Behind the Show | Al Madrigal on What Makes a Great Field Piece
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Who is Al Madrigal and what is his connection to The Daily Show?
Hey everybody, this is Mark Paone, longtime editor at The Daily Show. Once again, back with a former Daily Show correspondent. I was, I should say... One of your favorites. One of my favorites, and senior Latino correspondent. That's right. Comedian, actor, entrepreneur. Yes. Renaissance man. Yes. Al Madrigal. How are you? When you say long time, exactly how long have you been here? Because I know you keep track. I started season two. That's insane. And this is season- 7-7-97 was my first day. Holy crap. Because for a while, I think you would call, as a joke, all jokes, we'd call John the new guy. And he had been here for like 16 years. Yeah. And we became, I mean, as you do in the field department, which is where I did a lot of work when I was here, because I was here from the years of 2011. I believe I started full time at the beginning of 2012, shared an office with Jessica Williams.
uh who's just crushing it i'm so happy for her um it's kind of cool to see everybody go on and do things but i was here from 2012 to 2000 end of 2013 full-time and then another like half year Or half, like on and off, part-time until John left. And then I dribbled into Trevor. Just dribbling. So how did you get the gig? I don't remember.
How did Al Madrigal become a correspondent on The Daily Show?
I got the gig because, and this is a be nice to everyone you meet thing. I got the gig because a guy hit me up to do a guest set on a show in Miami at the Coconut Grove Improv, which was an insane comedy club. Go around the country from 2005, 2004 till 2010. That's how I made a living primarily. I was acting in some TV shows, but I would do stand up on the road. And people hit you up for guest sets. The guy that hit me up was Adam Lowitt, a comedian from Florida who was going to be there at the time, who was also a producer at The Daily Show. He went on to be an executive producer. He's done many incredible things. He's in L.A. now? In L.A. with two wonderful children and his wife. And we're still closed and stay in touch.
But he hit me up for a guest set. Then he hit me up for when I was in New York for another guest set. Then he hit me up for another guest set. So this is like guest sets over years. Right. And then finally, when we're at Caroline's in New York, he said, you know, I think it was my act was sort of skewing this way. And he goes, you'd make a great Latino correspondent. Right. He goes, I know just how to pitch it. So we waited for a dark week, which the show has weeks on and weeks off. It's very difficult to do a daily show like they do. It's amazing that John did it as long as he did. And we're going to do it the Thursday of a dark week when he's in. A working dark week, yeah. A working dark week. So we have Hallie Hagelin, who was a newish writer at the time.
She's gone on to be EP of things and rose to the ranks here and is very, very funny. So Hallie Lowett and I, we write this piece on Debbie Riddle, who's a congresswoman from Texas who won it, and it's amazing. how this is in 2011 and nothing has changed she wanted to establish a group of non-US citizens like a second class of citizen that could work as home care workers so nannies gardeners and anyone else that you'd want, some sort of Latino taking care of your things so that they could work without employment laws. So you wouldn't have to pay them minimum wages or anything like that. And then this was in Texas, so we did that piece. that got changed so we rewrote it and i auditioned and it went well john took me over here where i was sort of waiting in one of these little side guest rooms and said congratulations uh and get ready for a lifestyle of women and drugs i'll never forget that no John Oliver, he always used to give you a great impression of people at Daily Show conventions.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Who is Al Madrigal and what is his connection to The Daily Show?
0:39–2:21
2
How did Al Madrigal become a correspondent on The Daily Show?
2:21–5:35
3
What challenges did Al Madrigal face while working on The Daily Show?
5:35–10:34
4
What advice did Stephen Colbert give to new correspondents?
10:34–13:27
5
How are field pieces created on The Daily Show?
13:27–16:38
6
What was Al Madrigal's favorite field piece?
16:38–46:28
Speakers
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