
even a dunderhead like me couldn't f--- up this decision, and
believe me I tried. It was clear that it was a great and fun
thing to do. I could have looked that flank steak dead in the
eye and said, "I want rump roast."