Leslie Jones Takes Over ‘The Daily Show’ With Her Signature Brand of Chaos

With Jones, The Daily Show begins the arduous journey of finding a permanent replacement after Noah’s seven-year stint manning the desk. Headache-y hosting successions like the Jay Leno to Conan O’Brien to Jimmy Fallon drama on The Tonight Show and the brief and confusing week that Mike Richards hosted Jeopardy! suggest that passing the baton on blue-chip shows isn’t necessarily easy. Since its debut, The Daily Show has had three official hosts: Craig Kilborn, from July 22, 1996, until December 17, 1998; Jon Stewart, from January 11, 1999, until August 6, 2015; and Noah, from September 28, 2015, until December 8, 2022. Jones is the first of five comedians lined up to guest host The Daily Show in one-week increments, but the possibilities are endless as to who will book the gig full-time, and when (and, it’s worth saying, if) that host will be appointed.

While Jones isn’t necessarily known for her political comedy, she bounced between the news stories with her signature verve and commitment, tickling the audience. She began the show by discussing the most recent political scandal: President Joe Biden’s classified documents being found in a garage near his Corvette. “This is a national security emergency, okay? A man this old with access to a Corvette?” she quipped, before breaking into a bit of the song “Greased Lightnin’.” She then impersonated the woman who was in charge of handing out the classified documents to Biden, joking that she had just “smoked the biggest spliff I have ever rolled in my life” urging Biden to “be cool with documents.” The joke was not overly analytical, but fun and sharp nonetheless.

Jones really came alive when she was given the space to be her irreverent self and talk about issues that were closer to her own experience as a Black woman. In a segment about the controversial statue of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King recently unveiled in Boston, Jones had the audience in fits describing how the statue looked a lot like, well, cunnilingus. “I got to talk to white people for a second,” she said. “White people: You don’t need to be saying shit about this statue, you understand? Black hands only. You need to sit at the back of the bus for this one, okay? This is our civil rights icon…going down on his wife,” she said with an appropriately long pause before the punch line. She then turned to another camera and addressed another section of the audience. “Okay, Black people, what the fuck are we gonna do? We gotta talk about this because you know it’s messed up when Black people and Proud Boys hate the same statue,” she said, earning a huge laugh.