Noah’s Arc

Ten Years On from The Rolling Stone Interview with Trevor Noah

A decade ago, when I was the Contributing Music Editor of the South African edition of Rolling Stone, I convinced the magazine’s editor that we should put Trevor Noah on the cover. The comedian was, I said, on the cusp of greatness and, what’s more, was interesting enough to be the subject of the The Rolling Stone Interview, a feature in the magazine that gave the world this classic interview with John Lennon in 1968 and, for more than 50 years, has provided a way for a notable figures - mostly in music but also in popular culture and politics - to share their stories, philosophies and opinions through a longform, unfiltered Q&A format.

At the time of publication, the South African edition of the magazine - launched in December 2011 with a career-defining story by editor Miles Keylock on the late, great Hugh Masekela - was already struggling to keep afloat. After a three year run, during which we provided a platform for some of the best music journalism in South Africa, all that remains of my 10-page Noah spread - outside of the hard-to-come-by printed copy - is part of the introduction, curiously filed not under Interviews, but as an “Opinion” and no longer carrying my byline (who is still keeping this unofficial website live, I have no idea).

Ten years after I wrote it, I’m struck by several things in the interview’s signature scene-setter opener.

The first is the growing role that being on Twitter was playing in Noah’s ability to both connect with his audience and run his live shows. 

“It’s the best thing ever invented in my world,” Noah offers, revealing a flash of unguarded passion. “It’s changed the game because I now have interviews and conversations with my fans every day. They can ask me any question on Twitter and, if I see it, I will reply.”

Except of course for another South African buying Twitter and calling it X, nothing has changed in the years since Noah and I spoke in a room in a Cape Town hotel that stood on the edge of the centuries old Company’s Garden. Noah still uses the platform to announce shows (including his current Off The Record Tour), engage with fans and share news, but instead of the 600 000 I mention in my 2013 story, he now has 11,7 million followers, probably, by some way, the highest of any South African.

The second thing is in the final part of my introduction; the bit that comes after a detailing of Noah’s impressive run of international live dates in 2012 and cut out of the online remnant.

I write:

“It’s not at all bad for a former taxi-driver-slash-owner who, back in 2005, was hawking copies of CDs for cash, and eating an endless supply of two-minute noodles to survive … But Noah’s unique background meant he was always going to stand out and, when combined with his boy-next-door appeal, has turned the multilingual son of a Xhosa mother and a Swiss German father into a cipher for all of us, his stories resulting in the most mixed fanbase of any entertainer working in South Africa today. Possibly ever. Is he destined for comedic greatness? Give him some years and it’s likely.” 

It was with no small amount of satisfaction that I remembered these words when Noah was announced as the host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show in 2015 (taking the reins from Jon Stewart who had come to shape and define the show’s format and position a comedy half hour as essential viewing for serious news watchers). He was at the helm of the late night American comedy-satire-current affairs show for “an amazing seven years”, as Noah put it in his departure announcement that also saw him pay tribute to a network that “believed in a random comedian nobody knew on this side of the world.” “South Africans knew and loved me,” he added in the clip from September last year.

South Africans did know and love Noah before he surged into the consciousness of Americans but, even at home, it had taken some struggle and much experimentation to reach the adoration that his 2012 That’s Racist show brought out in the packed crowd on the night I was in the audience. Noah’s first steps into the world of entertainment came when he - accidentally - got a role on the South African soapie, Isidingo. He then presented a show called Run the Adventure before moving into radio (Noah’s Ark on YFM) and then making his first appearance at a comedy show at Horror Cafe in Johannesburg’s Newtown (“The show was horrible that night and my cousin, who was drunk, shouted out ‘You guys are horrible’. And the comedian said, ‘Oh, you think you can do better? Why don’t you try?’ And my cousin said, “I’m not better, but my cousin is funnier than all of you’. So they challenged me to come on stage and my cousin was full of bravado, insisting I get on stage. So I got on stage and it just came out.”)

Re-reading the interview in the printed copy of the magazine, I am struck by so many things. 

For instance, Noah’s views on the role of a comedian.

Do you think it’s the role of a comedian to talk about that (racism)? Be an active agent for reconciliation?

No. It’s the role of a comedian to be funny. My goal is to be the Trevor on stage that I am off stage. That is what I work towards. It’s a state of consciousness where you are ‘being’, you are not trying to ‘be’. You get on the stage and you say to the people, ‘Come be with me’.”

For instance, how he would deal with breaking out.

“We (Noah and his friends Ryan Harduth and Robby Collins) are the most low-maintenance tour. We don’t have a rider. We don’t even have a dressing room. I have a room at home and I will dress in it and then come to the theatre. We will bring our own water. We don’t fly business class. You will find us in 25 D, E and F. All in a row. We call ourselves the Fresh 2 Def tour. 25 DEF, always.” 

I’m pretty sure that these days Noah has a dressing room - for his trio of years hosting the Grammy Awards and at The Daily Show - but a recent pic on X reveals he’s still channeling his 25 DEF years. 

For instance, where he gets his material.

“I tell my stories and I have fun doing it. My comedy style was to tell people the things that my friends laughed at. I still do that today. People go ‘How do you write jokes’ and I say ‘I live life’. That’s where my jokes come from - trying to live as much as possible.”

And finally there’s this, at the close of the interview:

So what’s coming next? What do you have planned for 2013?

I don’t plan. My weakness is that I love doing things for the first time - with Jay Leno, the Comedy Central Africa Roast, with Edinburgh. My mom was the first person in my family to own a computer, to speak English well …

To make a baby like you …

Exactly. What’s great about those things - even without them being an achievement - is that no-one can take them away from you: first African performer on The Tonight Show, in terms of comedy; first South African to have a one-man show in Edinburgh. I love that. What’s great is that the South African comes with it for free - so I am representing my people and myself. We work in a world where there is no recognition. We don’t have Grammy Awards for comedy. You have to find your own achievements, so mine will be the firsts.”

In the 10 years since then, the firsts that Noah has achieved are unparalleled for a South African creative. Three years presenting the Grammy Awards. Hosting an iconic American television show for seven. Multiple Emmy nominations including, just recently, four 75th Primetime Emmy Awards nominations - one for his Netflix special, I Wish You Would and three for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. An Emmy Award. A best-selling book - Born a Crime - that echoes and gives more detail about many of the things he told me back in 2012. A just announced Spotify Original podcast launching later in 2023, another first for a South African.

And it’s true: no-one can take these - and more to come - firsts away from Noah as he makes good on the promise of comedic greatness of a decade ago.

Dear readers, I leave you with this.

As you might have guessed from my previous two Substack articles, my mom, Emma, is, unexpectedly and devastatingly for her loved ones, facing the end of her life. A sudden trip back to uMhlanga to see her and the stuff of life (my day job; family) have minimised my writing time and so I am reaching back into my archive for words from my past that still please me and feel resonant. But there are so many new things I want to write about here - like Joe Henry a few nights ago at Paradiso’s wonderful Zonnehuis venue that’s as moving and beautiful a show as I’ve ever seen. But for now, it feels comforting to head back to a time and place when I was undisturbed by what Henry - whose prostate cancer is, for now, in remission - called a “dire” illness at the start of his Amsterdam show; a time when there was still a question mark over whether or not Spotify would survive in the face of looming competitors (like Apple and Google), the subject of a short piece in the same issue of Rolling Stone that featured my Trevor Noah interview, and a time when Rick Rubin was still known as a creator and producer and was making lists of his Greatest Hip-Hop Songs of All Time, years before his (frequently unoriginal) aphorisms on creativity had turned him into a guru for the Instagram generation, again something only paging back through a magazine reveals.

There’s this too. I now live in the Netherlands and have a day job at Erasmus University in Rotterdam so you can imagine the warm feeling I got when Noah won the Erasmus Prize 2023 for “his inspired contribution to the theme ‘In Praise of Folly,’ named after Erasmus’s most famous book, which is filled with humour, social criticism and political satire”. Another Noah first, still close to my home.

You can watch an additional short interview I did with Trevor Noah during the photo shoot for the January 2013 edition of Rolling Stone here.