![]() Jack, an elderly, shifty-eyed gentleman - a holdover from before the show hired a full-on security staff - sits outside the room, ensuring no one bothers them. dress rehearsal (journalists aren’t allowed to watch), O’Neil, Stewart and select writers-producers disappear to rewrite the script. In the familiar control room though, he’s at ease, even when hiccups arise. “That’s the most stressful thing I’ve done,” he admits. three hours of live TV, with scripts only materializing a few hours beforehand. ![]() And he singlehandedly helmed October’s Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington, D.C. This year could shake up his self-proclaimed Susan Lucci status: O’Neil was integral in the show’s full-episode Glenn Beck parodies. The show itself is synonymous with Emmys, but though O’Neil’s been nominated seven times, he’s never won. John Oliver, a writer and correspondent, goes so far as to say, “You’re writing about Chuck? Has Variety really stooped that low?” Here, these are the ultimate compliments. Turnover on “The Daily Show” is minuscule.Īsk any employee about O’Neil, and they trash him for being horrible. Pennolino, O’Neil’s second in command at “Good Morning America,” came shortly after to join his former boss. Craig Spinney, O’Neil’s stage manager from 1990s FX morning show “Breakfast Time,” was already working there. O’Neil took over shortly after Jon Stewart inherited the show from Craig Kilborn. Lunch is catered every day, and O’Neil sits with his jovial crew, lingering well after others go back to work. The morning is for the writers to hone the satire O’Neil, meanwhile, remains in a holding pattern until close to 3 p.m., when scripts trickle in. “My role is to do everything possible to do what they envision.”Įmployees at “The Daily Show” operate, for the most part, autonomously. “I don’t think I’ve ever said ‘no,'” he says. No matter what the writers come up with, he tries to make it work. “At one point, we had to build a bathroom and set up a fake live shot from the stall,” O’Neil recalls. Tonight features two standard desk pieces and a visit from Ferrell. O’Neil is rarely flustered, despite the fact that this meeting - core team members around a conference table, massive support staff along the wall watching, like an arena - is the first time he hears what’s in store for the evening’s show. If we crash and burn, we can fix it in post.” ![]() “I always joke: We’re not landing planes at the airport. “There are few things that stress me out,” he says after the morning production meeting, which lasts all of seven minutes - three of which are a “motivating” clip from a horrible-yet-awesome action film. But after 11 years with “ The Daily Show,” O’Neil - small frameless glasses, a mop of dark curly hair and a tight amiable grin - handles the grind with aplomb. Playing latenight TV director is like playing a massive video game, and it can easily slip into disaster avoidance, mitigating problems as they arise. This juvenile (if not hysterical) bit is the only major curveball across O’Neil’s plate today. ![]() This must have sparked something, because mere seconds before Ferrell appears on screen, O’Neil is told about the bat as if happening simultaneously, there’s Ferrell, on camera, with a bat - strokin’ away. Then, in act two, Stewart showed a clip of a lawyer demonstrating anal sex on a baseball bat - strokin’ away.
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