Trevor Noah, the South Africa-born comedian recruited to replace Jon Stewart at the helm of Comedy Central’s influential “fake news” program “The Daily Show,” will be officially taking of the job on September 28.
“Late night will NEVER BE THE SAME. Or maybe it will,” a tweet from “The Daily Show” Twitter account said Thursday.
Ironically, it was tweets that initially gained Noah a considerable amount of unwanted notoriety stateside. Relatively unknown to American audiences, the 31-year-old biracial funnyman was inundated with bad press earlier this year when some of his past tweets deemed sexist and anti-Semitic were unearthed in the wake of the breaking news that he would be filling Stewart’s shoes.
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“To reduce my views to a handful of jokes that didn’t land is not a true reflection of my character, nor my evolution as a comedian,” Noah tweeted in response to the backlash.
In a promo clip released by Comedy Central on Thursday, Noah is seen cautiously approaching Stewart’s empty desk but then rapidly making himself at home. He practices his intro and goofs around the set until Stewart sneaks up from behind and startles him. Interestingly, the YouTube title teases a “new and sexy” “Daily Show.” Stewart, who has hosted the iconic show for 16 years now, will be stepping down on August 6. The 52-year-old, who won numerous awards and widespread critical acclaim during his tenure as host, has alluded to a desire to continue working on outside interests, such as film directing, once he leaves the show. “It’s not like I thought the show wasn’t working any more, or that I didn’t know how to do it. It was more, ‘Yup, it’s working. But I’m not getting the same satisfaction,’” Stewart told The Guardian in April. “These things are cyclical. You have moments of dissatisfaction, and then you come out of it and it’s OK. But the cycles become longer and maybe more entrenched, and that’s when you realize, ‘OK, I’m on the back side of it now.’”
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