Desi Lydic is having a moment.
The actress-turned-fake-news anchor on The Daily Show won two Emmys last season as performer and a producer for her shortform spinoff Desi Lydic Foxplains. Now she has three of those statuettes after winning one the previous year for The Daily Show as one of its key cast of rotating anchors, and the only female one, in the format the series adopted after the departure of Trevor Noah and return of OG host Jon Stewart on Mondays only.
The Daily Show has evolved into one attracting its biggest audiences ever, and Lydic — who’s been a correspondent on the Comedy Central stalwart since 2015 — is one of the reasons why. She joins me for this edition of my Deadline video series Behind the Lens to talk about how it all works, most particularly in this Trumpian environment, and the challenges and opportunities for comedy in a world where it is difficult to keep up with the real news.
She talks about how on some days all the material they had planned to use on the show had to be quickly dumped in favor of breaking events and coming up with a brand-new opening set. She also talks about the pitfalls of being in Trump’s crosshairs, whether she worries about going too far, the influence of Stewart, how she got the job in the first place and much more, including the herculean task of having to watch Fox News so the rest of us don’t have to.
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To watch our conversation and to go “behind the lens” with Desi Lydic, just click on the link above.
Join me this season every Monday and Friday for a new edition of Behind the Lens and every Tuesday and Thursday for a few episode of The Actor’s Side.
