Trevor Noah: The 60 Minutes Interview

Look at the late night TV landscape and you will see that most of the hosts are white men in their 40s and 50s, but not Trevor Noah, he is biracial, not American and only 38 years old, but he is a certified celebrity with a following around the world he brought an international dimension to Comedy Central's daily show. He is from South Africa, where he grew up under apartheid. He called his born memoir a crime because it was illegal for a black woman like his mother and a white man like his father to mix like we did for the first time.

Reported in December Trevor says he's always felt like an outsider but his humor that makes people laugh has been his ticket to belonging Story will continue in a moment Trevor Noah is back on tour with his comedy show in a different city pretty much every weekend yeah, like when you're in Texas, they'd say you have guns in the vehicle, you say no, so they say okay, here's one, here's you all have a good night. Now he loves owning the stage, the roar of a huge crowd, typically fifteen thousand people in giant stadiums like this one in Washington DC, is a far cry from his more limited day job in the television studio at the daily show, where he had a Shaky start when he took over six years ago from Jon Stewart and now it feels like the family has a new stepfather and he's black.

It was a good decision. Terrible at first. Awful. Don't accept the daily show Leslie when they offered you to do whatever. Don't accept the daily schedule. What happened at the beginning. Oh, I mean. everyone hated me, people didn't even know me and they hated the idea of ​​me but you had a savior Donald Trump, once you realize that Trump is basically the perfect African president you start noticing the similarities everywhere an once he found his contrast, the secret. He documented that his ratings began to improve and he realized that he could connect American politics with his experience in South Africa.

He grew up in Johannesburg and its black township of Soweto during apartheid's strict racial separation regime. He always felt like an outsider, not as black as his mother thing not quite white like his Swiss father whom he has seen infrequently in his life being with your father who was white that was a crime yes this was the law that forbade anyone of different races to mix there's something I heard that I'm not Of course I believe it, but your grandfather used to call you master, yes, because of the color of your skin, that's how he referred to me, master, and he always forced me to sit in the back of the car, be like a teacher, what can the police say?

If I said the teacher was sitting with me, your parents, your grandmother in particular, were always afraid that the police would come looking for you. What would have happened if they had found you? They probably would have taken me to an orphanage. No, yes, your grandmother was always hiding. You, yes, were locked up, right? I don't. It was in a pandemic before the pandemic existed, but you were poor. You write in your book about eating worms and having a toy that was a brick. This is what I always tell people who are poor. In a group or in a community being poor isn't as bad as being poor when you know what you're missing so when I grew up we played with bricks as cars and you crashed them into each other and it was one of the most fun games I've ever played.

Same thing about eating more pani worms. What I didn't like was when we couldn't eat anything else and my mom said we were going to have to eat more panini rooms. for longer because we don't have money to buy chicken and he spends time inside became a voracious reader, he wrote about his mother, patricia

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, in his memoirs, he was born a crime, saying that she raised him almost as if he were white, without limitations on what he could. achieve it, she wrote that it was just the two of them, him and his mother against the world, but then she married a man named Abel, who, he claims, beat her mother and then shot her in the head.

The bullets to the head didn't hit anything vital, yes, apart from the head obviously, but it didn't hit his spinal cord, it didn't touch the nerves, it didn't touch the brain and all it did was cut off a piece of his nostril in one go. side and the bullet came out clean and my mom looks at me and says. Trevor Trevor don't cry baby I said no mom I'm going to cry you've got a shot in the head and she says no no no no look on the bright side I said what a brain sign she says no at least now because of me I don't know you're officially the most beautiful person in the family, you said you had the black world and you had the white world and this is a quote from you, all I wanted to do was belong, everyone wants to belong half of our fights in life.

They are because we want to belong and that is why I grew up in a country where they told me that your belonging was defined by the tone of your skin color and that never worked for me, you know, I discovered that my greatest joy was with people where we shared interests and way we talked and the way we laughed etc. so I always wanted to belong and that I think has been a gift and a curse in life. I have a funny feeling that you belonged because you were funny, funny. It's something I developed as a tool, yes, to belong, he was funny in Johannesburg, but he became a professional comedian by accident when he was 22 and went on stage at a comedy club on a dare from his cousin, yes, you you laugh, but it's true because I'm like a mix, you know, I have a percentage share, like it was that kind of thing that he killed, abandoned his plan to go to college and was soon touring around the world as a comedian According to Forbes, he is one. one of the highest paid comedians today, started touring the United States in 2011 and a year later, since I was a little kid, I always wanted one thing and that is I always wanted to be black, he was on tonight and called attention from jon stewart's producer on the daily show, a viacom cbs property, when he was finally offered the hosting chair, he said it would have meant taking a pay cut and giving up his life on the road, so stuart had to talk to him.

At that he said: I am not offering you the glitz and glamor of your life. I'm offering you a home for a while. I think you will come to enjoy it. That intrigued me. It was like he had always wanted to have it. I always wanted to belong at home, so I thought this might be the opportunity from Trevor's couch in New York City and a chance to weigh in on serious topics when Kovitt arrived and was broadcasting from his apartment at almost 11. Millions of people saw his monologue about race and George Floyd there was a black man on the ground in handcuffs and you could take his life so you did it almost knowing there would be no ramifications and it wasn't funny and now we have a new dimension of Trevor I guess you've seen a different dimension to Trevor.

I have always had a different dimension. Well, you showed it to the public. That's true. Some of the funniest people we know on the planet have depression. It comes to mind. I think over the years what I have learned from some great therapists is that my depression is created by a severe level of ADHD. ADHD looks like depression. What do you mean it can be different for different people? I don't know, you know? but so for me it means that if I'm not careful with how I sleep, how I eat, how I manage my routine, I can feel overwhelmed and I can feel like the whole world is too heavy to bear.

That stays with me, you said it wasn't until you got to the US that the real hate started coming to you, oh yeah definitely, what was the hate you felt? Have you ever been stopped by the police? I have been stopped quite frequently. the cops, yeah, one of my best friends, David Meyer, you know, he would drive all over the west coast to see these comedy shows. If I were driving, they would pull us over and then he would drive. They wouldn't stop us, but you said you had experimented. hate, yeah, but I mean, that's welcome to America, you know, that's tough, yeah, there's a lot of hate in America because there's a lot of anger in America, how is it changing you for me?

I'm always trying to figure out how to talk to you. someone who hates me, this is where we are for now due to his childhood growing up between two different worlds, he tends to see both sides of an argument and takes his reaction to the trouble his friend comedian dave chappelle got into by his Netflix special the closer we get. Black people, we look at the door that was criticized as homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic in your mind. Did you cross the line? Did David Chappelle cross the line? Yes no, it immediately puts me in a position where I have to choose a side when I think the issue is much more complex than that, I think everyone is defining the line for themselves, no society defines a line, see what you are saying now is that you're saying that society has decided, but America is clearly divided that half of society has gone like no, dave chappelle, we love what you said, we're sick of the woke, we're sick of the people being told what to say, we're sick of not knowing how to use the correct pronoun, you're right, dave chappelle, so if half of society is saying dave chappelle is right and half of society is saying he's wrong, so that means there is no line, it means that society is looking at the line from two different sides and that's why I say you can't tell if it crossed the line because which side are you looking at the line?

Defines whether it crossed it or not. Are you still learning things all the time? Yeah well you've had to learn about New York City, your new home since 2015, buy an apartment here, make new friends, let me ask you about your personal life for a minute do you want to have kids? I come and go sometimes I'll meet kids who make me go I want a child and then sometimes I'll meet kids where I go I hope my sperm doesn't do anything because this person is a terror you're 37. okay, you're right, that's how much time is ticking , it's okay, but you're not sorry, no, no, now you have a girlfriend, maybe well, I read page six like everyone else in this world the tabloids you don't like to talk about your friends no, how is Trevor with his girlfriends no there's a catch, you don't have to answer that question

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introduced us to comedy producer ryan hardooth and comedian david kibuka now supervising producer on the daily show they are among his oldest friends in south africa he answered you don't have to answer any questions about personal relationships who you He said okay, what does mitch mcconnell like with these girlfriends? do you know the answer to that question?

I don't know exactly why he didn't answer because they don't even ask him and also because people don't want to know this is what I'm going to say about Trevor with his girlfriends, so you're just going full bore. Go ahead with yeah, of course he is wow, he's very, very, like a great boyfriend, so what are the qualities that you like most about Trevor? He is a great boyfriend. Yes, Trevor told us that he hangs out with these guys often and talks to his mother every day, which he says keeps him grounded, he's a perfectionist workaholic, yes, he would say that 100, he sure is despite that he does the daily show during the week and has hosted the Grammy Awards for the past two years, he refuses to give up his comedy shows he genuinely loves the feeling of love I think I think that when we laugh as human beings that's when We're our most authentic selves that's why your real life is so ugly, you know what I mean?

It is not filtered in any way. I love that it's pure joy forget what people think just laugh you know we need it every day every day watch Trevor Noah and his team write a daily joke on 60 Minutesovertime.com sponsored by Cola Guard .