Trevor Noah covered Esquire, and the new host of ‘The Daily Show’ gave an honest take on the challenges of his role, his heritage, and taking the reigns from Jon Stewart. Read some quotes below, and visit Esquire for more.
Growing up in Apartheid South Africa:
He was an outsider, an interstitial kid: too white to be black, too black to be white. And he was funny. “I was a little shit. My dad’s friends used to complain that I had a radio in my chest…Let’s say a group of white kids were about to fight with a group of black kids. You could break the tension with a perfectly placed comment and crack everybody up. And now, once they’ve laughed, they can’t fight. Because now they’ve broken that facade of impenetrability. That was always my favorite thing…to pierce a moment with a well-timed joke.”
Flying as an African during the Ebola scare:
The man taking temperatures walked right past him, because Noah didn’t look African enough. “I’ve never felt so conflicted in my life…Don’t get me wrong, I never want anyone to think I have Ebola, but I also don’t want anyone to assume that I can’t have Ebola.”
On Jon Stewart:
Jon Stewart warned him about the anger. Staying in this business and mainlining the politics of either side can make you an angry person. Certainly Stewart was consumed by it at the end; the job aged him like a president. “But that was the reason he said I should do it, because I’m not angry. So for me, it’s weird when people are like, Why aren’t you angry? Because maybe the conversation doesn’t need more anger. Maybe that’s what’s not going to help.”
How he grabs audience’s interest:
Maybe it’s a two-minute explainer. Maybe it’s a quick news update for digital. ‘If you just have those, people go, That’s how I get my news every morning. I click on that, dedicate two minutes, then maybe watch another two minutes. I’m saying we should do it like drugs – make the news like drugs. Give them a little taste and get them coming back, and then we charge them.”