Rob Corddry
Rob Corddry Talks The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
"Of course they know what The Daily Show is now," said Corddry. "They didn't at the beginning. Maybe when Carell started doing the show they didn't know. Now they know and we basically prep them. We say, 'Look, there might be some kind of ridiculous questions. Please answer them as seriously as possible.'"
Former Daily Show success story Steve Carell called it method acting, and Corddry agrees. "It's excruciating at times. You literally sometimes have to hang your soul up at the door when you go in and then pinch your leg so you won't laugh at times too. But it is kind of weird in that you're playing somebody named Rob Corddry too, so initially people had a problem. 'Well, I don't know, maybe he's a reporter but he makes a lot of poop jokes, he's bald. Let's just not cast him.' So I think our roles kind of scared people for a while. They really didn't know what to make of us."
Sometimes, Corddry would feel downright bad doing his schtick on innocents. "There was one guy who was selling plastic lawns and it was a guy that opposed him. Now, of course, we have an ironic take and I had to side with the guy that was putting plastic in front of people's houses. So I was anti the guy that was against this and he was the sweetest, sweetest, most endearing fellow I'd ever met in my life. Basically I had to destroy him. But we were really on his side but we weren't. It's hard and it's never easy to explain that."
On the other hand, one of my favorite bits, where Corddry tries to infiltrate book store security with the new Harry Potter book, required no soul selling. "That was one of the easier ones because that was a little bit sketchier. We didn't really have to interview anybody although, one joke was cut. Basically, the joke to that piece were the camera turns where I'd always turn to the camera. I was interviewing a guy, because they had to hide the Harry Potter books, and he said, 'We do the same thing with all our books.' And I said, 'Really? With Sue Grafton?' And he goes, 'Yes, Sue Grafton's very popular.' And I turn to the camera and I said, 'No one likes Sue Grafton.' Jon thought that was too mean. Every once in a while, Jon will surprise you. Like really? You've got a thing for Sue Grafton, huh?"
Corddry guest hosted for a few nights when Jon Stewart was either sick or at the birth of a child, but there was never a plan for Corddry to take over. "It was a blast. I don't think I couldn't pull that off. It would be a completely different show, geared more towards poop than the middle east. But it's not really my bag to tell you the truth. Those guys, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are lucky in that they have found relatively, I guess at the perfect time, exactly what they should be doing in life. The Daily Show wasn't that exactly for me. I've never been sort of a political animal, although I became one while working there just by default."
Those who recall Corddry's final commentary, going from Mecaca to Yourpeepee, now know that was all him. "Yes, when that happened, I got right on the red phone and I was like, 'Did you hear it? He said Mecaca, put me on the story.'"
Stay tuned for updates.
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