Jon Stewart's last day of hosting The Daily Show will be on August 6, and while many will miss the oftentimes controversial satirst, one writer in particular will not. That's because Wyatt Cenac, a former writer and correspondent for the show, recently revealed that he didn't get along with the famous host.
Speaking with Marc Maron on his "WTF" podcast, Cenac told Maron about an explosive confrontation between Stewart and himself -- one that happened in 2011 when Stewart was making fun of black presidential candidate Herman Cain by doing "a voice" Cenac said sounded liked the character Kingfish from the 1950s sitcom Amos & Andy, canceled after complaints about black stereotyping:
"I don't think this is from a malicious place, but I think this is from a naïve, ignorant place." He remembered thinking, "Oh no, you just did this and you didn't think about it. It was just the voice that came into your head. And so it bugged me."
Cenac told Maron that he literally cringed when he first saw Stewart's bit. He went on to discuss the confrontation:
[Stewart] got incredibly defensive. I remember he was like, What are you trying to say? There's a tone in your voice. I was like, "There's no tone. It bothered me. It sounded like Kingfish." And then he got upset. And he stood up and he was just like, "Fuck off. I'm done with you." And he just started screaming that to me. And he screamed it a few times. "Fuck off! I'm done with you." And he stormed out. And I didn't know if I had been fired.
He had wanted to see Stewart as a father figure, and didn’t get that. "There had, in my experience, never been an explosion like that." Cenac said that after the confrontation he went out to a baseball field and broke down:
"I was shaking, and I just sat there by myself on the bleachers and fucking cried. And it's a sad thing. That's how I feel. That's how I feel in this job. I feel alone."
Cenac was the only black writer on Jon Stewart's staff. He went on to tell Maron why he felt so strongly about Stewart's portrayal of Cain:
Something like this, I represent my community, I represent my people, and I try to represent them the best that I can. I gotta be honest if something seems questionable, because if not, then I don't want to be in a position where I am being untrue not just to myself but to my culture, because that's exploitative. I'm just allowing something to continue if I'm just going to go along with it. And sadly, I think that's the burden a lot of people have to have when you are "the one." You represent something bigger than yourself whether you want to or not."
