Leslie Jones would do anything for The Daily Show, but she won't do that (co-host with Jordan Klepper)

Before Jon Stewart's return, Daily Show producers considered elevating the comedy stylings of Jones and Klepper.

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  October 30, 2025 | 5:31pm
Screenshot: YouTube
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Leslie Jones would do anything for The Daily Show, but she won't do that (co-host with Jordan Klepper)

Imagine, if you can, a world in which Jon Stewart decides against returning to The Daily Show. Horrifying, we know. Namely, because it looks mostly like the world we live in now. While Comedy Central and The Daily Show probably wouldn’t have received the ratings bounce it got from Stewart’s return, upon Trevor Noah’s departure, producers were thinking of outside-the-box ideas to keep the show running. One of them was pairing guest host Leslie Jones with regular co-host Jordan Klepper. However, despite admitting on the Good One podcast that The Daily Show has writers “from God” and that she would “do The Daily Show forever,” she’s not sharing the desk with anybody.

Jones had some success on The Daily Show after Noah’s exit, receiving praise for her brief stints and enlivening the late-night series at a particularly fallow period. She hosted the show in January 2023 and again in November, during which she shared her spot with Klepper. She and Klepper, as Good One host Jesse David Fox admits, worked really well together, and it probably would’ve secured Jones the job had Stewart not returned. The only problem: “I’m a solo act.”

“Yeah, we were really good together, and they were talking about putting us together,” Jones says. “I was like, ‘Nah, I’m a solo act.'” I thought he was really great, though. Jordan’s really funny.”

Oddly, earlier in the interview, Jones recalls a time when she was considered for a solo spot on a talk show, taking over for Ellen. After auditioning for the job, she had a five-word response: “No, no, no, no, no.” The Ellen gig was a little “too much like SNL” and “wasn’t fun to do.” The job felt like “pressure, and I felt like I’m never going to do a job like that again, which makes me feel pressure.” Who could blame her?

 
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