Read This: Inside the early days of The Daily Show
Key takeaway: Craig Kilborn still sounds pretty horrible even after all these years later
This year marks the impressive 25th anniversary of The Daily Show’s debut on Comedy Central—a fact that neither ages all of us, nor sends us into an existential spiral on the steady decline of America’s sociopolitical health. In honor of the show’s arguably improbable success and longevity, co-creators Lizz Winstead and Madeleine Smithberg reunited with some of the original show anchors yesterday for a Q&A chat benefitting Winstead’s Abortion Access Front. For its own celebration of a quarter-century of TDS, The Daily Beast also briefly spoke with Winstead about her co-creation and subsequently brief tenure on the show.
“25 years ago, we created a show because our media wasn’t doing its job… we’ve landed now in 2021 where the media finally started doing its job and right-wing conspiracy theorists have decided that the media isn’t doing its job because it’s doing its job. It’s really wild,” Winstead summarizes, “And just to know that all the instincts I had about that show—the framework, who to hire, what subjects to tackle…[it’s] a foundation so solid that they could reimagine it while the basic structure held up.”