Comedy Central president Michele Ganeless says she’s had “moments of great anxiety” in the wake of choosing South African comic star Trevor Noah to replace Jon Stewart as host of “The Daily Show.”
Speaking to GQ, she said the network picked Noah because “he is a student of our culture. But he looks at it from a very different perspective.”
Also, she said, he is “super, super funny.”
Noah “really understands our audience, because he is one of them,” Ganeless says, which GQ contributor Zach Baron assumes is a reference to its younger audience. Noah is 31. Stewart is 52.
“Comedy Central would be happy to discover, or rediscover, … a more demographically appealing audience than the one that was aging in lockstep with Stewart,” Baron says.
Noah is set to take over Sept. 28.