The Daily Show with Jon Stewart won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Talk Series, and former host Jon Stewart took the opportunity to explain how terrifying life is when you’re not on television.
Watch: Jon Stewart’s Emmy speech is all about how scary life is when you’re not on TV
Emily St. James was a senior correspondent for Vox, covering American identities. Before she joined Vox in 2014, she was the first TV editor of the A.V. Club.
“I have been off of television for six weeks, seven weeks, whatever it is. This is the first applause I’ve heard,” Stewart said to laughs. He went on to explain that other TV people don’t know how it is out in the real world. “There are tables with food, but you can’t take it!”
The Daily Show won the old Outstanding Variety Series 10 times in a row between 2003 and 2012, before it gave way to pseudo-spinoff The Colbert Report. It was fitting that it would win the inaugural Outstanding Variety Talk Series category, then. (The category was created when the Academy split off sketch series into their own award. Inside Amy Schumer won that prize.)
Though several episodes of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart will technically be eligible for the Emmys next year (including the final episode hosted by Stewart), it’s difficult to see Comedy Central campaigning for the show at next year’s awards, particularly if new host Trevor Noah gets off to a strong start. As such, Stewart used the occasion for one last goodbye to all of the people he’d worked with and to the Emmy voters who’d showered his show with so much love.
“Thank you so much. You will never have to see me again,” Stewart concluded his speech.
By Emily St. James
By Caroline Framke
By Emily St. James and Caroline Framke
