Trevor Noah on the cover of his comedy special "It's My Culture"
Last year my family and I lived in South Africa for about three months. Within 48 hours of being there, complete strangers started asking us if we'd ever heard of Trevor Noah. For the remainder of our unforgettable time there, next to people asking us if we were Americans, the most frequent question we heard, every few days, was whether not we had taken the time to watch one of his comedy specials. Born and raised in apartheid Soweto, South Africa, Trevor Noah is absolutely the most popular man in the country and one of the most beloved comedians in the world.
The internet is not super fast in South Africa, so people don't stream movies and YouTube quite like they do in America. That means DVDs are BIG in South Africa like they were in America ten years ago. After being asked a few times about Trevor Noah, we decided to take the plunge and purchase one of his comedy specials on DVD. You could pretty much find them at any/every store. It only took our family 30 seconds to realize just why he was so huge. Deeper than that, as a complex interracial family ourselves, we just understood him.
Born to a Swiss father and a black South African mother during the harsh era of apartheid, Trevor was primed to make fun of anybody and everybody in a way that no other South African truly could. Like the best comedians in the world, he was able to laugh at his pain of not being able to be seen publicly with his father during apartheid (it was against the law—his father was close with him in spite of it all) and simultaneously expose apartheid for the ridiculousness that it was.
Able to hop back and forth between cultures, I don't think I have ever heard a modern comedian more skillfully speak on issues of race, poverty, nationalism, and politics better than Trevor Noah. It's no easy thing, but the man was born to do it. This is what makes him the perfect fit for The Daily Show.
Head below the fold to understand why.
So, when we left South Africa to move back to the states, we left a huge part of our heart in South Africa and we honestly felt like we left Trevor Noah there too. When we soon saw him appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, then on a Comedy Central special, then learned that he was hired as a special correspondent on The Daily Show, our entire family was so amped.
The news that Trevor Noah was just hired to replace Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, though, shocked us—mainly because if we could've picked one dream person for the job it would've been him—and that just doesn't happen very often. First off, the man is hilarious. If you have Netflix, look him up. He has entire comedy specials on there and you will soon see why he was an amazing hire for his comedic skills alone. Secondly, Noah is able to speak about American issues as an outsider in a way that gives him an incredibly unique perspective. As someone who just moved to America from South Africa, but, at first glance, is seen as African American or even Latino by people who pass him up on the street, he's able to crack jokes on issues like race and class in America in a way that only an outsider could.
Trevor tells a hilarious joke about how in South African people belong to one of three racial groups—black, white, or colored. Because of his mixed background, he was always viewed not as black, but colored. He jokes that he always wanted to be viewed as black and couldn't wait to come to America and finally be black for the first time in his life. As soon as he got off of the airplane and into the airport in New York City, someone came up to him speaking Spanish because they thought he was Latino. His quest for blackness continued!
I had heard many times just how much Jon Stewart loved and admired Trevor Noah and was glad to have him on the show. This move, though, was bold—not because Trevor is "black" because that's complicated, but because Trevor is new to America and will bring a courageous and irreverent humor that is so timely for our nation.
I can't wait to see it. Congrats to Trevor and congrats to Comedy Central for landing a truly world-class comedian for this job.