Trevor Noah standup show at SugarHouse a 'working vacation' from 'The Daily Show'

John Oliver. Amy Schumer. Chris Rock.

These were just some of the prominent names floated in winter 2015 after the announcement that Jon Stewart was retiring as host of Comedy Central's satirical news program The Daily Show.

But it wasn't a comedy A-lister who ultimately got the gig. Instead, Trevor Noah, a relatively unknown stand-up comic from South Africa, assumed the daunting task of filling Stewart's seemingly unfillable shoes.

Some six months after his debut, Noah, 32, and The Daily Show have been buffeted by the double whammy of critical disapproval of his performance and viewership that is significantly lower than it was during Stewart's reign in the anchor chair.

During a recent interview, Noah, who on Saturday will perform a sold-out stand-up show at SugarHouse Casino, talked about his unusual childhood living under apartheid, his path to a comedy career, the place held by his TV show in the popular culture, and his optimism that success is on the horizon.

You were born to a white father and a black mother during apartheid, which, as you have noted in your act, made you a "crime." Were your parents ever arrested or prosecuted for that?

My mom was arrested a few times for being with my dad. If they were caught in public, she'd go to prison. Luckily, white guys didn't suffer the same punishment. He was just told not to do it again. That was pretty much the world I grew up in.

How confusing was that for you?

As a kid, you don't know. If that's the only world you know, you grow up thinking sometimes police come and take moms away. That's all you think in your head. It's the only world I'd known growing up, so it wasn't a strange thing to me. You only realize how strange [it was] in hindsight. But as a kid, I thought that I was living a pretty normal life.

Did you have friends who were in the same situation?

No, I didn't. Most people didn't mix in South Africa during that time. So I didn't know anyone else who was like me.

What inspired you to become a comic? Is that a popular career choice in South Africa?

That's funny you ask that. We didn't have stand-up comedy in South Africa, because free speech was illegal. There was no free speech until we got democracy [in 1994]. So, growing up, stand-up didn't exist. Comedy wasn't a thing. We didn't even get certain TV programs and music in the country because there was censorship. Growing up, I knew nothing about stand-up comedy.

But I grew up in a funny home. My grandfather was hilarious, my mom was really funny. I grew up always wanting to tell stories to people.

So how did your career begin?

It was random. I was 22, 23 years old. I went to a comedy club one night [post-apartheid]. It was one of those little rooms where nobody is really having a good time. It's not even a comedy club. It's a bar and some comedians are using it, and the guys on stage weren't having a good night.

So my cousin got drunk and he heckled the comedians, and we got into a huge fight, and it ended with my cousin saying I should get on stage and show them how it's done.

I got on stage - you're basically fighting for your pride - and it actually worked out.

If comedy was outlawed when you were a kid, who were your influences?

For the first few months I got into stand-up, I had no influences. I just knew that the audience liked to laugh, so I would tell them stories. Every time I'd go to the club, I'd go with a friend of mine who smoked a lot of weed and he'd shout out things, like requests. And I'd just tell the stories he'd ask for.

I didn't really have any influences. The first comedian I remember seeing on a professional level was Eddie Murphy. A friend of mine heard I was doing stand-up, and he came over to my house and gave me the VHS of Eddie Murphy's Raw, and he was like, "Hey, you need to watch this." And we watched it, and it was mind-blowing.

It would seem hosting The Daily Show is an all-encompassing experience. I can't imagine there are many times, on or off the set, when the show doesn't dominate your life. Is doing stand-up a mini-vacation for you?

That's exactly what it is. Stand-up is just a beautiful place for me to relax. People go, "But it's work!" No, it's completely not work. The same way the audience is coming to have a good time, I'm having a good time. We're exploring everything together. But it's so organic. I talk to you directly.

No two shows are exactly the same. That's probably my favorite thing about it. So it really is a vacation - a working vacation.

What has been your biggest "I never saw that coming" moment for you on The Daily Show?

I think the biggest thing is . . . how much people rely on The Daily Show for the news. It's a scary reflection on the news in America when people are saying to me, "Why aren't you covering this?" or "Why aren't you doing that?" And you go, "Well, why aren't you watching the news?" And they go, "We don't watch the news. We watch The Daily Show."

This is insane! That's not what should be happening anywhere. A satirical news show shouldn't be thought of as a [legitimate] news show. That's what happened.

That's the biggest thing for me that came out of nowhere. More people are looking to it for the news than for the comedy, and I think that's not a good place to be in. So I constantly try to remind people this is comedy. I'm not trying to be righteous, be holier than thou. We're just trying to make a few points, and we're going to try to find the truth, because that's what great comedy does.

The critics have not been uniformly kind to you regarding the show; A common theme of theirs is that you don't go for the jugular in the manner of your predecessor. What is your response?

It's funny, because my predecessor gave me one piece of advice: "Don't be as angry as I was."

When Jon left, he said, "I'm angry and I'm tired. That doesn't make for a good comedy show. You are young, you are not angry, and you are not tired, so enjoy that. In time, you will grow to be angry at things, you will grow to be tired, but let the audience experience the joy of having a new host."

I understand where any critic comes from. There's no way you can replace Jon Stewart.

No one's going to say overnight, "You've done a great job replacing him." There's no way you can replace a legend and an icon, especially not in a few months. All I can do is keep growing it, keep building an audience, keep doing what we're doing. Then, you know, maybe in a year or two or three, you'll look back and remember that period when it was like that.

That's the history of late night. Conan [O'Brien] had horrible reviews at the beginning of his career. Now look at him, he's an icon.

And everyone said about Johnny Carson, "He's not political enough, he's not strong enough." Human beings are resistant to change. All you can do is keep pushing forward and hope that you stand the test of time."

Trevor Noah, 9 p.m. Saturday at SugarHouse Casino, 1001 N. Delaware Ave., sold out. 877-477-3715, sugarhousecasino.com.