Why Roy Wood Jr. Left "Mentally Stressful" Daily Show Correspondent Job
Roy Wood Jr. said that he hasn’t counted out the possibility of becoming the Daily Show host but knows that it’s a long process and being a correspondent is too “mentally stressful” to do while also trying to “figure out what’s next for myself.”
The comedian and former Daily Show correspondent opened up more about his decision to depart the show during a Monday appearance on talk show Sherri. The conversation began with host Sherri Shepherd expressing that, “I’m really sad because everybody was rooting for you to take over as the host,” to which Wood responded, “It could still happen.”
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“I just don’t want to do the work in the meantime,” he joked. “I was shocked at the decision myself because number one, we was in the strike for five months. Who you know come off strike then quit the job?”
Wood, who hosted the White House Correspondents dinner earlier this year, clarified that it wasn’t his plan to leave the show at that time, but after a while, understood just how long the process would take, forcing him to make some choices about his next steps.
“As you start looking at the lay of the land of late night and television as a whole, that’s going to be a long process figuring out who’s gonna be in that chair, and I respect that process. But while you got your process, I need to have my process, so I’m gonna be over here making sure that all my ducks are in a row as well in case that doesn’t end up the way that I hoped,” he explained.
He also opened up about the intensity of being a correspondent on the Comedy Central late night series, saying “it’s not easy.”
“It’s not like hard labor, but it is a mentally stressful job, so I want to make sure that I remove that stress from my space so that I have space to figure out what’s next for myself — in case I’m not in a chair come January,” he told Shepherd. “So I had to leave. I’m sorry. That’s what it is. It’s nothing personal. This the first job I ever quit where I got to clean out my office.”
Wood went on to describe the process of finding a new host for the show following the December 2022 departure of Trevor Noah, who the comedian thanked for his “eight years” with The Daily Show.
“It’s basically, ‘Hey, do you want to get married?’ Then Comedy Central’s like, ‘Well, we’re going to date around.’ Alright, well, you go ahead and date around, and I’m going to be over here getting myself together for whoever wants to be with me when the time comes,” he said.
