Josh Johnson on His New ‘The Daily Show’ Job, Maintaining Realistic Optimism & Why He’s Not Running for Office Anytime Soon

“I feel very bad about how this call is lit,” says Josh Johnson on Zoom. “I did my best, but I am in a hotel room in Jacksonville, Florida and there were only so many lights to work with. There is some shadow being cast that is not wholly flattering — so you have caught me.”

It’s a few days before Johnson, 35, takes his third spin as one of the revolving hosts of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, Nov. 11-14 — the program’s pater familias Jon Stewart hosts on Mondays — but the weeks before and after are bookended by his extensive Flowers stand-up tour. Hence, his location.

Johnson’s reference to the shadows in his hotel room has to do with his college major: theatrical lighting design at Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana. (He grew up in Alexandria.) Although he had done stand-up at open mics while in college, Johnson says that his decision to commit to a career in comedy happened after he moved to Chicago. “I moved there to start doing stand-up,” he says, “but I think if I got a couple of design jobs here and there, or had a fast track to the union, it would have been a slightly different story.”

It’s a good thing United Scenic Artists Local USA 829 didn’t come calling. Johnson’s turn at The Daily Show’s anchor desk is but the latest achievement in an increasingly successful career, which also includes the stage and social media.

He joined the program as a writer in 2017 and, along with his fellow scribes, is a four-time Primetime Emmy nominee. He was named New York’s Funniest Standup at the New York Comedy Festival in 2018, and has starred in several specials. He has more than 8.7 million followers across his social media, where he is quite prolific — and very funny — on the latest cultural and political news of the day. (His take on the announcement that Bad Bunny would host the Super Bowl Halftime Show — see below — is a must-watch.) He posts weekly stand-up sets on his YouTube channel on Tuesdays, and that content has been viewed nearly 430 million times in total.

That popularity has translated to his Daily Show viewership. His first night as anchor in July drew 590,000 total viewers, according to Nielsen — making it the most-watched non-Stewart-hosted episode of the year by total audience. His demographics were even more impressive. In the 18-49 age category most desired by advertisers 226,000 viewers tuned in, a larger audience than Stewart’s top-rated episodes — until September, when Stewart hosted a special Thursday night episode in the wake of Jimmy Kimmel‘s suspension by ABC. That show drew 443,000 viewers in the 18-49 demo. (It’s also worth noting that when Johnson scored that ratings achievement, he posted a video to his YouTube channel thanking his fans for their support.)

Despite these, um, flowers, Johnson was chill, thoughtful — and extremely modest — in this conversation with Billboard, where he talked about the challenge of his transition to the anchor desk, and his dedication to being fair to the public figures he covers, even if he’s not a fan.

You’re about to host your third week of The Daily Show.  What has the ride been like?

I’ve been having a lot of fun, and everybody’s been super supportive. So, it’s been really special, but I still have a whole lot to learn so I’m excited at every opportunity I get.

It looks like everybody on the show is having a blast. What’s the culture like there?

Everyone with a role has been in it long enough to feel really comfortable with it and inspired by Jon [Stewart]. For the most part, whenever I’m hosting, I look at it as an opportunity to learn more about what everyone else is doing. When I started as a writer I was so focused on writing and style and voice — and the writer’s wing in general — that sometimes I didn’t understand how a piece I’d written affected props or costume, for example.

Now being on the correspondent-slash-hosting side, I see what it takes to make something happen from that perspective. Understanding how everything comes together makes me feel like a better writer, because I’m now speaking more of a shared language. The show is a great culture for that. Everybody can learn from everybody else, even if it’s not their department. 

When you host, are you writing your own material?  

It’s a group effort.

Has there been any particular challenge to making the transition from writer to correspondent to anchor?

It’s probably hitting refresh after each show. That’s not a bad thing — but you could be on cloud nine after you do a show, and right after wrap, there’s this element of, “OK, but we do have to come back tomorrow and start again.”

At the end of a week, you get to enjoy everything that you did and be like, “Wow, what a great experience.” Day to day, hitting refresh is sometimes a challenge, although I’m used to it from doing so much standup on the road. You’re in West Palm Beach one day, Jacksonville the next day and maybe Tallahassee the next. I feel the same way about my YouTube channel where I post every Tuesday.

Tell me more.

Every Tuesday I post a new set. Sometimes, it’s extremely topical or political, and sometimes it’s more culture or pop. I really love doing that. We premiere live every Tuesday at 9:00 p.m., so you can hop in the chat, meet other people and have good conversation with everybody. Then the sets are available for free on YouTube for the rest of time. Outside of that, I’m touring. I’m going to continue touring into the future so if you miss me in your city, don’t worry, I’m coming back.

You’ve been a writer since 2017. At what point did you think, “I want to be on camera”?

It wasn’t something that I was gunning for for years and years. It started to set in as I got more comfortable with the show. I was having a great time writing for everyone on the show. Then as some years passed, I felt, “OK, this could be a cool move, and I can write material for myself when I’m hosting.” And I continue to work with the writers the same way when I’m on the other side.

In the ’60s, Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies’ motto regarding political figures was “make them small” through humor and satire, which is what The Daily Show does so well. At this particularly volatile time in our country, do you feel like you are performing a public service?  

I can only speak for myself. I very much appreciate that people love and enjoy what I do, but I think the people doing public service are doing real public service. I don’t want to conflate making TV with making change. At the end of the day, it’s a comedy show. There are plenty of people out there doing their best to change things, whether it’s in their local community, their state, the world. The best I can do is raise awareness of who they are and what they’re doing. I wouldn’t want to take any of that shine away because there’s already so little of it on the people who really matter and are super important to the morphing of the world in the way that is a bit safer, a bit more equitable. Those are things that I also want, but to say that I am doing it would be too gracious to myself.

I just watched your stand-up bit on New York’s mayoral election, in which you break down the candidates and their campaigns in an authoritative and easily understandable way. Has your comedy always had a political bent?

Not really. That is a product of learning and working at the show for so long. The real testament to how the show has helped me grow is that before I was at The Daily Show, all of my observations were taking regular, everyday things to the most absurd place. Here, I learned more about, not just politics but the world and storytelling from the perspective of people who may know nothing about the story you are telling. So, you have to make it comprehensive, interesting and funny within the time constraints you have on TV.

When you’re not doing The Daily Show, you’re touring. Do those two things complement each other?

A little bit because even though they’re two very different things, expressing your ideas to an audience is never going to not make you better at expressing your ideas to an audience. So, doing as much as I possibly can to learn every day helps me be a better host and bring more spark to every show that I’m doing. It’s a nice upward spiral.

You are one of the most chill stand-up comics I’ve seen. You’re not a pacer or a mic stand fiddler. Has that always been your style?

Yeah, somewhat. I’m not necessarily a high-energy individual, so I think that’s really what you’re clocking. Even offstage, it’s going to be a similar speed.

You have talked about being confused with the NFL player Josh Johnson. Have you guys ever met or talked?

No. We’ve never run into each other.

Have you ever had a politician or a politician’s supporter come at you for something you said on the show or in your act?

No. I try to be fair in my assessments of people. Even if they’re people that I really don’t like. I still can acknowledge when they did a thing for the collective good or made a smart political play — even when it’s something that I consider to be terrible propaganda.

I do my best to give kudos where they’re deserved and that’s not so people like me. You have a better political understanding if you can be as close to objective as your political leanings will allow. I talk about everybody, and if I see something that does not hold water, I’ll say so, even if I like that person. When you start to visibly play hardcore favorites in the face of things that you would not let slide for another person, that’s when people get called out. And so, I only speak about politics in a way that is cyclical and universal.

What do you mean by that?

If you stay in the big arc of history and how politics works, you can see that there is precedent. We already had a Gilded Age, so there’s already a playbook on how people combated that robber-baron era. But there’s also a playbook for the robber barons to get and consolidate power. So many of these things are bigger than any one political figure, and they’ll last much longer than any one person’s political career.

It would be shortsighted to act like everything begins and ends with a Donald Trump or Joe Biden. These people are moments in time. Your lifespan will see many presidents, senators, governors and mayors. Holding them to account in the way that gets results that we benefit from the now is the way to [evaluate] them —  not so much how one person makes us feel.

There’s that phrase that “history may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” When you hear people saying that Trump or New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will bring about the end of the world, do you think that’s an overreaction?  Are you optimistic about where our country is headed?

I always lean towards optimism, just because that’s the best way for me to live. But I’m not ever going to pooh-pooh the idea that things can get worse than you imagine. I do think that with optimism and hard work, they will turn out better than someone could have projected.

I look at history the way I look at a ball on a table. A ball on a table can roll in several ways. It can return to the same point that it was at before. That’s the cyclical side — the repetition of the political arc that we’re seeing. When economists look back, they point out that depressions happen every so many years and recessions happen every this many years. But I acknowledge that the ball could eventually roll off the table. I acknowledge that you could squeeze the general American consumer to the point where they don’t bounce back the way they did in the 1930s and ‘40s — if we don’t have some sort of great resurgence without the right legislation, like FDR’s New Deal, put us back on track.

I do think we are at the table’s edge, and that’s not to be alarmist. That’s looking at it from a perspective of, you can’t have this many mass firings, tariffs, the gutting of government programs and a government shutdown all at once. People can go back and forth about how necessary some of these things are, and some of them, like layoffs, are seasonal. They create a lot of pain, but it’s something that we see all the time. For example, Microsoft slowly and quietly hires 10,000 people over the course of nine months, and then they do a massive layoff.

Do you think that’s happening now?

What I think is happening now is very different. A lot of these companies are masking their hiring freezes or layoffs as the results of AI. People are like, “Oh, AI is taking jobs.” In a lot of cases though, these layoffs were going to happen anyway, because the company isn’t making enough money or because they’re gutting themselves for the ability to buy back stock, or whatever. All these things wrapped up together puts us in a place we have been before, but through different means. And if not corrected — if not taken very seriously by people who don’t seem to be taking it seriously — the ball could roll off the table.

That’s terrifying.

Look, hopefully I’m wrong and everything is going to be fine in a week. I would love that. I love when people say, “No the Uber’s not going to get here for another 10 minutes.” And I’m like, “It’s probably going to be 20.” And then it’s just two minutes. I want to be wrong so bad. I want the next time that we talk for you to be like, “You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. Things only got better after we had our call.”

I hope you are wrong too. Would you ever think about running for an office?

Here’s the thing. If you’ve ever been in the back seat of a car with someone who is not a good driver, and you see that the car is about to go off a cliff — saying so might be an astute observation, but it doesn’t mean you can drive. Sometimes, people think being subversive or calling something out is the same thing as being able to do drive, and it isn’t. So, I do my best to throw support behind people who, I think, are saying and doing the right things and have a track record that will allow them to get the things done that they’re promising. But as far as me hopping in, it would be a huge misstep; one of the saddest moves of hubris — the hubris I see in people who, think, “Oh, I’m famous so I can run for office.”

As soon as they’re campaigning, people are picking apart everything they say. And if they win, that’s when things get even worse, because then, it’s all their fault. So now, you’re the guy driving. And there are cliffs everywhere.