Trevor Noah and Ayo Edebiri Win Big at 75th Emmy Awards

This Sunday, the 75th annual Primetime Emmy Award ceremony took place in Los Angeles, California. South African comedian, author, and former TV host Trevor Noah was among the victorious nominees as he took home the award for Outstanding Variety Talk Series for The Daily Show. Noah hosted the award-winning satirical news program for seven years before stepping down in September 2022. The comedian paid tribute to his team, thanking the “crazy Africans who followed me to this country” — fellow South African TV writer David Kibuuka and Uganda’s Joseph Opio — while accepting the honor. The team was also nominated for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series and Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming, and Sunday’s Emmy marks Noah’s first since The Daily Show's "Between the Scenes" won for Outstanding Short Form Variety Series in 2017.

Nigerian American actress Ayo Edebiri, star of the popular American comedy-drama series The Bear, won the award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. During her comical acceptance speech, the 28-year-old writer and producer thanked her Barbadian mother and Nigerian father for their support and understanding, saying, “Thank you so much for loving me and letting me feel beautiful and Black and proud of all of that. I love you so much. Probably not a dream to immigrate to this country and have your daughter go ‘I wanna do improv,’ but you are real ones.” Last weekend the starlet took home her first Golden Globe award for her work on season two of the Hulu show.

Since stepping down as host of The Daily Show, Noah has secured a podcast with music streaming giant Spotify called “What Now? with Trevor Noah,” toured his stand-up specials around the world, and won awards for his publishing efforts. His win at this year’s Primetime Emmy Awards solidifies his continued success on the global stage. The highly coveted award show has been crowning the best in American television since 1949. This year’s award ceremony was meant to air in September 2023 but was pushed to January 2024 due to members of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA going on strike for better union contracts.