South African comedian, actor, TV and radio host Trevor Noah will do what the Springboks recently failed to do – proudly raise the South African flag on foreign soil – when he presents the premiere episode of The Daily Show on Tuesday evening.
In March this year, Comedy Central announced that Noah would become the host, executive producer and writer of its Emmy and Peabody Award-winning The Daily Show, following the departure of Jon Stewart.
Noah has since announced that Kevin Hart and Ryan Adams will lead a diverse set of guests who are to sit down with him on the new version on Tuesday.
Hart, scheduled to be Noah’s first-ever guest, will be followed by Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe, also on Tuesday.
GOP (Republican) presidential candidate Chris Christie will join Noah on Wednesday while Adams – performing a song from his Taylor Swift cover album – will end the week on Thursday.
“The first episode will be a reintroduction of the show… so what we’re doing is dividing the first week into a four-part miniseries that will set the tone for what we hope the show will be,” said Noah.
Jon Stewart announced that he would be leaving in February and Noah was named as his successor a month later.
Noah first joined Stewart in 2014 as a contributor.
He made his US television debut in 2012 on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and has also appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, becoming the first South African stand-up comedian to appear on either late-night show.
Noah has hosted numerous television shows, including his own late-night talk show in South Africa, Tonight with Trevor Noah. He was featured on the October 2014 cover of GQ South Africa and has been profiled in Rolling Stone, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal, and by CNN and NPR’s Talk of the Nation, among others.
He continues to tour all over the world and has performed in front of sold-out crowds at the Hammersmith Apollo in London and the Sydney Opera House in Australia.
Meanwhile, Noah has been voted as the 2015 South African of the Year.
He is the first recipient of the South African of the Year accolade.
Calls to vote for four remarkable South Africans who had achieved global recognition in their chosen field went out on social media platform Twitter on Monday, September 21 and ran until midnight on September 23.
Noah was a narrow winner over cricketer AB de Villiers, sprinter Wayde van Niekerk and Team MTN-Qhubeka.
The South African of the Year is a registered trademark.
But in tune with the National Braai Day initiative, it is run as a non-profit project with the sole purpose of enhancing the National Heritage Day public holiday as South Africa’s national day of celebration.
Sunday Independent