Kal Penn Is Another Of Four Finalists For 'Daily Show' Host

 

Recently, we reported that former The Daily Show correspondent Hasan Minhaj was reportedly leading the race to replace Trevor Noah as the show's next permanent host of the late night Comedy Central talk show. The day after that landed, The Wrap reported that Kal Penn was still in the running and there were in fact four leading candidates, which means the other two are still unknown.

Penn guest hosted the week of March 13-16 (the show doesn't do Fridays), the week before Minhaj, the last two following Leslie Jones, Wanda Sykes, D. L. Hughley, Chelsea Handler, Sarah Silverman, Al Franken, John Leguizamo, and Marlon Wayans that weren't current correspondents. The string of guest hosts of course came about after Trevor Noah departed after more than seven years as host on December 8, only announcing his departure on the exact mark in September. There has been no comment from network about these candidate stories.

The Wrap also came with actual statistics to back up those executives who wanted to keep the guest host carousel going, as the show saw ratings rise 21% from January to mid-April 2023 when compared to the same weeks in 2022. Franken drew in the highest audience of non-correspondent guest hosts with a total average viewership with 792,000. Leguizamo and Silverman came in second and third place, respectively. Penn performed fourth-best with an average of 606,000 total viewer average while Minhaj followed with an average of 602,000.

Penn’s Monday episode included an interview with President Joe Biden, which garnered 658,000 viewers, before drops on Tuesday and Wednesday, with 614,000 and 570,000 total viewers tuning in, respectively. Penn rebounded on his Thursday episode, drawing in 580,000 viewers. The Harold & Kumar and The Santa Clauses actor, who has been part of birthday festivities for Blue the dog and SpongeBob SquarePants, was an associate director in the White House Office of Public Engagement during the Obama administration. Highlights from his hosting week are below.

Source: The Wrap