Ahead of his big debut on The Daily Show next week, Trevor Noah sat down for an interview with Rolling Stone and gave a few hints as to what we can expect from his turn as host. As for what week 1 of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah will look like, here’s what he had to say:
What can people can expect from your first episode? The first episode will be a reintroduction of the show — but you can’t just go off one episode like, Oh I know what this is about, I know what this is. It takes a lot more time. You’re building a relationship. So what we’re doing is dividing the first week into a four-part miniseries that will set the tone for what we hope the show will be.
Noah also talks about watching old Daily Show episodes to prepare for his new job, his thoughts on political correctness vs. a “hunger for outrage,†and his intent to keep The Daily Show diverse both in front of and behind the camera:
Well, already we have people coming in and the racial diversity of the correspondents has gone up dramatically. I won’t tell you who they are but you will see them. Gender-wise, we’ve got a ton of great female writers, too. In the new submissions, 40 percent of the final writers we decided to go with are female. And finding those voices is difficult but we’re lucky in that I’ve worked with great people of every color and I’ve worked with fantastic female writers as well. So we’re bringing that into the room.
Noah’s response here is a little misleading. While the Daily Show writing staff is definitely more diverse than most late night shows, the 40% figure is incorrect – there are three women on the 17-person writing staff, or 18% female writers total (and none of them are new hires – all three wrote for Jon Stewart). Read the rest of Noah’s interview over at Rolling Stone.