A clip is currently being widely shared from a comedy special Trevor Noah did back in 2013.

Taken from his ‘It’s My Culture’ show, the video shows Trevor riffing on the idea that “all women of every race can be beautiful.”

He then goes on to say "And I know some of you are sitting there now going, 'Uh Trevor, yah, but I've never seen a beautiful Aborigine. 'Yeah, but you know what you say? You say ''yet'', that's what you say; ''yet''. Because you haven't seen all of them, right?' Plus it's not always about looks, maybe Aborigine women do special things, maybe they'll just like, jump on top of you and [mimes blowing motion]."

Veronica and Lewis’ planned interview with Trevor ended up being exclusively about his derogatory comments about Aboriginal women. Noah acknowledges that in this case the outrage is understandable and talks about learning from people from different cultures to his own.

“You understand how much gravity a joke can have in one place versus another place.”



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Noah touched on the process of writing jokes and rewriting jokes after realising they weren’t coming across the way he wanted them to: “I was trying to make a joke about how all women are beautiful and I was responding to comments about certain women being called unflattering [things] in South Africa. It’s one of those things where, if you were to make the joke again you would probably make it better.”

On the issue of intent vs outcome Noah said: “I always go back to intention. So, if you’re trying to hurt people, then you would carry on doing the joke. If you’re not trying to hurt people, then you don’t do the joke... That’s what all comedians do, we work on material to try and get to the place where we’re telling the best possible joke. And so, what I can say is 'thank you, to the first person who educated me on the joke and how differently it can be seen in Australia.'”

Listen to more of the chat up top.