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Louise Thomas
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Jon Stewart has recalled an early comedy sketch that went down so badly with bosses it nearly got his MTV talk series, The Jon Stewart Show, axed.
Speaking on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast about the show, which he hosted from 1993 to 1995, Stewart said: “Two weeks into it, we do a bit: I thought it would be funny if we have Dave Attell, one of our writers at the time, dress up as Hitler and come out like he’s a guest on the show.
“Like, ‘Hey, everybody is wondering what happened to Hitler. I think you brought a clip!’ and it’s him at Nuremberg.”
Stewart said he “didn’t think anything of” the controversial sketch and how it might come across. “We’re laughing our balls off because every idea you come up with… it’s 2 o’clock in the morning and you think it’s hilarious because you’re sleep-deprived.”
When Stewart and Attell, who are both Jewish, performed the sketch in front of the show’s live audience, Stewart had said: “Our first guest is very surprising. Nobody’s heard from him for many, many years. We are just so honoured that he chose to do this show first. Ladies and gentlemen, Adolf Hitler!”
Then Attell walked onto the stage in full Nazi costume, doing the Sieg Heil salute and holding a bagel with schmear, announcing: “I don’t know what I was so afraid of, these are delicious!”
“What I didn’t realise is that the crowd would rightfully boo the s*** out of him. It’s Hitler!” Stewart told O’Brien. “The whole thing devolves. I see in the control room, there’s an immediate break. The stage manager comes out and goes, ‘Uh, they need to see you in the control room.’”
Executives who’d been watching the live feed from LA were not happy. “The phone rings,” recalled Stewart. “It’s just one guy, and he goes, ‘That will never see the light of day. That will never air. You will never do that again.’”
The show didn’t last long in the end, but in 1999, Stewart went on to host The Daily Show on Comedy Central, a gig he did until 2015. The satirist, who has won 23 Emmys across his career, rejoined the show earlier this year for the election cycle.
