I remember the first time I was in a room with Roy Wood Jr. I mean, not just me, everyone.

It was April 29, 23, when he headlined the White House Correspondence Dinner, which basically

meant he got to roast a sitting president on national television.

You've had quite a few scandals, you know, we know about the documents, we know about the laptops,

but there's been no scandal more damaging than the scandal of, is Joe Biden awake?

Hey, say what you want about our president, but when he wake up from that nap, work gets done.

He might doze off with an infrastructure bill.

Student loan forgiveness.

Did we free Brittany Grown or free Brittany Grown?

So I was sitting at the CNN table

trying to avoid becoming an internet meme

with an ill-time smirk.

But it was by all accounts a great night for Roy Wood Jr.

And that only increased the chatter that he would replace Trevor Noah as the new full-time host of the Daily Show.

The Comedy Central program had basically been holding public auditions with a roster of all-star

comedians taking turns behind the desk, Chelsea Handler, Hassan Menage, and Roy, who had served

as a correspondent for the show for eight years.

But this all went down before the historic writer's strike, and by the time the lights

came back up, a lot had happened. Minaj was taken out of the race by a New Yorker expose,

and Roy Wood Jr. stunned the comedy world by dropping out of the race without an obvious

destination. So when we sat down in New York for an interview, it felt like there were a lot of

unanswered questions. Well, until this.

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