AVC: You're on The Daily Show as Steve Carell, but aren't you sort of playing a character?
SC: In a sense, yeah. I think it was—you were sort of assuming a role and a posture of somebody other than yourself. And that was also a way to protect yourself, because it was very scary to be in front of these people, essentially improvising with someone who doesn't know they're doing a scene with you. It's always better in my mind to assume a character in that regard.
AVC: To sort of separate yourself emotionally.
SC: In a way.
AVC: It could be perceived as making fun of people who aren't in on the joke.
SC: I almost didn't take the job because of that. Because I didn't feel like it was... It was neither kind nor funny to me to go after people who just didn't deserve it. It was sort of shooting fish in a barrel. I think it bordered on mean sometimes, and I... Once Jon took the reins, that changed. That eased up. And they weren't mean for the sake of being mean, they were more self-mocking, and when we did go after someone, it was generally someone who deserved it. A white supremacist, or a Nazi, or someone who was, you know, good fodder. Not just some quirky person who we wanted to make fun of. I never enjoyed that aspect of it, and I think that aspect of the show changed over time.
AVC: Why do you think people agreed to be on The Daily Show when they weren't going to be presented in a terribly positive or flattering light?
SC: I think either they were unaware of what The Daily Show was at the time, or they... People just like to be on camera. There's a huge desire to be in front of the camera, and once there, people will say and do almost anything. It's sort of a drug, and I think people get addicted to it.
AVC: As The Daily Show got bigger and became more of a national phenomenon, did it become harder to do field pieces with people who hadn't heard of the show?
SC: Certainly. To take people off guard and to keep up that appearance of a legitimate news program became more and more difficult. I was doing a Howard Dean rally this last election, and the crowd was chanting "Dean! Dean! Dean!" But when they saw our camera crew, they started chanting "Daily Show!" And I mean, this was 500 people. It was sort of hard to get in under the radar, whereas before, no one knew who we were, and we could ask anything of anyone and get a straight answer to very ridiculous questions. It's harder when people are playing along, because it's just not as funny. They're trying to be funny, and it sort of cancels out the whole joke.
AVC: What were your favorite and least favorite field pieces on the show?
SC: Least favorite was a guy who was a conspiracy theorist who believed that Walt Disney had built a subterranean city under Disneyland in which he programmed children who he had kidnapped from Disneyland into being his personal drones and to do his bidding. And the man sincerely believed this. He also thought that Donny Osmond and the Mandrell Sisters were alien robots. But he had a wife and kids, and he ran a business, he was a mechanic, a mobile auto mechanic. Couldn't have been a nicer guy, but truly, truly believed in all these alien conspiracy theories. And I felt really dirty, because I knew just letting him talk was going to make people laugh, but ultimately it was pretty sad. And of course, once the piece aired, he was extremely offended, and thought he'd been duped—and he had. So that was my least favorite. My favorite might have been an interview I did with John McCain in his campaign bus. He was extremely playful and fun, and just a very charming man. To gain access to him was an interesting experience.
AVC: Plus he's a friend of the show.
SC: I think he became a friend of the show after that piece. He liked it so much, he played it on a loop in his campaign bus.
AVC: That's interesting, because with some politicians, you feel it's kind of a way to court the younger audience. "Look how hip I am!"
SC: I think so. I think it's a way to seem palatable to a younger demographic. But that's also very manipulative. I think in a lot of ways, they just kind of see where their potential voting bloc is skewing, and look at it that way, as opposed to truly being fans of what the show is saying and representing. So I think there's a very cagey aspect to that as well, in terms of public figures jumping on the show's bandwagon and endearing themselves. I guess better to endear themselves and potentially be looking like a cool sort of self-deprecating politician as opposed to someone who's bearing the brunt of the joke.
AVC: Have there been times when you went out to do a field piece and just weren't able to get anything out of it?
SC: We were always able to get something. I don't ever remember going out in the field and coming back with nothing. We always managed to find a three-minute piece out of whatever we did. So no, there was never an abject failure.
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