Jon Stewart Confirms NBC Wanted Him for Meet the Press

Could Jon Stewart do news without comedy? Reports surfaced earlier this month that NBC had approached Jon Stewart about a hosting gig at its Sunday morning political show Meet the Press following David Gregory’s exit. The comedian confirmed to Rolling Stone on Thursday that those reports were indeed true. But he didn’t take the offer all that seriously.

“My guess is they were casting as wide and as weird a net as they could,” he says. “I’m sure part of them was thinking, ‘Why don’t we just make it a variety show?'”

But Stewart wasn’t interested in the gig. “I felt like that was one of those situations where someone says, ‘We really like what you do. Why don’t you come over here and do something different, maybe something you don’t do as well, for us?'” the Daily Show host said. “I can understand notionally where it comes from. News and entertainment have melded in a way. But they would be overcompensating on the entertainment side. That’s certainly not an outlandish decision, although I don’t necessarily think that’s the best direction for it.”

Good thing too—what would Daily Show and Colbert Report fans do if both Stewart and Stephen Colbert had left Comedy Central?

[Rolling Stone]