When comedian Jason Jones' children asked about the birds and the bees, he responded, "Well, what do you think?" They answered, "I think [the seed] goes in through the forehead...and a baby comes out mommy's tummy scar."
"[My wife Samantha Bee and I] had to correct that," Jones explains to Ask Me Another host Ophira Eisenberg at the Bell House in Brooklyn, NY.
This kind of naiveté inspired the power couple to create the TBS comedy The Detour. The show follows a family of four traveling from New York to Florida on a road trip gone awry. While on the road, the parents, played by Jones and Natalie Zea ( Justified, The Following), bluntly speak to their 10-year-old twins about issues such as race and sexuality. "It's not an ABC family sitcom," Jones assures Eisenberg.
While The Detour focuses on domestic travel, for 10 years Jones went to countries such as Iran, Russia, and India as a Daily Show correspondent. Back at home, Jones pushed boundaries of humor and taste — one particularly risqué segment chronicled Jones' actual vasectomy. Jones enumerated the challenges in getting that story to air in a bonus clip from the episode.
A native of Canada, Jones recently became a United States citizen. However, Jones began his career in Toronto with the sketch group The Bobroom, which is why we asked if he could translate some Canadian phrases for us in his VIP game. To raise the stakes, we pit him against a contestant who runs a poutine shop in Brooklyn and is on her own path to Canadian citizenship.
HIGHLIGHTS
On getting a job on the Daily Show
Completely coincidentally. You may cry nepotism. But honestly, [the Daily Show] actually didn't want to hire me because they thought that [Samantha Bee and I] would break up. That would be just awful office politics. "Whose side do we pick?" Of course, they would pick her side.
On Craft Corner Deathmatch
It was a competitive crafting show. I basically just sat there and made fun of them, but I did it in a WWE announcer type of way. I had to apologize between takes. One was "make a sweater out of leaves" so we dump all the leaves. This one woman drew a nice pattern and put all the leaves down and then the producers gave me a leaf blower. It was so mean but pretty funny.
Heard on Jason Jones: Comfy Bunny Hug
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