Michelle Wolf, “The Daily Show’s” newest correspondent, did not take a traditional approach to her now burgeoning comedy career.
“I was a kinesiology major in college, which is exercise science,” Wolf told TheWrap. “Then, I was either going to get my Ph.D or go to medical school, but I was kind of burned out after school. My roommates had all gotten jobs on Wall Street, so they were like, ‘Come work with us on Wall Street! We’ll all live in New York for a couple of years.’”
That led to a job at Bear Stearns in March 2007, until that firm collapsed a year later amid a global financial meltdown. Wolf assured us she had nothing to do with that. She then went to JP Morgan for a few years after that.
In that time, Wolf, who counts Carol Burnett and Colin Quinn among her comedy inspirations, never thought of doing comedy professionally.
“I always loved comedy, but in my mind it wasn’t a viable career option,” she said. “I always thought, ‘You go to college. You get a job and then you pay off college.’”
But all of that would soon change.
“I took an improv class and after my first class I was like, ‘Oh, I just want to do something like this. This is super fun,’” she said. “So I did a couple years of improv and about five years ago I got into stand up. That kind of overtook everything. Eventually I got a job on ‘Late Night with Seth Meyers,’ and was there until April of this year and then came over to ‘The Daily Show.’”
And while Wolf is a new face on the show, she is well known in comedy circles. Louis C.K. recently named her as one of the great comedians working today, describing her as “relentless, funny, consistent.”
She has also performed with luminaries like Sarah Silverman, and wrote for both the 2016 Academy Awards and the 2014 Emmy Awards. So while her career as an investment banker may have fizzled out, Wolf’s stock is definitely on the rise.
But she isn’t letting success go to her head. The long-running satirical news series is a cornerstone of the Comedy Central brand, something Wolf does not take lightly.
“This is a show that I grew up watching,” she said, “It was on for all of my adult life and most of my life in general. I’ve watched ‘The Daily Show’ forever. So being a part of it is surreal.”
Watch some of Wolf’s performances below.