Hasan Minhaj is looking back at the gig that almost was.
In an interview with Esquire published Wednesday, the comedian reflected on once being the front-runner to succeed Trevor Noah as the host of The Daily Show. But after The New Yorker published a profile last year alleging that Minhaj embellished and made up his onstage anecdotes for his comedy, the offer for the gig was taken away. Jon Stewart went on to replace Noah, appearing on the show once a week.
“We were in talks, and I had the gig, and we were pretty much good to go,” he told Esquire. After the story was published, Minhaj was called and told the job was no longer his.
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“It went away,” he said. “That’s part of showbiz.”
In addition to losing the hosting job, Minhaj explained that the “most painful thing” about the public scrutiny that followed was how it impacted his family.
“The most painful thing is my wife and my parents,” he said. “To see them hurt, to see them engage with ‘So I’m reading on the Internet…’ — that is so painful. I’m the eldest. I feel really, really sad that I let my parents down.
“I’m very lucky that they got to see many beautiful highs of my career. Watching them experience a painful moment, an embarrassing moment in your career, I wish I didn’t put them through that. That’s the tough part,” he added.
After the article’s publication and the public conversation surrounding it, Minhaj released a 20-minute video in which he offered context to the stories labeled as false, including being rejected for prom because of racism, his run-ins with undercover law enforcement surveilling the Muslim community in his hometown and an anthrax scare at home.
“There were omissions and factual errors in The New Yorker article that misrepresented my life story, so I wanted to give people the context and materials I provided The New Yorker with full transparency,” Minhaj said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter at the time.
“With everything that’s happening in the world, I’m aware even talking about this now feels so trivial,” Minhaj said in the video. “But being accused of ‘faking racism’ is not trivial. It’s very serious, and it demands an explanation.”
He continued, “To everyone who read that article. I want to answer the biggest question that’s probably on your mind: Is Hasan Minhaj secretly a psycho? Underneath all that pomade, is Hasan Minhaj just a con artist who uses fake racism and Islamophobia to advance his career? Because after reading that article, I would also think that.”
“Halfway through the interview…I was saying, you put this here and do that. I could see the journalist was not interested,” he told Esquire about the interview. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this might not be great.'”
After the story and the subsequent backlash, Minhaj was reached out to and spoke with other comedian friends, including Ramy Youssef and Mike Birbiglia, who in THR’s Comedy Roundtable defended Minhaj. “I love Hasan, and I think the intent of that writer remains very nebulous in why they’d write that. It’s very confusing to me,” Birbiglia said.
Minhaj also spoke with John Mulaney and Jon Stewart, recalling the latter telling him, “Why the fuck are they doing this? And who does this benefit?” Stewart encouraged him to use the experience to make something funny saying, “This is great for you.”
“When Jon told me that, I felt really seen,” Minhaj said, noting he went on to make light of the situation in his Off With His Head stand-up.
Since then, Minhaj has kept busy, launching an interview show on YouTube, Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know, and starring in It Ends With Us. The comedy set he’s been touring will be released on Netflix in October as a stand-up special, Off With His Head.
“I’ve already written my next stand-up show,” he teased. “It involves the stage and another comedian in an interesting way. A line producer looked at it and said, ‘I don’t want to budget this, but I’m excited.’ I’ve felt this before and it’s exciting because it feels new and weird.”
