Last summer, Drake broke the internet when he appeared as a guest on The Really Good Podcast. It was his first in-depth  interview in nearly a decade following the cancellation of his infamous Rolling Stone cover story back in 2014. 

 

In many ways, the podcast—set in the famed rapper’s bedroom at his Memphis home—is classic Drake. We see mics propped up on either side of his California King bed, where he's sitting snuggled up under his sheets. An assistant hands him bottled water before the conversation kicks off. And after a few seconds of Drake sipping in silence, we hear the voice of a woman. 

 

“Can we start?” she says in an unbothered tone. 

 

So, how did Bobbi Althoff, an inconspicuous celebrity interviewer, get Drake in bed? According to the novice TikToker-turned-podcaster, it was actually pretty easy. In a conversation with Cosmopolitan in January, Althoff explained, “I DMed Drake and asked if he wanted to be on my podcast, and he said yes.” 

 

When it comes to celebrities breaking their silence, interview veterans such as Oprah Winfrey and Diane Sawyer are typically the ones who get the call. That’s why when Drake enlisted the then-25-year-old podcaster to do the honors, the internet had a lot of questions, starting with: Who is Bobbi Althoff? 

 

Apart from being a mother of two living in Southern California, Althoff, 26, is a member of a media-savvy generation of females who are redefining what it means to be a celebrity guest host. From rapper’s beds to their own living rooms, women like Alex Cooper, Ziwe, and Bobbi Althoff are booking the hardest interviews in the game. Even the likes of Trevor Noah, Jimmy Fallon, and Jimmy Kimmel, who dominate late-night television, are asking them how they did it. But beyond delivering unique comedy to their viewers and running their own shows, none of them are waiting for permission from media gatekeepers.

 

It’s been thirty years since Joan Rivers’ late-night talk show, The Late Show with Joan Rivers, was canceled. Debuting in October 1986, The Late Show made history with Rivers as the first female late-night host on television. Although the talk show only ran for nine months before disagreements with executives led Fox to shut it down in ‘87, its cancellation spotlights an attitude toward women in television that continues to bar aspiring female hosts from running their own desks.

 

Since then, networks have invested millions in a group of male guest hosts that are following in the footsteps of Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Jay Leno, and Bill Maher. And ever since, diversity has been scarce. 

 

When Trevor Noah left Comedy Central’s The Daily Show in September 2022, seven years and a day after assuming his role as host, the search for a permanent replacement sparked anticipation. Who could possibly supersede the man who made an audience gasp after announcing his resignation on live TV? 

 

The answer could have been a woman, but after a yearlong hunt for the next guest host, impatient fans were shocked by the channel’s decision to bring back Jon Stewart—Noah’s predecessor who hosted The Daily Show for 16 years—claiming Comedy Central missed a pivotal opportunity to move the needle. In other words, this is the problem with Jon Stewart. 

 

Questions about when women will join the late-night party have been circulating for decades. In fact, The Guardian, The Atlantic and The Los Angeles Times, to name a few, touched on the “women problem” in 2015, shortly after Noah succeeded Stewart. But while each article cited the South African comedian’s induction as a stride toward diversity in late-night, women and people of color continue to be overlooked. 

 

Nevertheless, the career success Alex Cooper, Ziwe and Bobbi Althoff have experienced over the last few years begs the question of whether getting their own late-night show is even necessary. Despite citing late-night hosts like Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Fallon as sources of inspiration, the million-dollar deals and immense audiences these women have amassed on social media signal the rise of a flourishing “girls club.”

 

Cooper was one of the first on the scene. She started off on a virulently misogynistic platform, Dave Portnoy's Barstool Sports, with Call Her Daddy, an advice and comedy podcast “for the girls." At the time, Cooper ran the podcast with her now ex-co host Sofia Franklyn, featuring “uncensored, real, female locker room talk which quite frankly is just as nasty as guy locker room talk,” as Cooper described it.

 

Then in 2021, Cooper broke off from Barstool in favor of co-producing her podcast with Spotify, keeping the same medium and broadening her discussion topics. But once she stopped making her show all about sex and ditched the co-host style, people got upset. Cooper responded in a Los Angeles Times interview, saying that she wanted to be “mentally stimulated” by her show. 

 

The three-year agreement between Cooper and Spotify clocked in at $60 million, for an annual salary of $20 million. But perhaps most amazingly, she’s been able to build an all-female team for her show. According to Cooper, other female presenters have told her “it’s inspiring.” Why? “A woman just got what in the past would’ve been a male contract,” she said. 

 

Like Cooper, Ziwe also had an early start. She went to Northwestern where she double majored in radio, TV, and film as well as African-American studies, with a minor in poetry. She told Rolling Stone in October 2023 that her path was inspired by Stephen Colbert. A couple years later, she was interning for him as a writer on The Colbert Report. 

 

But her big break came when she created Baited with Ziwe, where she interviewed her white coworkers and made them feel uncomfortable about race. In 2020, the show moved from its original home on Youtube to Instagram Live, where Showtime caught wind of it and transformed it into Ziwe, her eponymous satirical talk show, which ran for two seasons from May 2021 to December 2022. 

 

Ziwe’s trademark dry humor and running “gotcha” gag created some iconic viral moments. Like when she made Phoebe Bridgers “apologize for all racism” in ASMR or when she quizzed Chet Hanks on Jamaican slang. But Ziwe was more than a fresh entry into late-night, as fans of her show even went on X (formerly Twitter) to push her to take over The Daily Show after Noah’s departure. 

 

While Ziwe has yet to succeed Noah, Althoff has revealed wanting to replace Jimmy Kimmel. She said as much on her podcast last month, where she interviewed him. But, unlike Cooper and Ziwe, who launched their careers with more experience under their belts, Althoff’s quick rise was a-typical. The then-TikToker started hosting in May 2023 with a few hundred dollars, a TikTok account and absolutely nothing to lose, offering $300 to anyone who could get her an interview with a celebrity. It only took her $600 to get to Drake. And with that, she had succeeded. “I always knew that I wanted to interview celebrities. That was kind of the big goal,” Althoff told Rolling Stone in January 2024. 

 

Althoff has high hopes for her podcast. In her interview with Mark Cuban, she admitted she was $20,000 in debt because of her podcast startup. Yet, she doesn’t want any investors for her business. “I want full ownership of it myself,” she told Cuban in the same interview. “I believe in my podcast. I am trying my best.” And after a brief hiatus from her meteoric rise into the guest host stratosphere, Althoff dropped a teaser for season 2. 

 

They’re thriving in their own spaces, with control over their shows. Much of their success points to the virality of their content - no doubt a product of their interview styles and the high-profile celebrities they snag. Who can forget when Julia Fox said she was “Josh Safdie’s muse on ‘uncah jams’” on Call Her Daddy? Or when George Santos dropped bars of Nicki Minaj’s Monster rap seconds after not being able to name civil rights activists on Youtube with Ziwe? This is what gives them the audience base that rivals traditional late-night. 

 

Yet they’re not given the same opportunity for growth. So when Showtime canceled Ziwe in 2022, there was an uproar on social media. 

 

“These were interesting, provocative conversations,” said Washington Post reporter, Alexis Williams, who interviewed Ziwe in October 2023. “Do men just have a better opportunity? Like the bro-y, goofy type of humor versus something cerebral actually going on underneath all the comedy?” 

 

It seems like virality is their way in. Kevin Fallon, editor of The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, likens the reactions to these uncanny interview moments to the same ones we have when watching our favorite TV shows. It’s just too good to look away. 

 

“Ziwe’s interviews in themselves are sort of an art form in that they don’t conform to the structure of late-night TV in the way that Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel or Seth Meyers run their interviews,” Fallon later said. 

 

But as we’ve seen, more popularity comes with more hate, and Cooper, Fumudoh, and Althoff have definitely dealt with their share of pushback.  “The episodes I’ve been given the most s— about are the most downloaded of Call Her Daddy. What does it say about you, that you hate it and you’re still watching it?” Cooper told the Los Angeles Times in June 2022. 

 

Despite drawing inspiration from men like Zach Galifianakis, Nathan Fielder, Eric Andre and even Stephen Colbert, the interview personalities, comedic styles and celebrity guests taken on by these women have provoked criticism. And more often than not, the host personas they consider alter egos are the main target. 

 

In a 2022 interview with Trevor Noah on The Daily Show, Ziwe addressed these misconceptions saying, “this is my personality. It’s a hyperbolic character but there’s a kernel in there. I, Ziwe, am kinder than the character Ziwe.” 

 

Ziwe told The Guardian in 2020 that she frequently gets negative comments online, accusing her of “hating white people,” calling her interview style cringey and ineffective in provoking real conversations. 

 

“Ziwe is a comedian first. She is always about letting the joke take the lead,” said Post reporter Alexis Williams. “She talks about how she's not this super duper girly- girl, but that's what her parents wanted her to be like. She dressed like Hilary Banks on the show in some episodes to wink to that. To say, I'm going to look this way that you'd like me to look, because that coincides with your idea of what a woman is,” she added.

 

In the same Guardian interview, Ziwe admitted she was just trying her best to do what she could. And if others didn’t understand her alter-ego, she encouraged them to come up with their own ideas. 

 

Fans who fell in love with Call Her Daddy during its Barstool days have also had a lot to say about Cooper’s interview personality since transitioning to Spotify. Her desire to push beyond raunchy sex talk is her attempt to align her show with female empowerment, which she told TIME  has always been the goal. Ironically as well, Cooper said that the same people who criticized the podcast for being toxic and a representation of internalized misogyny are the same ones begging for her old personality to come back. Just like Ziwe, Cooper said at the 2023 Cannes Lions Festival that “there is more to me.” 

 

For Althoff, the backlash runs deeper. Her quick rise to fame has people claiming she was an “industry plant.” Not surprisingly, she’s also been compared to those who came before her, being called knockoff versions of similar comedians like Funny Marco and even Ziwe. Her interview style also hit a boiling point for the Black community on social media in late 2023, with accusations claiming she was taking interview opportunities from Black hip-hop journalists. 

 

Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse in February 2024 when an AI-generated sexually explicit video of Althoff went viral on X (formerly Twitter), forcing the podcaster to temporarily log off. But now, Althoff is back for more. 

 

Yes, institutional problems regarding women in late-night comedy have affected the careers of females pursuing hosting. But could the careers of Althoff, Ziwe and Cooper point to a better media-based alternative? From book launches and podcast deals to tours with more lighting cues than some Broadway shows, these women are keeping it awkward, personal and bolder than ever. 

For now, these women are some of the brightest contemporary role models for women in guest hosting. But in the meantime, it’s safe to say that maybe women don’t need late-night.