Rachel Maddow Taking Hiatus Until April to Make Movie With Ben Stiller and Lorne Michaels

Rachel Maddow announced on Monday that she will be taking a hiatus from her primetime show beginning this week and stretching into April to work on a new podcast and a movie. Such a retreat from the 9 p.m. timeslot was expected as it was previously reported the most popular anchor at the network would be focusing on other projects in conjunction with a massive deal that is paying her to be off-camera more often. This is where it would be appropriate to use the Bold Strategy, Cotton meme. Especially as MSNBC has also lost Brian Williams in the 11 p.m. hour.

"There’s all the stuff that I have been working on that I want to work some more on," Maddow told her viewers. "So, as you can tell, I’m nervous about all of this, it’s a change in my life. But it’s all for the good. I will be here this week, through Thursday of this week, and then the hiatus means and I’m just going to be off for a few weeks. Off from doing the show. I’m not really going anywhere. I’ll be back for the State of the Union and for other big news events in the meantime. I will also be back doing the show again before you’ll even miss me. I’ll be back in April."

Bag Man, inspired by Maddow's podcast about Vice President Spiro Agnew, will be directed by Ben Stiller and produced by Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels. There's an above-average chance it will be pretty good considering the roster and source material. Maddow didn't offer any further details on her second podcast, which is being made for NBC Universal.

She also offered that this may not be the last time she's off-air for an extended period of time.

“There may eventually be another hiatus again sometime in my future, but for now we are just taking it one step at a time."

This sounds like a well-established person trying some new things and exercising different creative muscles. It also sounds just miserable for network executives trying to figure out the current and future state of a primetime lineup.