11 Things We Learned About Trevor Noah and 8 Things We Learned From Trevor Noah

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11 Things We Learned About Trevor Noah and 8 Things We Learned From Trevor Noah Listening to His Interview with Ron Bennington

This week Comedy Central announced that Trevor Noah was going to be the new host of the Daily Show when Jon Stewart steps down later this year. Trevor Noah has been a big name in stand up comedy worldwide, but American audiences are only starting to get to know him. And yet, he rock skipped from one of the best starting tv gigs in comedy- Daily Show Correspondent- to one of the best jobs in comedy worldwide – Daily Show host- in almost no time at all.

In January, Trevor sat down with radio show host Ron Bennington to talk about comedy, and his (at the time) brand new gig working as a correspondent on the Daily Show. It was a great interview, showing off exactly why he landed the gig.  We went back over the interview, to share some insight. Enjoy these 11 things we learned about Trevor Noah from his interview with Ron Bennington (and Jeffrey Gurian!) and 8 things we learned from Trevor Noah about the business of comedy.


Things We Learned About Trevor Noah


 

1 T

He’s an international comedy star.  Okay we learned that from Ron technically.  And technically we already knew it, but you might not have known it. Now you know.

2 T

Jon Stewart called him up personally about a year before he joined The Daily Show personally, to get him on board.  Stewart said “hey listen, I know you’re touring, I know you’re traveling. I like your stuff, we’ve got to find a way for you to work with us.” It took about a year before they could find a way to make it work, there were timing issues involved. Jon Stewart said “don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. You just tell me and I’ll make it work.” Noah said hearing from Jon Stewart — someone who wasn’t just a funny voice, but a voice that actually says something– was a big honor.

3 T

Trevor started on The Daily Show as a correspondent in December 2014.

4 T

Noah grew up South Africa, where he was ten years old before the country held their first democratic election. Noah said that he was lucky, because by the time he was old enough to understand liberty, the country had changed.  So he didn’t suffer in the same way that his parents had.

5 t

If he was a comedian 20 years ago he would have been be arrested.  In fact he didn’t even know there was such a thing as a comedian. It didn’t matter if you were black or white, if you spoke out about the government, or if you said anything that made it seem as if you were against the man you were going to jail.

6 T

He gets recognized all over the world from his time on The Daily Show.  Since joining the Daily Show he has been surprised to see how globally recognized the show is. Even in places like Dubai, after doing his very first segment on The Daily Show, people would yell out ‘eeeey! Daily show!”

7t

The first American stand up he heard was Eddie Murphy’s Raw and it changed his life.  The first time he saw stand up comedy from America, was shortly after he had started to do comedy.  A friend gave him a tape of Eddie Murphy Raw, and said “you have to watch this, he does what you do.” Trevor thought his friend was lying, because he only knew of Murphy as The Nutty Professor. “I watched Raw for the first time and I sat there, and you know when you reconsider all your options in life and go, I need to quit because I don’t know how you make people laugh like this? It was an out of this world experience.”

8 T

His end goal is to get to the point where his audience become like friends.   Where they can agree or disagree with you, where they’re not like sheepdogs who just follow blindly, or strangers who get angry and write you off. He wants to get to a place where there can be honesty but they will still stay with you, even when they disagree.

9 t

He used to dee jay.  His experience with music has a lot in common with his relationship with the timing and rhythm of comedy.

10t

Before being named Jon Stewart’s successor, he talked about loving the freedom to balancing touring stand up with his work on the show.  “I have no fixed schedule. I’m lucky enough that I travel the world; so if I’m in town then we do something.  If there’s something that we really feel would be great to do then I’ll fly in and I’ll do it, but I still live in South Africa. New York is my comedy home. I come here and do shows and have a good time but I could be doing tours in the Middle East, I could be touring the UK, I could be anywhere. Which as any performer knows, the greatest thing to have is the ability to work when you want to work. Nobody should take that for granted so I don’t.”

11 T

He’s the only comedian who ever apologized for laughing too much during Jeffrey Gurian’s act.


Things We Learned From Trevor Noah…About Comedy


 

1 Trev

You are never guaranteed a great bit will connect.  Comedy is not like music, and a hit comedy bit is not like a hit song.  One of the craziest things about comedy- you can get on stage with a bit that you think you have worked out perfectly but on the wrong night, with the wrong audience in the wrong place it could just go down the tubes.  A bit could kill in a theater and you could walk down the block to a club, perform the same bit in the same way, and it could die.

2 Trev

You can use porn to describe the evolution of comedy.  “If you look at the evolution of porn you can directly see the evolution of comedy,” Trevor said.  “It’s what was acceptable at a time and then what is acceptable now. To shock people now…you really have to be what we would consider extreme. Where as back in the day you listen to all the greats and you’re like wow this was considered edgy?”  This is similar to the way porn evolves.  “There was a time when porn was a woman in her underwear….and now if it doesn’t include ten guys on top of a skyscraper, this is vanilla.”

3 Trev

There is value in people expressing their negative qualities on stage. “Whats amazing about comedy, is I find from watching my favorite comedians, a lot of the time you’ll say things that you think only pertains to you. And then you’ll sees people in the audience go ‘oh that’s not just me? I thought I was the only guy who jacked off to Martha Stewart.’ That’s the real magic of comedy is trying to find those similarities where nobody knew you were all thinking the same thing. Where somebody says it for the first time.”

4 Trev

Jon Stewart changed the way talk shows work.  Jon Stewart’s use of clips within the context of his own show, was groundbreaking.  “He was taking the stuff that was from other shows. It was almost regarded as taboo back then. You didn’t acknowledge another person’s show. You almost acted like it didn’t exist.”

“But because of Jon Stewart to a large extent, you’re going, ‘do you know what happens on that show? This crazy shit happens.’ But your viewers don’t feel like they need to go there. Jon will tell us what happened on Fox News. Now you become the hub for information and that falls into the realm of a really brilliant comedian. When you have a really brilliant comedian– the top guys– they’re almost your one stop shop. You go, ‘if he talks about it then it happened.’ All the greats did it…the Bruce’s the Hicks’es and they make it palatable. ‘He’s not going to lecture me.'”

5 TREV

The amount of time you have on stage, changes the way you do your comedy.  You can’t do the same type of comedy when you have a ten minute set, that you would do when you have an hour.  “One of the hardest things I had to learn was…what is your intention when you’re on stage? And your intention is limited by the time that you have. In a ten minute spot my job wasn’t to change anybody’s mind. My job wasn’t to have some amazing little discovery. It wasn’t about that. In that 10 minute spot, my job is to make you laugh. I want you to have a great time. This is a comedy show and we’re all just going to have a great time together. When you come to my show I want to make you laugh but lets also share something between the two of us.”

 

6 TREV

Rhythm matters.  When you go to different places around the world, your material doesn’t have to change, but you have to slightly change your rhythm. So Brooklyn has a different rhythm than the UK, which has a different rhythm from South Africa and so on.  “Everywhere you go in the world has a rhythm. I adapt in terms of how I tell you the same thing. I don’t change my point of view, I don’t change my opinion. It’s a small slight thing and if you’re cognizant of it, it changes everything.”

7 TREV

Political correctness hurts the evolution of comedy.  If someone had recorded Chris Rock working out his famous niggers vs black people bit early on, he would have been written off of comedy.  Even Rock himself said, that early on the set was racist, vitriol and it didn’t work.  “He knew what he was trying to say but he couldn’t say it in the right way and I think that’s true with a lot of jokes. When you’re trying to bring it out of your mind it doesn’t really make sense and a club is supposed to be that environment. But now the club isn’t the club anymore. And next thing you know you’re trying to explain, ‘no what I was saying was….'”

8 TREV

If you disagree with someone, its better to engage them.  “Lets say you disagree with somebody. It’s so much easier to write them off, swear at them and walk away. But….if you engage somebody. It’s like a magical thing that happens, where instead of going, ‘you’re a racist pig,’ talk to the person. Go ‘why did you use that word?'”  If you dismiss someone, they won’t change, and you won’t learn anything new either.  But if you actually talk about things, both sides gain a little insight.

 


Listen to the entire interview exclusively on SiriusXM On Demand.

 

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