Jon Stewart learned the hard way that animals can make unpredictable co-stars during his MTV talk show days — when a guest’s trained condor flew into the audience and bit someone on the back.
Before hosting “The Daily Show,” Stewart led “The Jon Stewart Show” on MTV from 1993 to 1995. In the series’ last week on air, he witnessed two disastrous guest segments that went off the rails.
On the June 19, 1995 episode, one of Stewart’s guests was the “Birdman of Vegas,” who trained condors. The guest brought two of the birds onto the show, demonstrating their training by having one fly onto his arm. However, while one condor obeyed its trainer, the other flew into the audience. Amid uproar in the studio, the rogue condor landed on an audience member and began biting their back.
Adding to the shock of the beloved late-night host and the audience, the bird’s trainer seemed unfazed as his condor attacked a man, even as the crowd began chanting “Sue them, sue them!” The only small comfort for Stewart was that the show was already in its final week and couldn’t be cancelled again.
Jon Stewart recalled the condor incident in his memoir
Reflecting on his career in his 2014 memoir, “Angry Optimist: The Life and Times of Jon Stewart,” the talk show host shared an account of the condor incident.
While recalling the challenges of hosting the half-hour MTV format, Stewart said he and the crew “stood there dumbstruck while [the condor] bit an audience member’s back.” He added that the trainer offered little reassurance after losing control of the bird. “The trainer says, ‘Hey, man, maybe you should go to commercial.’ And I said, ‘Hey, maybe you should get your bird.'”
Stewart’s recollection also revealed that the show’s chaos continued the following episode. “The next night, Marilyn Manson was on and they ended up lighting the stage on fire,” the host said, referring to a stunt that stoked controversy at the time, in which Manson lit a Bible on fire on the stage floor. “I really thought somebody was going to be killed that week.” Perhaps a better showbiz mantra is never work with rock stars or animals.
