Trevor Noah (born 20 February 1984 in Johannesburg, South Africa) is a South African comedian, best known to an American audience for hosting The Daily Show with Trevor Noah from 2015-2022. He also wrote an autobiography, Born a Crime, which describes his upbringing in South Africa and references the then-illegal relationship between his black Xhosa South African mother and white Swiss father.
His comedy circuit attracted attention for its genuinely international and cosmopolitan approach to humour, as Trevor Noah brings a genuinely post-colonial and critical view of international politics, both of his native South Africa, other nations, and of the USA, which is further helped by the fact that he speaks many languages, including English, Xhosa, German and others.
Trevor also voices Griot, the AI assistant of Shuri in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing in Black Panther (2018) and receiving a bigger role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. He also played Stacy in the episode, Internet, in StoryBots: Answer Time
Trevor Noah's works include examples of the following tropes:
- Badass Bystander: A memorable story
from when The Matrix came out. Laurence Fishburne was in South Africa to help out a school, and a much younger Trevor naturally headed out to go see him. However, since he got too excited to watch the road, he accidentally ran his car into a ditch as Laurence was passing by—and Laurence reflexively yelled for a nearby crowd to go help him, which they did. Trevor swore that he'd tell Laurence the story if he ever got to meet him in person, and eighteen years later, he finally got the chance. - Be Careful What You Wish For: During the early days of his career, he traveled with Gabriel Iglesias, where he stated that he came to America because he "wanted to be black". Between shows in Texas, one of Fluffy's friends came to see him and gave him a ride ahead of the tour bus; while passing through an immigration checkpoint, the officers requested a photo op and admitted that they were bored as all frick from the lack of cars passing through. Gabriel proceeded to point out that Trevor would be coming by in the tour bus in a couple hours "you know, if you're bored". Text from Trevor the next morning: You're a dick.Trevor: They pulled me off the tour bus like I was a common criminal! I wasn't wearing any pants! They took away my passport, my cell phone, all of my money, they stuck me in a jail cell with other criminals! Don't you have anything to say?!Gabriel: Dude, you said you wanted to be black.
- Bilingual Bonus: His appearance at the 91st Academy Awards has him use his gift for languages to insert an "old Xhosa phrase" which at the ceremony he says, is about how people are strong when they come together. Xhosa-speaking viewers correctly identified that what he said was "White people don't know I'm lying".
- Brief Accent Imitation: Perhaps due to his multilingual childhood, he has a surprising aptitude to mimic accents with scary accuracy and uses it a lot for comedic effect. One of his bits include a story of him doing it by accident by picking up some of Hitler's speech mannerisms while learning German and scaring a subway attendant in Germany while ordering a sandwich.
- Butt-Monkey: as a result of being the “new guy” touring with Fluffy, he is caught up in a pretty dickish prank on Gabriel’s part. See Be Careful What You Wish For for more details, or watch here: https://youtu.be/b4gLMyRHdk8
- Hidden Depths: He's really good at dancing. Enough that back in 2012, he managed to become a runner-up in the Dancing with the Stars South Africa.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Due to his status as a "coloured" in Apartheid South Africa, his mother and his dirt-poor extended family had to pretend of not knowing him in public and often hid him from the authorities or any white person when traveling. By his preteen and teen years, he had problems fitting in school due to his lighter skin tone and his tendency to cause mayhem in class and at home with his highly religious and strict disciplinarian mother, who loved him dearly but was never soft with him in terms of discipline, and then add his alcoholic, abusive stepfather and you have a not very good childhood.
- Even the Guys Want Him: While appearing on QI, he so thoroughly charmed Stephen Fry and Sandi Toksvig that Fry played up his attraction while Toksvig claimed she'd be willing to turn just for Trevor.
- Man of a Thousand Voices: He's capable of having different accents and switch it up right away from a British accent to a Nelson Mandela accent.
- Separated by a Common Language: Some of his humor is based on the differences between South African and American English.
- Strange-Syntax Speaker: His take on Jacob Zuma involves mocking the man's speech patterns and how Zuma pauses at random times.Trevor as Zuma: Let us understand that I, Jacob Zuma, am not a count...ry on my own.
- Virtual Assistant Blunder: Trevor does a routine that highlights how VA's like Siri and Alexa are only really geared up to understand instructions in Standard English. Trevor illustrates this by taking on the persona of a Boer whose first language is not English but Afrikaans. Alexa is eventually thrown out of a window by the exasperated user.
