Lisa Rogak - Angry Optimist

Perhaps more importantly, at least in the eyes of Comedy Central executives, the ratings during Oliver’s tenure equaled Stewart’s: his first week, Oliver’s shows attracted 1.5 million viewers, the same as Stewart’s.

Stewart began his time away from The Daily Show by meeting his Egyptian counterpart Bassem Youssef, who is regularly referred to as the Egyptian Jon Stewart. Youssef invited Stewart onto his show El Bernameg, aka “The Program.” When Stewart appeared on the show in June of 2013, Youssef’s show was the most popular show in Egypt.

Dr. Youssef doubles as a heart surgeon and got his start as a humorous critic of the Egyptian government—and journalists—by making videos of his funny diatribes in the laundry room of his Cairo apartment building and posting them on YouTube after the 2011 revolution known as the Arab Spring. He called the show The B+ Show, aka “B(e) Positive,” after his blood type, and aired the first show in March 2011 while riots were still going on in Tahrir Square. “My program is a direct result of what happened in the revolution,” said Youssef. Within a few months, his YouTube shows were so popular, garnering five million hits each, that a major Egyptian TV network offered him a show of his own, which quickly became the most-viewed show in the country, and it spread throughout the region.

It’s clear Youssef regarded Stewart as a hero. He framed one of his favorite Stewart quotes—“I’m not going to censor myself to comfort your ignorance”—and displays it prominently in his office. “I love Jon Stewart, and I will never shy from the fact that he is a role model,” he said, adding that while there are similarities between the shows, his is necessarily less-polished than the American version. “We are at a different stage in building our country,” he explained. “Stewart is in a much more stable environment, a much more established democracy. Here, it is much harder to come up with the program.”

In hosting Stewart on his show, Youssef was also returning the favor. He had appeared on The Daily Show on a visit to the States in June 2012. “I love the guy,” said Youssef. “He’s part of the reason why I’m here.”

In addition to his name-recognition in Egypt, there were signs that Stewart’s popularity was spreading throughout the world. Even though The Daily Show is only broadcast in a handful of countries—including India, Australia, Portugal, and the United Kingdom—millions of people could view his shows online through ComedyCentral.comand YouTube. And if their governments banned it, there were always work-arounds online.

Perhaps not surprisingly, China has a growing audience for The Daily Show, although Stewart’s increasing popularity caused the Chinese government to start banning the bootlegged and illegally downloaded broadcasts that are uploaded with hastily added subtitles to Chinese social media sites like Sina Weibo and Youku; often the addition of a new show crashes the sites. In the spring of 2013, Stewart reported on the air pollution in Beijing and made the comment, “Things may be bad, but at least we can’t chew our air.” The segment went viral across the country along with an online campaign for Stewart to produce a week’s worth of shows in China.

Known by his Chinese name Jiong Situ, Stewart has become so popular that many people yearn for their own version of The Daily Show, which would be pretty much impossible under the current Communist government. “How wonderful it would be if we could also complain about our country like this,” commented one Weibo user.

From all accounts, despite the fact that Rosewater was the first movie he directed, Stewart was the consummate professional on the set.

According to star Shohreh Aghdashloo, who played a gypsy queen on NBC’s Grimm series, Stewart worked hard to make the actors and crew feel comfortable. The first day of the shoot, he acknowledged his lack of experience and apologized in advance to the cast for any mistakes he’d make. Though he turned out to be a very hands-on director, he knew enough to trust the actors to make their own decisions when it came to figuring out their characters’ motivations and actions.

“The good directors allow you to do that,” said Aghdashloo, mentioning that she was so impressed with his work that she told him he was a born director. With a budget of under $10 million, the movie was shot primarily in and around Amman, Jordan, with longtime Hollywood producers Scott Rudin and Gigi Pritzker helming the production team. But after just a week on the set, Stewart asked his producers to increase the film’s budget. Even though actor Gael García Bernal, who starred as Che Guevara in the 2004 movie The Motorcycle Diaries, had already agreed to play Maziar Bahari in Rosewater, shortly before filming began he had asked for more money. The other principal actors in the film were relative unknowns and the film crew relied on numerous locals to pitch in where they were needed.

And so adjustments were made on the fly. A riot scene involving eight hundred extras presented an issue because there was no money in the budget for the expense. “There was a lot of debate and chaos around what we should do,” said Alaadin Khasawneh, who worked as a member of the production team and also played a prison guard in the movie. He and the team came up with an ingenious solution: they put out the word on Jordanian social media sites that extras would be paid with a hug by Stewart. “It was a big risk and a gamble, but it worked out. And it just goes to show how much Jon is loved in Jordan.”

Bahari, author of the book Then They Came for Me, also spent time on the set and was very pleased with how Stewart handled his story. “I think Jon did a very good job with the film,” Bahari said. “I’m excited to see what the final result will look like.”

And García Bernal concurred. “It was the most incredible filming adventure I’ve ever put myself into,” he said.

The shoot was complicated by the fact that part of the filming schedule occurred during Ramadan. “It was an intense five weeks because people were fasting,” said Khasawneh.

As filming progressed through the summer, Stewart settled into his role. His schedule on the film prevented him from watching Oliver’s work as his substitute, but he joked that “[Directing] has been exciting and invigorating, but weird as hell,” he said. “And I don’t watch The Daily Show because it’s too weird. It’s like watching someone have sex with your wife’s desk.”

What was even stranger was that, as Aghdashloo described it, there was “a line of beautiful girls” always waiting just outside the set, eager for a chance to meet Stewart in the flesh.

The film wrapped in August 2013, Stewart returned to the States, and reclaimed his hosting seat on September 3, 2013. Postproduction began on Rosewater, and though a distributor had not yet been lined up, Stewart announced that the film would be released sometime in 2014.

When Stewart returned to The Daily Show, he was tanned, rested, refreshed, and more than ready to resume his hosting duties. Still, speculation had now begun about when—not if—he would leave permanently.

Was his first hiatus indeed the beginning of the end of Jon Stewart’s long reign on The Daily Show ? And if he left, what could he do that could possibly match his accomplishments on Comedy Central? Depending upon how Rosewater did with the critics and at the box office, he could forge ahead with a new career in the movies, succeeding the second time around, this time behind the camera.