How Trevor Noah Challenges His Beliefs

Hey, guys.

Welcome to the Inbound Studio. I'm Josh Horowitz. By day, I'm an MTV News correspondent, but today I'm talking about the power of humor with my guest, Mr. Trevor Noah. Of course, you know him as an author, a comedian, and the host of the Daily Show. Trevor, thanks for stopping by.

Thank you very much for having me. This is fun. We're live.

This is the first inbound studio, Facebook Live.

This is the first live I've ever done in my life.

I don't think that's true.

That's not true. You can lie when you're live.

He's good. He's good, this one. Let's talk a little bit about the power of humor in your life. Growing up in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the 80s doesn't seem to be the most hysterical setting and time and place in history.

It depends on who you were, I guess. Some people were like, this is a good time.

Well, tell me, was humor immediately a way of coping with what you were dealing with as a kid?

You know, growing up, I found in my family, we used humor to cope. You know, humor is a tool that you can use to process information. It's a filter that you see the world through. And so it doesn't minimize what's happening to you. It doesn't minimize how you feel about what's happening, but it helps you cope with the information that's coming in. And so that's how we've always used humor in my home.

Can you give it a specific example, growing up, of when you kind of relied on humor to get you through a tough time?

Oh, wow. There's tons of times I'm trying to think of which time in particular. You know, I know growing up, I always realized that humor was a tool I could use. I mean, whether it was getting away from bullies, whether it was, you know, making my mom laugh so that she wouldn't beat me, whether it was basically was always to avoid being done grievous bodily harm. That's what you use humor for.

Yeah.

You go like, you know, what did they say? A laughing jury is not a hanging jury, Right? Yeah. So, I mean, my life was punctuated by comedy. But trying to think back to one moment is difficult. I do know there was one moment. So I was 7 or 6 years old, and I was sent to the principal's office because I was being naughty with a friend. And I went to a Catholic school originally, and the principal was gonna give us a spanking, and he brought out, like, a little rubber piece Of I don't know what it was. And my friend and I to bend over, and then he proceeded to spank us, which was very formal. I'd never been spanked before. Cause when you grow up in an African family, you get beaten, you don't get spanked.

Skip right to that.

Yeah. So, like, spank. It was like very formal, very, like, you know, like on the bum. Count them down. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And then I. I did the countdown while he was doing it, because he did my friend first. It's like five Spanx and even five. And so when he came to me, then I was like, 5, 4. Then my friend laughed, and then I laughed, and then the guy was like, it's not funny. It's not fun. And then he was just. And I was like. And then he didn't. He just couldn't do it anymore. He must have thought I was like a creep. I was like, he's enjoying it.

Sadomasochistic.

Yeah. If you enjoy it, then you sing the fun at.

For this poor guy that just wanted to hurt you.

Exactly.

Think of him, Trevor.

That's. I felt bad.

Did your. Where did your sense of humor come from in terms of your family? Do you have a similar sense of your mom?

Oh, yeah, definitely. My sense of humor came from my mom. My sense of humor came from my granddad. They were the funniest people in my family by far. My granddad was a wild man, very boisterous, really charming man by the name of Temperance Noah. And he used to walk around in our neighborhood in Soweto, a place called Media Lands, where we grew up. And, like, he would walk around uttering random English phrases just because he knew most people that lived near him couldn't speak English, but he didn't know what they meant. He just knew how to say them, you know? So, like, someone would greet him and then he'd be like, good afternoon. Remember that today is a day that is not promised, but we must not forsake our. Our future as we see fit. And I'd be like, what does that mean? He's like, it doesn't matter, but it sounded good. Exactly.

I want to talk to you about the way you connect with audiences, because as a host of a show like the Daily show, your background is primarily from stand up, and you have a few kind of masters of serve. When you're hosting a show like that, you have to connect with the guest. You have to connect with the studio audience in the studio. And maybe most importantly, you need to connect through that when the audience at home is that, are there conflicts? There is standup, what's serving you? Well, give me a sense of sort of where your head's at in terms of who are you trying to connect with when you're doing your show?

I find it's trying to create a balance. So you're trying to be in a space where you're creating a show that essentially is for the home viewer. But what you're trying to do is bring the home viewer into the space where the show was made. Right. And so it's trying to communicate with somebody that's not there, and yet at the same time they are. It's trying to almost do what you do on FaceTime or Skype with the family when one person is not there. You try and have a hangout. And using standup, I can communicate with my audience, but getting the message to the home viewers is the most important thing. And finding that balance is what makes it a challenging format. But what's great is stand up is all about communicating. And then if you build a relationship with the person at home and you can picture who they are, which I always try and do, then I find it's easy to communicate with people, you know, on both planes.

I read an interview with you recently where you talked about. You said, quote, I'm not selling you anger. You were talking about wanting to create a connection with everybody with your audience as we were talking. And I find it strikes me also like, you know, you interview people whose politics you don't agree with, Tomi Lahren, et cetera. And like, that interview got a lot of press. Is it important for you to kind of reach across to an audience that doesn't necessarily agree with you politically, to find moments of connection?

Well, not necessarily. You know, it. It all depends what you get out of an interview. You cannot determine at the beginning of an interview. Oftentimes you go in and when you come out on the other end, you find you. You've gotten something that you didn't anticipate. Sometimes I find bringing someone from the other side, whatever it may be, whether it's the political spectrum or just from a world that you're not familiar with, is really bringing somebody in to help you refine your point of view or help you challenge yourself. Because if you spend too much time in your own world, you only know what you know, and you believe it. And you reinforce that when you meet someone who doesn't agree with you, they force you to challenge your beliefs. And in the challenge comes the galvanizing of ideas, I find. And that's what I appreciate. That's why I'll engage with somebody I don't agree with. I don't think I'll change everyone I meet. I'm not trying to, you know, persuade everyone. I have a conversation making you sharper.

As much as it is. Yeah.

But it's like it also pokes holes in my arguments where I walk away going, ah, okay, why do I believe that? Yeah, why do I say that? Can I make that stronger? Can I go and read up, or can I reinforce what I believe? Or is it a view that I have to now question as a whole? Because I'm just parroting something that other people have said.

Did your, did your job change the day after the US election? You think? Did your.

Oh, yeah.

How so?

Well, I think, you know, as I would say with my friends, shit got real, essentially because before that there was a general sense of arrogance maybe. For many people watching the US election, there was a feeling of it's all a foregone conclusion. It almost felt like it was just, you know, painting by numbers. Right.

There was an inevitability to what was gonna happen.

Yes, the joy of the race. But the truth is we know how it's going to end. It's inevitable. And after Donald Trump won, you could feel a shift in how people perceived politics. You could feel a shift in how people perceive the future of the United States and even the world. And at that point, I realized for myself now there was a purpose, not just for myself, but for the show to inhibit a space where we would be examining, probing and questioning the world that we were now living in. You know, so some people go, oh, you seem like you got a lot more serious after Donald Trump. When I go, yeah, because now there was something to be serious about.

The world got serious.

Exactly. Yeah. Whereas before that there were moments where I felt like serious listen was needed. But I, I've never been a fan of artificial panic. Because then what happens is if you exist in a constant state of panic, then panic becomes the norm and by default it becomes something that is not important.

Did you, did you say something to your staff, like the day after or the days after in terms of, like. Because I don't know, you know, the politics of your staff, but like, I would assume morale maybe wasn't great on a personal level for your staff. Did you have to kind of rally the troops to kind of figure out what your purpose was and what your going forward?

Well, I said to everyone, I said, I know some of you are afraid. I know that some of you feel like you're in a country that you're not familiar with anymore. I know that some of you don't know how to deal with this. I said, what I can tell you is you're lucky enough to be at the best place to have that be your situation. This is a space where you can come and share those feelings and hopefully we can connect with people out there who have similar views. And over time, you will find more and more people who connect with, you know, that feeling. And that's what I said to my staff. And I said, let's go out there and do it like we were doing it for ourselves. Because that's essentially the kind of show that I believe you should make.

We've got some questions from the Facebook audience as well. Here's one. Where do you draw the line on humor? Can humor go too far? This is a quintessential question for comics, you know, for ages.

Do you.

Do you have an internal barometer? Do you know when you. Is there such a thing as going too far with comedy?

I think comedy, the definition of comedy, is going too far. That's why it evokes a visceral response. You know, it's something that people don't plan. They don't want to laugh at times, but it comes out of them. I don't think comedy can go too far. I think a person's ideas may be ideas that can offend people, but offense, I've learned when traveling the world changes so dramatically, you come to realize that it really is based on the person and how they're perceiving something. You know, remove comedy from the equation. Something like a thumbs up sign. If you take that around the world, you'd be shocked that in how many different countries this means something totally different.

Yeah.

So you go, this is. This is a good thing. And then in some countries they go, no, this is a cuss. You know, this is you swearing at my family. And. And so comedy is very much the same thing, depending on your audience, depending on the space you're in, depending on what you're talking about, and most importantly, context. That is the line I find. So I use a barometer, and my barometer is context. I ask myself the question all the time. I say, what is the context that I'm telling this joke in? And what is the context that the audience is listening to me in? You can tell a joke to your friends that you couldn't tell anywhere else. Cause your friends know where you're Coming from you, you could then tell a joke to your comedy audience that you couldn't tell anyone else. And then there's a joke that you would tell to everyone because, you know, it connects as broadly as possible.

So having said that, when you started to work in the States here, did you find there was a learning curve in terms of what worked here and what is. If there is an American sensibility of comedy, what they respond to? Even as, you know, within America, different states, different parts of the country respond to different material. That's a challenge for a comedian, for a stand comedian that didn't grow up here. Was that kind of an adjustment? Was there an adjustment period?

Yeah, but I. You know what? I'm lucky in that I've traveled a lot and I've enjoyed being in new places, learning how people do comedy, discovering what makes people laugh. I've come to learn, for the most part, human beings are all connected by the same fibers. What changes is the rhythm of comedy? What changes is how you tell a story, but the story is still the same. It's, you know, it's why movies go around the world. Essentially, everyone in the world is watching the same movie at some point, but the language slightly changes the nuance of what the film actually means. So it's the same with comedy. You start to learn. You're like, oh, if I just tweak this a little bit, it connects with people more. If I change that a bit, then it does the same thing. So that's all I had to learn, depending on where I was going.

So Vin Diesel brings the world together and other.

Vin Diesel brings the world together.

Truths that we cling to.

That is true.

Another Facebook question along these lines. Where in the world would you like to share your comedy that you haven't. Is there a place you haven't gone.

That, oh, where in the world would I like to share my comedy that I haven't. I would still love to do comedy out in Asia. I haven't had a chance to do that. That would be. That would be exciting. I'd love to do comedy in South America. Where else? Wow. I've been to most places that I've wanted to go to, so. So, yeah, I guess, you know, my dream has always been, you know, once I'm, you know, done with the Daily show and then just start traveling the world and then start learning comedy in other languages and then begin a new journey of standup.

As you know, Daily show has welcomed many politicians, presidents. It's not out of the realm of possibility that President Trump could be on your show one day.

Who knows? Yes.

What would you ask President Trump? Have you thought about it?

What would I ask President Trump.

If.

Donald Trump came to the Daily Show? I think the question I would ask him would be if he were given a reset button that would flash all of our memories, that would erase everything that we know about him. His tweets, his statements in public, his rhetoric on the campaign trail, his, you know, mistakes, his Pussygate tape on a bus, everything. If he could press that button, who would be the new man that he would want us to see going forward, and what would he want that legacy to now be? That's probably the. The thing that I would want to know from Donald Trump.

I hope we get to see it. Do you think. Do you think we're in a golden age for political comedy? A lot of great Daily show veterans, you know, have, you know, Samantha Bee, Colbert, obviously, there's a lot of interesting content out there. U. It probably doesn't behoove you to look at the other stuff you want to maybe not imitate others, but you tell me, I mean, what's.

Oh, well, I'm lucky. I cannot imitate others. Like, I mean, that's one thing I learned when we started the Daily show was, you know, the worst thing you.

Could do is imitate John.

Yeah, well, yeah, some of the writers were. Stayed on from the, you know, the Jon era, and everyone knew how to write a joke for Jon Stewart. But just even my accent changes how you write a joke. There's words that I can't say the same way, there's a rhythm that changes. So, in essence, you. You're forced to be original, which is really nice. And then I. I look at my history, I look at where I'm from, I look at who I am, and that all informs my comedy. So, you know, we're in a golden age of comedy. And I think what's great about having all of these different shows is you get different perspectives.

Yeah.

You know, I enjoy the fact that Sam Bee can give me her perspective from a woman's point of view as opposed to going, let this man tell you what he thinks women are feeling. Right. It's like, no, it's nice to go like, oh, I didn't know you were thinking that. It's nice to watch Colbert and think of something else. You know, it's nice to have people telling their stories. And that's what I inherited on the Daily show, and that's a legacy that I hope to continue going forward.

Finally, do you think comedians are always kind of honing their craft throughout their career. Do you think you're always gonna be learning?

Oh, yeah, definitely. You should.

There's not a point where you're like, I figured this out. I know how to.

Comedy's never finished. It's never finished. Comedy's like sex. It's never finished, man. You can think you're good, and then one day you'll get into a situation where you're like, oh, I've got a lot to learn.

Words to live by. Trevor, thanks so much for stopping by for this first Facebook Live on Inbound Studio. And thanks for watching, guys, on this Facebook Live. We'll see you next time.