Having hosted what was arguably television’s most successful daytime talk show in history for 25 years, it’s fair to say that Oprah Winfrey knows her way around a television studio.
Still, that familiarity with the nuts and bolts of how the TV sausage gets made proved to be “shocking” when she joined Trevor Noah as a guest on “The Daily Show.”
A Long History with ‘The Daily Show’
Jennifer Flanz is showrunner on “The Daily Show,” having worked there for 28 years since beginning as a production assistant in 1998. She recently sat down with People to recall some of her most memorable moments on the show over the years.
Flanz has welcomed some of Hollywood’s biggest stars as guests on the show, but she admitted that none had made quite the same impression on her as Winfrey.
A Backstage Exploration
“Oprah was here during Trevor’s tenure, and she was walking around the building [and] popped in the control room. Our director at the time, and other people, were practically fainting,” Flanz told the magazine. “Everyone was like, ‘Wait, she’s just walking around.’ Meanwhile, she’s this larger-than-life character.”
At the time, Winfrey wasn’t alone. “Gayle [King] came with her, I remember, and they were just walking around checking out the scene and seeing what we do,” Flanz continued.
“And it was shocking to me because sometimes a guest comes and they stay in the back in the green room with their publicist until it’s ready for their segment to go out, but she just was walking around.”
Winfrey, on the other hand, instead decided to explore the behind-the-scenes workings of the show.
“It made me think, ‘Oh, this is a person who used to have a show every day, who had a studio with a control room.’ It seemed like she was poking around because she gets that this is a day of production setup, and it’s probably something she was very familiar with,” Flanz explained. “But that was shocking.”
Former Correspondents Are Her Favorite Guests
According to Flanz, of all the guests that have appeared on the show, her most beloved moments have been when former “Daily Show” correspondents who’ve moved onto other things return as guests.
“My favorite guests are when our old news team comes!” she said.
“When Jessica Williams comes back, and I get to see Jess because we get her to come on the show as a guest, it makes me so happy,” Flanz added.
A Plethora of Talent
Of course, regular viewers of “The Daily Show” can attest that A-list Hollywood stars aren’t the only guests welcomed to the show, which also invites some relatively obscure figures when compared to the likes of Winfrey.
“It ranges from J.Lo to a tick expert that we had on recently,” Franz recalled. “It could be an author, a politician, a scientist, a celebrity. It ranges from talking about the summer blockbuster epic film that is going to be everywhere to, just tonight, we have a woman who wrote a book about financial literacy. And it’s always amazing to me that they’re equally interesting to our audience.”
Flanz believes it’s that mix of the unbelievably famous and the unexpected that has made “The Daily Show” so enduringly popular.
“I think that’s because the hosts are interested in the topic that they’re talking to,” she explained. “I think if you’re interested, the segment becomes interesting. I think we do a good job of making sure that each host is paired with people and topics that they’re interested in.”
