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Jon Stewart hiatus: “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart will take a break for 12 weeks to focus on directing a film about a journalist jailed in Iran.
Jon Stewart speaks onstage at MusiCares Person Of The Year Honoring Bruce Springsteen on Feb. 8, 2013 in Los Angeles, Calif. (Larry Busacca/Getty Images for NARAS)
Jon Stewart will take a break from “The Daily Show” hosting duties this summer.
Stewart will take a three-month hiatus to make his feature directing debut for a serious film called “Rosewater” about a journalist held in Iran. The film is adapted from Maziar Bahari’s memoir “Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity and Survival,” which was published in 2011, according to USA Today.
Bahari went to Iran to cover the country’s 2009 elections for the BBC. However, he was later arrested and detained for 118 days and was forced to undergo interrogations. The man apparently smelled like rosewater, hence the name of the film. Stewart, who wrote the script for “Rosewater,” interviewed Bahari on his show in 2011.
“I am a television person who is accustomed to having a thought at 10 a.m. and having it out there at 6:30 p.m. and moving on, so this is a little scary, yes,” Stewart told The New York Times recently about his future directing debut.
“But one of the reasons we are in this business is to challenge ourselves,” he said, and added: “I really connected to Maziar’s story. It’s a personal story but one with universal appeal about what it means to be free.”
While Stewart is away, “Daily Show” correspondent John Oliver will take over for eight weeks of new shows, according to USA Today.
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