Trevor Noah isn’t exactly a known commodity. Even loyal Daily Show viewers might be a bit stumped. Who is this guy taking over for Jon Stewart anyway? There's some huge shoes to fill and Noah has a difficult task ahead of him.
Earlier today, Comedy Central officially announced that Noah will be taking over for Stewart at some point this year. Noah has only been at the show since October and he’s only been featured in three segments. That’s it. Now, we’re suddenly supposed to let him tell us what’s wrong in the news today in a funny way.
Like most comedians, Noah has had a long road to success, although his is much longer - distance-wise, at least.
Just how far has he had to come? All the way from South Africa. With that in mind, let’s look at some facts about his life and career.
screenshot from Comedy Central YouTube video
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Noah is 31 and grew up in Soweto, South Africa. His mother is a black South African, while his father is Swiss. That marriage was actually illegal while apartheid was still law.
“My mother had to be very clandestine about who my father was,” Noah told The New York Times Monday. “He couldn’t be on my birth certificate.”
He certainly never had a normal life growing up and often jokes that he was “born a crime.”
“I grew up in such a mixed family,” he told Newsweek in 2012. In order to speak with other members of his family, “you’d have to change your voice—you had to speak with a certain accent, otherwise people would not understand one word of what you were saying.”
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He can speak six languages. During his appearance on Stephen Fry’s Q.I., he showed off his click-singing.
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He was the subject of You Laugh But It’s True, an award-winning documentary by David Paul Meyer. The 2011 film chronicled his life and his rise to becoming South Africa’s most popular comedian.
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What really helped launch his career was his one-man show The Racist at the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe. In a review at the time, The Guardian praised his comedy about his family. “The pedestrian ending only slightly detracts from this impressive fringe debut from a classy young comic,” the paper said.
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Noah has already hosted his own show and is a widely known TV personality in South Africa. He hosted Tonight With Trevor Noah, a late night talk show, and also hosted the south African Music Awards twice. He even co-hosted reality shows in South Africa.
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Noah likes to think of the audience as his friends, which certainly works in today’s social media climate. Jon Stewart had an incredible connection to his audience and Noah already has a connection with his. In a 2013 CNN interview, he explained:
“My ideal setting is I walk from the streets, backstage and straight onto the stage... Two minutes and I am on the stage. That way in my head I have gone from my world and then into a social setting with my friends. I want my audience to be my friends -- that is when they will get the best comedy. If they see me as a performer, they won't get the best show.”
As seen here, he certainly knows about his American audience.
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Noah became the first ever South African comedian to appear on an American late night talk show when he made his debut on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 2012. For whatever reason, the following video is the only one left on YouTube of his appearance.
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He also appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2013. It was his first time in New York, so he joked about his first time in the Big Apple. He also proves how easily he can mask his accent.
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As noted before, Noah joined The Daily Show in October, but he’s only made three appearances since. So, let’s see them all now!
In his first, he joked about how some parts of Africa have better infrastructures than in the U.S.:
In January, he highlighted the attacks in Nigeria by Boko Haram.
And just last week, he joked about... chess?
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As the previous nine points have made clear, Noah will bring a new, international perspective to The Daily Show. If anything, today’s world is so linked that it seems pointless to have a show that only makes fun of what’s going on in the U.S... especially when the rest of the world provides such great material.
When Stewart took over The Daily Show in 1999, he wasn’t that well-known either and especially wasn't well-known for his political views. But Noah comes in with the experience of already having skewered politicians and world order on the stage, so let’s hope that experience works well on The Daily Show.