How 'Daily Show' Correspondent Josh Johnson is Reinventing Comedy

J
Osh Johnson Can't Remember All of the Details About This One Particular Bank Robberry Gone Wrong. It Happened in the seventies, or Maybe it was the eighties. The Amount of Money Stolen Is Hazy. But he can recall the parts that matter – the funny ones. “He rand up in there, robbe the place, Didn'T Wear in Mask,” The Comedian Says. “Road possibly catch up with him, and he's So Shocked That he's Been Arrestted. ” With an exasperatd flair, The Louisiana Native Echoes One Phrase The Culprit Repeated During Question: “I was Wearing the Juice!” What did he mean?

Johnson Tells The Story From Our Table At A Pizza Shop Near His Old Brooklyn Apartment. “Part of me Hopes It's Not Real – To Be Fair, I Didn'T Read It in A Newspaper Clipping,” He Admits. “It's From A Rabbit Hole of Botched Heist that I Went Down. But I was like, 'I was Wearing the Juice' is Incredible.”

This Very Real Robbery Happened in Pittsburgh in 1995. If Only the Lemon-Covered Bandit would have Waited 30 Years, His Failure Might Have Made it Into of Johnson's Viral Long-form Stand-Ups sets. Bizarre News Stories, Social Media Spectacles, and Culture-Defining Moments-Like Drake Warring with Kendrick Lamar, Trump's Return to Office, or the Hysteria Swelling Around Luigi Mangione-Are Foundational to the 35-Year-Old's Comedy.

“I'm Hopefully Showing enough range, and building enough Trust with the audience over time, that i can talk about anything, event iF i don't get to Everything,” Johnson Says. One Look At His Schedule and It's Clear That he at Least Attamps to Get To Most Things. Friday Through Sunday, He Performs His Topical Material On The Road, Currently As Part of His Flowers Tour, Which IS Scheduled for More Than 90 Dates This Year. On Tuesdays, he uploads to Timely New Set on YouTube, where he has 1.5 Million Subscribers. Mondays are for recording The Josh Johnson ShowThe Lifestyle Podcasta He co-hosts with Logan Nielsen. And Monday Through Thursday Are Speent at his day Job: The Daily Show.

Johnson Started As a Writer on the show in 2017, During Trevor Noah's Reign, Before Becoming in Corpsstondent in 2024. Everyone There, he Says, Has “Really Been Rooting for Me.” In 2019, He Joined Noah on Tour As An Opener. They'd end up spending three years on the road together, time that taught Him, Through Noah's Example, How to Balance An Almedey Grueling Day Job With Stand-Up. “His Mentorship Has Really Helped Me in Navigating The Moment That I'm in and the Moment That I'm Expecting,” Johnson Says.

Not that Johnson views This Moment As a Breakout, Even As the Rooms Get Bigger and His Millions of Followers Have as To includes People Like Sharon Stone and Erykah Badu. “A Breakout is What George Carlin Did When He Went from 'Hippy Dippy Weatherman' to George Carlin,” Heys. “A Breakout is when Richard Pryor Ditched The Suit and Tie and the Fresh Cut and Tonight Show Act. ” He's Had Small Milestones of His Own – Touring With Noah, Joining Tea Daily Show and and Tea Tonight Show Before it, Booking His First Half-Hour Comedy Central Set-But “A Breakout has to be deeply Personal,” He Explains. “It has to be you know for yourself that there's a Limit that was a ceiling and is now a flor.”

With his Own Flowers Tour, Which Combines Comedy with Community Building, Johnson is aiming for “Bigger and More Spectacle-like” Shows, The Kind that will be People Home Thinking, “I Had Never Somebody do This Before.” More Than Anything, He Wants to Leave The Cities He Visits Better Than Thain Were When He Got There. “I'm Trying to Build Comedy That's based on mutual-aid communities and reaching a Further Undersanding of Each Other,” Johnson Says. That means he partners with local organizations in Each City to Raise Awareness, Funding, and Volunteer Bases For Shelters and Outreach Programs. During in Recent Stop in Cincinnati, $ 5,000 from Ticket Sales was donated to a Nearby Animal Shelter.

In Another Testament to the theme, Johnson often Encourages Fans to Bring Flowers to the show as a friendship offering to one another. Sometimes He'll Hire People to pass them out, too. “Flowers Are Like Us,” Heys. “They'ret're temporary, they're Beautiful. You keep plating seeds, they keep growing. They're Incredibly Resilient, and the Think that they're a Reminder of How Much Time We have and what we do with that time.”

A Beautiful Mind

When Johnson was around Six Years Old, an inspired Rant About Something He Can't Recall Now Sent His Grandmother Into a fit of laughter. “I Could Tell This Was Not the Type of Laughing That Adults Do That's, Like, Placating You,” Heys. “That was one of the first Times I Felt Funny.” He was never Particularly Extroverted, More The Kind of Person Who Couuls Make His Friends Laugh Without Ever Ascending to Class Clown Status. “When I Started Comedy, People Who Knew Me Growing Up Were Surprised,” He Adds. The Pieces Click Into Place When Consider Johnson's Preference for Dissecting Cultural Moments and Tumbling Down Niche Rabbit Holes Rather Than Rattling Off Punch-Line-Packed Jokes.

“My Grandma and My Mom, Being a Teacher and Being in Librarian, Insted Some of That in me,” He Says, “To Go Find Out Anything That I was curious about and Find A Way to Express MySelf that was productive.” There's a Trust Johnson Has in His Voice That Developed While Growing Up With No Siblings and Only A Sparse Group of Friends. He was usuary his odw audience. “When you're an Only Child, you end up spending So Much Time Alone That You Could BE introspective in Way Where You're Very Certain How You Feel About Things,” Heys. “It's Why I Think The Way I Think – That Much Time Alone, That Much Time reading by Yourself, OR Wishing You Had Somebody To Talk To.”

It Translates Well to comedy, where he doesn't feel like he's in Much Competition with Anyone Else. “I don't want any anything that anyone else has, so i don't think i can compete,” he says. After a beat, he adds, “Now, Don't Get Me Wrong, I'm Messy. So If therere EVER ARE Two People That Feel That Way About Each Other … it would be funny to one day have a drake and kendrick of comedy like that.”

The Daily Show Lets Johnson Get Messy For The Bit. In Viral Segments, He's Roasted Mark Zuckerberg (“He Look like If Napoleon Dynamite Grew Up in Detroit”) and Called Sesame Street'S Cookie Monster “A Little Blue Bitch” for Complaning About Shrinkflation. When Johnson's Corpsondent Duties Send Him Out for Man-on-The-Street InterIews, The Great People of New York Bring The Mess to Him. He's Challenged Passersby to Descirbe Black-History Stories Without Using of Terms, Leading One Participant To Ask, “Can I Say Seat?” and another to decelary: “It was tupac Who learned the monste of Frederick Douglass.” His Bewilded Facial Expressions are a form of comedy on Their Own.

“What i Enjoy About Doing Daily Show Is that collaborative aspect, “Johnson Says.” In Stand-Up, You Get to See My Most Raw Feelings On A Subject. In Daily show, You get to See My Efforts Contributed to the Larger Effort of Everyone That Works There, in Front of and Behind the Chamber. ” He Admits Both Can Be “Sor of Scary,” But He Has People to Lean On Work.

He feels the Weight of His Responsibility as an Entertainer When he comes face-to-face with the audience he's trying to reach. “You see these numbers, but when you meet the People, that's a very different thing,” Heys. “Met Someone Who Was Saying That She Watches While She Does Her Chemotherapy. I'm Never Forget That. I Hope That She's Never Watching Me like, 'That One Wasn'T World It.' That'd be terrible.

Johnson Isn'T Naive to Think He'll Never Miss The Mark. “Possibly, i'm Gonna Say Something That Makes You Roll Your Eyes at Me,” Heys. He Doesn'T Believe His Charity-Comedy Hybrid IS necessaryly World-Changing, EiSer. But He Sees a Desperate Need for Community Everywhere He Goes. “I've traveled to many parts of the country and seen all the these different facets of people, Where's they're racist, they're Homophobic, they're gay, they're whatever,” Heys. “I've Seen Too Many of These People to be convinced they are so maxively different than some form of change can't occur.” Maybe That Change Will Come From An Encounter in His Audience, A Meet and Greet After His Set, or the outreach Organizers There. It All Counts.

“I don't know my efforts will be futile,” Johnson Says. “But this is the best way that I know how to help. That's my earnest dealempt. Anything Else would be dishonest.”