Hasan Minhaj confirms he lost “The Daily Show ”hosting gig because of jokes scandal, recalls intense call with Jon Stewart

"It was the first time I saw the speed and velocity of the Internet, how quickly a story can take off."

Hasan Minhaj looked back on the "disorientating" backlash in response to admitted embellishments in his comedic material, confirming rumors that he lost out on The Daily Show as a result of it.

The actor and comedian was considered to be the frontrunner to succeed Trevor Noah as host of the venerable Comedy Central program, but in the wake of a New Yorker profile that fact-checked his material, "it went away," Minhaj told Esquire in a new profile.

Related: Roy Wood Jr. says Hasan Minhaj's gig as Daily Show host 'fell apart' after New Yorker article

"We were in talks, and I had the gig, and we were pretty much good to go,” he recalled. After the story came out, Minhaj got a call and was told the gig was no longer his. "It went away. That’s part of showbiz.”

The backlash and various op-eds in the wake of it "was painful, there’s no doubt about it,” said Minhaj. “It was the first time I saw the speed and velocity of the Internet, how quickly a story can take off. That part of it was very new to me and disorienting.”

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Minhaj shared that his other comedian friends and mentors, including Ramy Youssef, Mike Birbiglia, John Mulaney, and even former Daily Show host Jon Stewart, reached out to him in the aftermath. He recalled spending hours on the phone with them. “I remember Jon called, and he said, ‘Why the f--- are they doing this? And who does this benefit?'"

Noah left the show in 2022 after seven years, with the program cycling through a series of guest hosts until tapping Stewart — who hosted between 1999 and 2015 — to return in February 2024 as a weekly guest host. He'll be part of the show throughout the 2024 presidential election cycle. Minhaj joined as a correspondent under Stewart's initial tenure.

Related: Hasan Minhaj says controversial interview about his stand-up was 'needlessly misleading': 'I'm not a psycho'

In the 2023 New Yorker profile, the journalist fact-checked a series of Minhaj's stand-up anecdotes — including one about a white FBI informant who infiltrated his family's mosque in the Sacramento area, and another about his daughter being rushed to the hospital after possible exposure to anthrax — and found that they were embellished. Minhaj stood by his work, stating that the embellishments were rooted in "emotional truth."

"My comedy Arnold Palmer is 70 percent emotional truth — this happened — and then 30 percent hyperbole, exaggeration, fiction," Minhaj told the magazine, noting that he doesn't believe he's manipulating audiences. "I think they are coming for the emotional rollercoaster ride. To the people that are, like, 'Yo, that is way too crazy to happen,' I don't care because yes, f--- yes — that's the point."

The comedian further clarified to EW at the time, "All my stand-up stories are based on events that happened to me. I use the tools of stand-up comedy — hyperbole, changing names and locations, and compressing timelines — to tell entertaining stories. That's inherent to the art form. You wouldn't go to a haunted house and say, 'Why are these people lying to me?' The point is the ride. Stand-up is the same."

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.