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“I want to make one thing clear off the bat: Not a fan. Not a fan of the podcast,” offered Jon Stewart. “Tried to get through the first one. Not a fan.”
Yes, the seventh episode of Strike Force Five, a Spotify podcast featuring late-night hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver, and Seth Myers whose proceeds go to their out-of-work staffers during the writers’ strike (ads come courtesy of Ryan Reynolds’ companies Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile), surprised listeners with a very special guest: Jon Stewart, the former host of The Daily Show who mentored Colbert and Oliver during their time on the Comedy Central series, and gave Kimmel an early gig writing radio spots for it — ads that apparently pissed off Stewart’s first guest, actress Gillian Anderson, who “castigated” Stewart over them.
While Stewart didn’t address the ongoing writers’ strike and the show again failed to comment at all on the recent Rolling Stone investigation into toxic behavior at Fallon’s Tonight Show, Fallon did explain how, on the advice of one of his friends, he recently stuffed onions into his socks all night to try to cure his cough.
One of the highlights of the show came when Colbert asked Stewart what his first talk show hosting gig was like.
“Oh, it was chaos. It was called The Jon Stewart Show. It was on MTV. The first guest on it was a gentleman by the name of — and I don’t know what happened to him — Howard Stern who, as you know, will always come on a show and prop you up,” said Stewart. “It must have been ten seconds in when he explained to me, pretty accurately, why I would be canceled in the upcoming future. Nailed it, kind of put everybody in their place for the thing, and then sat back and said, ‘What do you have to say now.’ So, it was an auspicious beginning.”
We learned that Stewart is listed as “Doofus” in Colbert’s phone, while Colbert and Stewart only see each other in person once a year even though they consider each other a best friend (owing to Stewart being anti-social).
The best parts of the hour-long podcast, however, consisted of the banter between Stewart and Oliver — including how Stewart “discovered” the British comic for The Daily Show.
“When I first met Oliver, I was almost sure that it was a Make-A-Wish situation. He was so pale and so sickly at that time,” joked Stewart.
“I remember he threw me some coins and said, ‘Boy, go get the biggest turkey in the city right now,’” Oliver shot back.
And then Stewart got a bit earnest: “You see tape after tape after tape after tape, and very rarely do you see a tape and go, ‘That guy.’ And that was just one of those with John. Not to be sincere, but he was so clearly great. And then we found out that he needed a green card… And, first bit in, we sent him down to Civil War reenactors and he broke his nose.”
Oliver confirmed that this did, in fact, happen.
“It was a Civil War reenactment and I believe I was fighting for the North,” explained Oliver. “And so, the bit was: Before they said ‘go,’ because I believe that’s how the Civil War began, I would run ahead of them as fast as I can at the other army. And I did that, and I then I was running literally as fast as I possibly could, it was quite wet underfoot, and I was wearing dress shoes. And then I fell forward, I realized there was a musket in my hand, and so I got out of the way, faceplanted, there was blood all over my face, and I knew I’d come to work at the right office when we got back and there was still laughter echoing around the office.”
According to Oliver, Stewart and his Daily Show staff had been playing the video of Oliver faceplanting on a loop in the office.
“He was like, ‘Play it again.’ ‘Play it again,’” remembered Oliver.
