Finding the Funny

“Madeleine’s pioneering life in comedy is a lot like her laugh: full-throated, uncensored, involves real tears—wait, is she actually crying?—messy, totally unladylike, and absolutely glorious. (I hope there’s an audiobook version, because you really need to hear her laugh.) – Mo Rocca, correspondent, CBS Sunday Morning and original correspondent, The Daily Show
“Smithberg took a chance, hiring an unknown, untested, aspiring actor from the Chicago Theater scene. It was his biggest break and it changed his career forever. But enough about Stephen Colbert. She hired me right after that, and I owe her a lot.” – Steve Carell
“Madeleine Smithberg was a talent coordinator for my earliest television shows. She had a fine eye for all things strange and startling. She proved the “what” was more important than the “who”. Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, it was Madeleine’s unique guest bookings that got people’s attention in those early days. We all loved her brain and her energy and her Rolodex (Google it). Turns out she’s also a good storyteller. I know you’ll enjoy this book.” – Dave Letterman
“Madeleine’s rise from affable and effective staffer on Letterman to the creator of one of the most influential television shows in the history of political comedy is the stuff of legend. “How did she do it?” one might ask. In this marvelous book, we finally learn the answer. It’s legendary!” – Paul Shaffer, longtime Late Show bandleader
“It wasn’t enough that Madeleine Smithberg was a key player in the breakthrough comedy that was David Letterman’s Late Night show on NBC, nor that she co-created The Daily Show, the most significant innovation on the late-night comedy landscape since the invention of Tonight in 1954. Now she has written a book about all of that.

And the life she’s lived before and after and in between. No surprise: it’s revealing and insightful, personal, and playful, and bust-a-gut hilarious on every page. Madeleine never had to look far to find the funny. It’s always been right there in her own creative hands.” – Bill Carter, author of The Late Shift, editor-at-large, LateNighter
“I was there at the beginning and this is a story I didn’t know. How The Daily Show came to be and what went on behind the scenes. It’s a story worth telling. And Madeleine tells it well. And it’s funny.” – Lewis Black, comedian and actor

Madeleine Smithberg might just be the most influential woman in late-night comedy you’ve never heard of. She earned three Peabody Awards and an Emmy Award for Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, which she co-created and ran as executive producer for seven years. During her time at TDS, she hired Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, and Mo Rocca based on her legendary gut for talent, and was instrumental in bringing onboard Jon Stewart, Ed Helms, Rob Corddry, and Lewis Black, among others. The format that she and her team built more than 30 years ago helped change the way college students get their news and is still as relevant today as it has ever been.

Before that, she spent six years as a talent coordinator, then producer, for NBC’s original Late Night with David Letterman, which she considers her “comedy graduate school.” The segment featuring a rhesus monkey in a blue satin dress attacking David Letterman may be the high point of her career.

As a producer, Madeleine has spent the past four decades making other people funny. Now it is time for her to tell us how she’s done it.

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