Wyatt Cenac: Jon Stewart Told Me To 'F*ck Off' When I Said a Bit Felt Racist

Wyatt Cenac told Marc Maron on the WTF podcast that Jon Stewart told him to f*ck off when he challenged him on race.

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Comedian Wyatt Cenac, who you may remember from his four-year run as a correspondent on The Daily Show, opened up about that experience in a recent episode of the WTF podcast, and it sounds like his relationship with Jon Stewart wasn't the greatest.

Cenac recounted an incident from 2011 where he told Stewart that a voice he did in a segment making fun of then-presidential candidate Herman Cain felt like a character from the grotesquely racist Amos 'N Andy show from 60 years ago. 

"I cringed a little bit. It bothered me," Cenac said. 

Cenac said Stewart responded by exploding at him in a way he'd never seen before at The Daily Show

Here's a transcript of what Cenac told host Marc Maron on the podcast (via Vulture): 

"He 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."

You can see the segment and hear the voice in the Daily Show clip below (at 2:37). 

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Cenac went on to say that overall, he didn't get the experience he was looking for at The Daily Show and never felt tight with his boss. 

"He was a guy that kind of stayed in his office — it wasn’t like he hung out. I mean, I worked on that show for four and a half years. We never really hung out outside the show. I’d say the longest conversation we ever had was the day I quit, and that was the most real conversation. And it was sad, because I honestly thought in that conversation, I was like 'This is how I wished I’d been able to talk to you for four and a half years, and maybe I wouldn’t be leaving now if we had this kind of relationship,' where it just even felt like respect. Because you can be a boss and still respect your employees. It felt like he was a boss, and especially by the end, where it was just like 'Oh no. I don’t feel like if something were to happen to me tomorrow, this guy would give a shit.'

You can listen to the entire podcast now over at the WTF site

Stewart's final show as host is Aug. 6. 

 

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