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Josh Johnson is trying out bits on me in the back of a black Cadillac.
We’re making conversation on the way from a “Daily Show” promotional event to his set at the New York Comedy Club in Midtown, and I can sense when
small talk starts inching toward a punchline.
He asks how I like New York and then compares the Big Apple to that one childhood friend with a rough home life: “He’s the first to help you out when you’re in trouble, but then he’ll hand you a cigarette and you’re like, ‘Bro, we’re 8.’”
Johnson is best known as the newest of six hosts of “The Daily Show,” where he began as a staff writer in 2017. He’s vying for Emmy contention alongside Jon Stewart and co., and also for his music-themed HBO comedy special “Symphony,” which debuted in May.
But most notable about the 36-year-old Louisiana-born comic is his prodigious output. Johnson releases nearly an hour of polished stand-up every Tuesday on YouTube — essentially a full-length special per week. His channel has racked up more than half a billion views. For three years straight, he’s kept up a pace that bewilders the industry’s leading comics.
“I don’t even think what I’m doing would be advisable, necessarily,” Johnson tells me. “I see why people say, ‘You’re leaving a lot on the table or giving it away for free.’ But this is what I want to be doing, and it’s pushed me to get better.”
The car pulls up to the club, and Johnson heads to the green room. Ten minutes later, he takes the stage to fervent applause. He’s ditched his T-shirt and coat for a gray zip-up hoodie and jeans — his uniform of sorts — and immediately jumps into jokes about the previous night’s heated NBA Finals game.
“We almost got rid of a billionaire out of nowhere,” he says of Knicks point guard Jose Alvarado’s courtside collision with Mike Bloomberg. “Everybody’s always planning, hiring security. Who would have thought they would get themselves killed?” And of the Spurs’ towering Victor Wembanyama: “Wemby looks exactly like ‘Nightmare Before Christmas.’”
Johnson’s comedic style is highly expressive, and his voice — nasal, with a Southern inflection — leaps across octaves and volume levels. He’s a physical performer, one who can tell the same story four or five ways, peppering in new insights each time. His material ranges from political to trivial: A bit about the absurdity of the Iran war might be followed by one about revolving doors.
“A lot of the men I know are bad at giving gifts. I was gifted an apron,” Johnson deadpans, getting one of the biggest laughs of the night. “I don’t own a grill. I’m not a cook. I suppose it’s just an apron to wear. You basically got me a hospital gown.”
Johnson crushes — delivering a set filled with sharp storytelling and punchy one-liners — and when he slinks back into the lobby, two fans chat him up. Johnson, it seems, is highly approachable. Maybe it’s because he’s in our living rooms talking directly to us as a “Daily Show” host. Or maybe it’s because when he greets you, his mouth curls into a boyish smile and his voice slides into a higher register, like Mickey Mouse if he grew up on the Bayou. A soft-spoken middle-aged woman opens her sketchbook and shows him a Sharpie portrait of him onstage. “You’re just so sweet,” she says as Johnson signs her drawing. “You have a generosity of spirit.”
It’s a quarter to 11 now, and we’ve Ubered to an overpriced sushi joint in SoHo for a late dinner. I ask him where that 15 minutes of material will go. “I don’t really know,” he says. “Maybe I’ll hold on to it and do it again somewhere. Maybe I won’t.”
Most comics wouldn’t dream of bringing 15 minutes of all-new material to a club and leaving it there. But Johnson is a stranger to the scarcity mindset. Perhaps that stems from his early days working in Jimmy Fallon’s writers’ room. “I wrote 125 jokes a day, and that’s all to hopefully get three on air,” he says. “You learn to not be precious. And you learn that you have more in the tank than you think.”
Scratching his chopsticks against each other, Johnson describes a typical week. By the time Tuesday’s YouTube episode drops, he’s already thinking about the next one. In addition to hosting and writing for “The Daily Show,” he pens the bulk of his comedy sets on Wednesday and Thursday and tapes himself performing the material for a live audience on Friday and Saturday. Tuesday’s episode often comprises bits that have never been stress-tested in front of a crowd.
I ask Johnson if he ever worries he’ll wake up one day with nothing to say. He ponders for a moment, as if I’m speaking a foreign language. “That would be like if you woke up and went to work and were worried you were going to run out of words.”
This unforgiving schedule is not some self-imposed sentence, he explains. It’s a weekly opportunity to pursue a mastery of his craft. It’s an exercise in discipline that has taken his career to unexplored places. “What some people see as a treadmill,” Johnson says, “I see as a magic carpet.”
Part of the inspiration for “Symphony” — a high-concept special that features musical interludes — was to create something “timeless,” Johnson says. If his weekly videos are photographs, then he likens his HBO hour to an oil painting. “We don’t go back and read microfilm newspaper clips of what was going on in 1904. I’m not saying that it wasn’t interesting, but people don’t do that,” he says, feasting on spicy tuna crispy rice (no mayo). “I wanted to make sure that someone watching ‘Symphony’ 50 years from now gets as much out of it as someone watching this week.”
In many ways, Johnson represents a bridge between the old and the new. He has a coveted and increasingly rare post as the host of a linear talk program, and his stand-up takes on a classic form, sans props or crowd work. Meanwhile, he has harnessed social media in a way few other comics can. At 2.7 million followers and 70.7 million likes, his TikTok page ranks above those of Nate Bargatze and Sebastian Maniscalco, two of the top-selling comics in the world.
Continuing in the music-themed vein of his special, on June 12 Johnson counted in his Comedy Band Camp Tour in Ontario. It runs through December and entails Johnson returning to New York during the week for his work behind the scenes on “The Daily Show.” (He hosts again later this month.) Johnson built a world around the tour, starting with a personality test that groups fans into “troops.” Sample question: “At camp you’re granted the power to talk to animals. Who do you gossip with first?” (I landed in the most populated tribe: the Fuchsia Flames.) Each troop has its own set of merchandise, from camp T-shirts and bandannas to wristbands, pins and keychains. Fans are encouraged to represent their troop and mingle at the venues. “There’s real value in showing people how similar they are,” Johnson says. On his tour, he attracts 20-year-old fans at their first-ever comedy show and people in their 70s who have avoided them for decades.
Johnson also plans to create mobile games and scavenger hunts and partner with local businesses while on tour to promote activities and offer discounts. “I want to give people an experience that starts long before they come to the show and can last long after,” he says.
Growing up, he went to church camp. “But the type of camp I always wanted to go to never existed,” he says, his eyes twinkling like a prankish troop leader. “So I figured I’d take a stab at creating it.”
