Marc Maron is setting the record straight again over what led to his former feud with Jon Stewart.
The comedian and podcaster recently chatted with Esquire‘s editor-in-chief Michael Sebastian about his (one-sided) rivalry with The Daily Show host, admitting that it was “fully fueled” by his own “insecurity.” He added, “Jon never did anything to me,” and that he “was just jealous” of Stewart and the career he had built.
“When I was coming up, he was this smart, cute Jewish guy,” Maron said, adding that Stewart was a “disciplined careerist” who understood how to “harness” his talent and then “capitalize on it” on his own terms.
However, the WTF with Marc Maron host said of his early career days, “I never had any control over my talent. I never knew its limitations or what it was. I was just all in and just demanding a place in the world of comedy.”
Maron has previously said the pair had a rocky relationship since the 1990s, when they were both trying to break out in the comedy scene. He had taken over Stewart’s hosting duties on the Comedy Central show Short Attention Span Theater, but it was canceled shortly after in 1994. Stewart went on to find more success hosting The Daily Show, cementing his name in the comedy world, which only led Maron to resent him more.
“Throughout my early career, Jon, who is roughly my age, was just everywhere,” he told Sebastian. “My envy of him was always … I would just shit on him, and to his face. It was just consuming. I couldn’t get through a week without him being on the cover of a magazine. For some reason, I saw him as, ‘If I could only have my shit together, I could be more like that guy.’ … Which wasn’t true, because I was out of my mind, and I was definitely gunning for something else.”
Maron admitted that he didn’t even get “into comedy to be an entertainer or have a job as a talk show host or anything,” but that he wanted “to hold space and to speak my mind.” He added, “I loved comedy, so I thought I can do that in comedy.”
“I think I had a big belief in that I will eventually be who I am and I always was, but it was not whole until fairly recently,” he continued. “So Jon really just represented that, and I was annoying to him.”
Sebastian later asked Maron if he had ever tried to get Stewart on his WTF podcast, which just concluded its final episode with former President Barack Obama.
“I tried to get him on early on,” the comedian responded, before recalling a moment when he was “kind of apologizing” to Stewart over the phone and telling him about his podcast. However, Maron said Stewart told him, “Well, there’s no love here.”
“He said, ‘I might be willing to have coffee or something, but I’m not doing that with you,’” Maron continued of the conversation. “And then he said, ‘I’m sure what you’re doing is very creative, and good luck with it.’ Just the stinging condescension of that … it didn’t help anything. And now he’s doing a podcast. So, full circle!”
