Trevor Noah is just trying to keep up with day’s news like the rest of us.
The host of “The Daily Show” spoke at Austin’s SXSW media and tech conference on Saturday about how the show has changed since Donald Trump was elected president.
One place the show has transformed is that it has to put together jokes for a world in which the news never stops.
“I think what we’ve come to realize is that there is no news cycle,” Noah told CNN’s Jake Tapper, who was moderating the SXSW panel. “There is no schedule, there is no plan.”
Noah explained that when he took over the Comedy Central show from host Jon Stewart in 2015 there was a ebb and flow to the news cycle and “a cadence to it.” He said that you knew there would be a time of the day where no news would be happening and you could compile the events of the day — and jokes about it — for the show.
Now, that’s not the case.
“There’s the ‘5:30 curse,’ we call it. At 5:30 p.m., somebody’s getting indicted, some tweet is coming out, something’s going to happen,” Noah said. “We’ve had to learn how to embrace that as oppose to running away from it.”
Tapper quipped that in the news business that’s not a curse, it’s “manna from heaven.”
“We don’t like it because we have to tell jokes about it. You just get to tell it as it is,” Noah said to laughs from the audience.
Noah continued by saying that he and his staff create the show for the day knowing “full well that there’s a good chance at 5 p.m., we’ll have to throw out most” and “create something that speaks to what’s happening on the day.”
But Noah feels like they’ve grown accustomed to the new normal of the news.
“We’ve gotten good at it, we enjoy it,” he said.
Noah isn’t alone in late night when it comes to having to create a daily comedy show based on the news and Trump every day. Other late night hosts such as Seth Meyers, host of NBC’s “Late Night,” have talked about putting their shows together on the fly in the age of Trump and even holding back on commenting on news until the next day to make sure they get it right.
With the 2020 election around the corner it won’t get any easier for Noah and company, but the election is a chance for the Comedy Central host to both inform his audience and make them laugh.
“I’m not trying to create a straight up news show. I want you to watch ‘The Daily Show’ because it’s going to tell you what’s happening in the world and also because it’s going to help you laugh,” he said. “Because if you’re not laughing at what’s going on right now, you will go crazy.”
