Hasan Minhaj‘s Daily Show hosting gig was, in fact, nixed by that now infamous damning New Yorker profile, according to the comedian himself.
He looked back on the adverse reaction he received following the publication of the Sept. 15, 2023 story — in which he had confessed to embellishing some of his stand-up stories — while speaking with Esquire, describing the fallout as “painful.”
“It was the first time I saw the speed and velocity of the Internet, how quickly a story can take off. That part of it was very new to me and disorienting,” he explained.
Now, months after reports that he had lost out on hosting the Comedy Central news series, he verified speculation that the profile cost him the role.
“We were in talks, and I had the gig, and we were pretty much good to go,” he recalled, noting that “it went away” in the aftermath of the story. “That’s part of showbiz.”
In the profile, Minhaj had argued that “every story in [his] style is built around a seed of truth,” summing up his “comedy Arnold Palmer” as “seventy percent emotional truth—this happened—and then thirty percent hyperbole, exaggeration, fiction.”
Minhaj responded to the backlash in October 2023 in a YouTube video, apologizing “to anyone who felt betrayed or hurt by [his] stand-up” but deeming the profile “needlessly misleading” as he justified his work. While he made light of the lost role at the Netflix Is A Joke comedy festival in May, he has since also created a new talk show titled Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know.
Esquire noted that comedians including Mike Birbiglia, Ramy Youssef, John Mulaney, and Daily Show vet Jon Stewart had talked to him amid the blowout.
“I remember Jon [Stewart] called, and he said, ‘Why the fuck are they doing this? And who does this benefit?’” Minhaj rehashed.
He also lamented the impact on his wife and parents, deeming it “the most painful thing.”
“To see them hurt, to see them engage with ‘So I’m reading on the Internet…’—that is so painful. I’m the eldest. I feel really, really sad that I let my parents down,” he shared.