Trevor Noah’s mum has replaced him with chickens. Watch Trevor explain this in his interview with Kelly and Ryan.
But how did Trevor get to this point?
Soho has played a big part in Noah’s rise from South Africa’s comedy circuit to international stardom. It was backstage at the nearby Comedy Club, after doing a turn there, that he met a comedian he had never heard of who told him that his South African life as the son of a black mother and a white Swiss father should be central to his act. The comedian was the celebrated British performer Eddie Izzard.
“Before I met Eddie, I was doing a lot of frivolous comedy,” Noah says of his early South African performances. “I was afraid to offend anybody. I was afraid to speak my mind.” He rarely mentioned his upbringing as apartheid was crumbling. “Coming from South Africa,” he says, “we were trying to forget all that.”
But at Izzard’s suggestion, Noah began talking about his life. In 2012, he made an appearance on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show, where he told the audience that when the police were around, his parents used to pretend he didn’t belong to them: “I felt like a bag of weed”. Later that year, Izzard arranged for him to perform at the Edinburgh Festival, where he won the “act most likely to make a million quid award” and that, Noah says, “changed everything”.
Jon Stewart, who quickly established himself as one of the most influential satirists in the US after taking over The Daily Show in 1999, began inviting Noah to New York and gave him a few spots on the show. Two years ago, after others reportedly turned down the job, Stewart tapped Noah to succeed him as the show’s presenter.
Source FT