Noah, Trevor (1984-…), is a South African comedian and television personality. In addition to performing stand-up comedy, he has appeared on, written, and produced a number of popular TV programs. Noah’s comic material draws from current events, politics, and his experience as a mixed-race child in a country whose people were racially segregated (separated by law). He has performed all over the world.
Noah was born on Feb. 20, 1984, in Soweto, a Black African community in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was born to a Black African Xhosa mother and a white Swiss German father. From 1948 to 1991, South Africa’s government enforced a policy of rigid racial segregation called apartheid. Under apartheid, it was illegal for Black and white people to produce children together. For this reason, Noah’s family had to conceal his parentage. As a youth during apartheid, Noah attended a private Roman Catholic primary school with children of different races.
After graduating from high school, Noah pursued an acting career. He appeared on a variety of TV programs, including a soap opera, a dancing competition, and a dating game show. During his 20’s, Noah discovered he had a talent for stand-up comedy and shifted his focus away from acting. In 2009, he staged his first full-length, one-man comedy show, The Daywalker. Since then, he has appeared in a number of one-man stand-up TV specials, including “African American” (2013), “Lost in Translation” (2015), “Afraid of the Dark” (2017), and “Where Was I” (2023). From 2010-2011, Noah also hosted his own talk show, “Tonight with Trevor Noah,” broadcast in South Africa.
Noah made his first U.S. television appearance in 2012 on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” The following year, he appeared on “The Late Show with David Letterman.” In 2014, Noah became a contributor to “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” He went on to host “The Daily Show” from 2015 to 2022.
Noah has won a number of awards for his work. For example, he received several South African Savanna Comics’ Choice Awards. Noah also won the 2015 MTV Africa Music Awards “Personality of the Year” award. And he was the recipient of the American Library Association’s 2017 Zora Neale Hurston Award for promoting African American literature. “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” won an Emmy Award for its 2022-2023 season.
Noah wrote the autobiography Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016). The book won two NAACP Image Awards in 2017. He later adapted the book for younger readers under the title It’s Trevor Noah: Born a Crime (2019).
