Trevor Noah on Star Wars: ‘No one should have to just shut up and take racism’
On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah started by discussing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “The Russian media says there is no war but we’re also winning it,” he joked.
He spoke about pleas for the US to intervene and Biden’s slow response toward assisting with weaponry. “Usually you ask America to send you weapons and they’ll send them quicker than a restaurant that pre-cooks the food in the morning then just reheats it when you order it at night,” he said.
America is “terrified of starting world war three, rightfully so” and wants to help Ukraine without attacking Russia so has sent $700m of weaponry including rockets but made them promise they would only use them in Ukraine. Noah said it was “basically giving them advanced rockets like a dad gives his teenager a credit card”.
He added that it was “a ton of rockets or maybe it’s like 10 rockets, I never know with military equipment”.
Noah then moved on to the new Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney+, centred on “the Galaxy’s most powerful hobo”, the latest in a “plan is to release a show about every character in Star Wars”.
But since the premiere, the Black actor Moses Ingram has been receiving racist messages online, some of which she shared on Instagram along with videos of her saying she will not just shut up and take it. Noah said that “no one should have to just shut up and take racism” and also questioned why Star Wars fans would question a Black character.
He said that “from the very beginning this has been a series where no one thinks twice if Harrison Ford is best friends with a giant dog bear or if a brother and sister want to smash” so why should anything matter.
His solution is to “give the new Princess Leia a Black boyfriend” to see what happens.