The first episode of Trevor Noah’s much anticipated podcast, “What Now? With Trevor Noah” has dropped. And he is clearly off to a solid start with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as his first guest.
In the series premiere episode, Noah and The Rock discuss everything from The Rock's troubled youth and his lifelong struggles with depression, to him listening, understanding and responding to public feedback surrounding the launch of his fund following the Maui fires and whether he'd ever consider running for President of the United States.
“It’s fascinating to speak to the person who was trying to raise money for the Maui wildfires and then experienced the backlash he did in a way that some people completely understood and other people completely didn’t,” Noah said.
“What is that like from the inside? How does the person process that information? What do they think about it? And then talking about his life and who he is, like, what made Dwayne Johnson the person he is today?”.
The Rock explained: “The whole idea of creating this fund, The Peoples Fund of Maui was to help people and help survivors. And Trev, these are my people... My grandparents, they all buried in the islands, so you know, it meant so much to me.
“But what’s interesting, when all that started to happen, and the backlash started to happen and started to come our way, it’s important not to get caught up in it. It’s important to just pause.
“It really tested my ability to separate noise criticism that was really worthy of my attention in this case.
He said that he was motivated by a comment on social media, which said that he shouldn’t pay attention to the “bulls***”.
Going forward, the Spotify podcast will feature different types of guests, some considerably more famous than others.
Previously Noah expressed how he wishes to book scientists and CEOs as well as politicians and athletes.
“Hopefully, you (the listeners) can get a deeper understanding of how they see the world, and maybe even talk about how they feel about how the world sees them.”
∎ New episodes of “What Now? With Trevor Noah” will drop on Thursdays on Spotify.