When Jon Stewart was at the helm of The Daily Show, late night TV looked a lot different than it does today. David Letterman and Jay Leno ruled the night, with Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, and Craig Ferguson right behind them. They were all white guys, most were snarky, and all brought an American viewpoint to the craziness of the day. Yeah, Craig Ferguson is Scottish, but he’d been living in the states since the 1980s. Late night’s focus was also different. It wasn’t wall-to-wall politics like it has become since the Trump era. If you wanted to hear about the President, you had better catch the first few minutes of the monologue. Late night was lighter. It was about sketches and silly celebrity interviews.
If you wanted something more serious, though, there was Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. He skewered politicians on both sides of the aisle, laughing along with us at the absurdity of our leaders. When he announced in 2015 that he was stepping down, it was crushing for many. He had been our voice of reason in a chaotic world that was on the verge of becoming even more chaotic. What would we do without him?
Many big names were thrown out as possible successors, such as Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Chris Rock. None of them got the gig. It went instead, shockingly, to Trevor Noah. For a lot of people, the response to this was, “Who?” Noah, who had achieved success in his home country of South Africa, had minimal name recognition in the United States. And the recognition he did have came from The Daily Show itself, where he had been a correspondent for only a couple of months before he got the call to sit behind the desk.
You couldn’t have picked someone who was more opposite to the much beloved Stewart. Some were annoyed by the decision, thinking that Comedy Central was giving into wokeness and trying to be cool by making a young, foreign born, Black man the host of an American political show. What would he know about our way of life?
It turned out that Trevor Noah knew quite a lot. While the early weeks of the show were a bit rough as Noah’s awkward nervousness at replacing a legend was apparent, he still showed why he had been chosen. Yes, it was because he was bright and funny, as he had shown in his standup routines, but it was also because, what some saw as negatives, were actually positives.
Late night was ruled mostly by men who had been in show business for decades. At only 29, Trevor Noah hadn’t even been born yet when Letterman and Leno started their careers. Noah’s youthfulness brought a different perspective to late night, one that was still optimistic and hadn’t had all the hope beaten out of him just yet. Other late night hosts could be mean. Even Stewart was guilty of it at times. Not Noah. That doesn’t mean he was nice per se, making him dull like Leno or later Jimmy Fallon. Still, there was an optimism to his approach. Just like Stewart before him, he made fun of politicians, but there was a hopefulness to his voice and a smile on his face most times.
That’s not to say that Noah couldn’t get angry. He lashed out many times at the Trump administration, and over mass shootings and George Floyd’s death, but Noah seemed to be telling us, yeah, everything is scary and effed up, but we’re gonna be okay. In such a nerve racking time, with an unpredictable President giving way to a deadly pandemic, we needed that release valve. Trevor Noah was that. He made you laugh and helped to ease the tension, all while teaching you something.
Being a foreign born Black man also helped. The optimism of youth made Noah stand out, but so did his upbringing. He didn’t grow up in America. He didn’t always understand everything we did, which only made him funnier. Those of us who’d been U.S. citizens since birth were perplexed by our country’s way, so to see someone from the outside try to understand our absurdities was hilarious.
It was also a way to teach us about people outside of America, and to remind us that there is a world outside our own. The best example of this comes from one of his very first segments as The Daily Show host, in what just might be his greatest and most memorable bit. Titled “Donald Trump - America’s African President”, Noah showed clips of Trump, then running for the Republican nomination, next to clips of African Presidents. The argument with so many at the time was that Trump’s crazy comments made him unpresidential. By showing footage of African Presidents saying wild and crazy things too, Noah showed us that Trump was sadly, in fact, speaking like so many Presidents in the world.
Who else in late night could have done that? Who else could have taught us in this specific way that we’re not so different after all? As great as Jon Stewart was, he couldn’t do that. His perspective was mostly just like our own. Trevor Noah forced us to step out of our comfort zone and look on the other side of the fence to see what was there.
The most fascinating part of The Daily Show under Noah were the "Between the Scenes" bits. Here, as the production crew set up between segments, Noah would talk to the audience. That, in and of itself, is not new. Late night hosts have long talked to their audiences during downtimes to keep them engaged. With Noah though, they were filmed and broadcast. These weren’t simple audience interactions where he answers mundane questions. Instead, it’s Noah just having a conversation with the in-studio audience, and with us. There’s no goal. There’s no script or teleprompter. It’s Trevor Noah the person, not the TV host, telling us more about his life or giving his opinion on something going on in the world. It showed that he was not preaching to us or more knowledgeable than us, but that he was just another guy on the ride, not knowing what was coming next, just like us. It sounds hokey, but it’s that simplicity, that a young South African Black man isn’t so different from a middle-aged white guy born in Ohio, that will be missed.
Trevor Noah isn’t going away. He won’t disappear to some animal sanctuary like Jon Stewart did for so long. There’s sure to be more standup specials. Maybe he’ll start acting or get another gig. And The Daily Show will surely, having learned what has worked with both Stewart and Noah, pick a worthy and perhaps unpredictable heir. But no matter who that next person is behind the desk, they’ll never quite accomplish what Trevor Noah did. It was Noah that showed us that you could turn late night on its head with the most unconventional pick for a host and have it work. His success means we can never go back to the way things were. That doesn’t mean no more white guys as late night hosts (Jordan Klepper would kill it as the leader of The Daily Show), but it does mean that we can’t forget to look outside the box and find new perspectives. We must seek out voices who have new ways to tell stories and new things to teach us. Anything else is just repeating what’s already been done.