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Trevor Noah Returns as Grammy Host with Comfort, Nervousness

Trevor Noah appears at the 63rd annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on March 14, 2021. Noah is hosting the Grammy Awards for a third-straight year. (AP)
Trevor Noah appears at the 63rd annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on March 14, 2021. Noah is hosting the Grammy Awards for a third-straight year. (AP)
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Trevor Noah Returns as Grammy Host with Comfort, Nervousness

Trevor Noah appears at the 63rd annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on March 14, 2021. Noah is hosting the Grammy Awards for a third-straight year. (AP)
Trevor Noah appears at the 63rd annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on March 14, 2021. Noah is hosting the Grammy Awards for a third-straight year. (AP)

Trevor Noah feels more comfortable hosting the Grammy Awards for a third-straight year, but the former “The Daily Show” host still has some nervousness about leading the ceremony with big-time acts like Beyoncé, Adele and Harry Styles looking on.

“The nerves come in because you’re standing in front of not just some of the best, but some of the biggest performers in the world,” said the Emmy winner. Noah expects his diligent preparation to get him through Sunday’s show.

“Nerves are part of what I do,” the comedian said.

Noah returns for his third hosting stint at the Grammys, which airs live from Crypto.com Arena on Sunday on CBS and Paramount+. The ceremony returns to Los Angeles after relocating to Las Vegas for the first-time ever because of rising COVID-19 cases and omicron variant.

“I was relieved Trevor came back because it makes my job more enjoyable and easier,” said Ben Winston, the show’s executive producer. He called Noah an “absolute pro” who he said can pivot gracefully at any moment on a night celebrating music’s best.

“He reassures me on a stressful night when a set hasn’t been built in time and I say to his ear ‘Sorry about that. I need you to go an extra 90 seconds because Lady Gaga’s orchestra isn’t in.’ He’ll just naturally flow, make a joke, get up and sit at somebody’s table and chat with them,” Winston said. “That’s a very difficult task with very few people could do — and definitely can’t do with his comedy and charm that Trevor has.”

Noah said each year of hosting the Grammys has offered a different experience because of the logistical challenges stemmed from the pandemic. But he said the intimate but socially-distanced in-person award show in 2021 helped him build a rapport with music stars — especially when telling his jokes.

Last year’s ceremony in Las Vegas was a hybrid model that included fans.

“Every year, I notice that I develop a different rapport with the people in the room,” he said. “That opens you up to a few more jokes and a few more conversations in a way where people understand the context of who you are in relations to them. It means you get to have a little bit of fun without anybody feeling like you’re dunking on them.”

As a music fan, Noah is looking forward to checking out the popular performers who will hit the stage including Bad Bunny, Mary J. Blige, Sam Smith, Lizzo, Steve Lacy and Brandi Carlile.

Beyoncé heads into the ceremony with a leading nine nominations, including record and song of the year nods for her song “Break My Soul.” Kendrick Lamar has the second-most nominations with eight, while Adele and Carlile enter the show with seven nods.

Styles, Blige, Future, DJ Khaled, The-Dream and mastering engineer Randy Merrill each received six nominations.

“We love having Trevor because he’s so darn good at it,” said Harvey Mason jr, the CEO of the Recording Academy. “He is so personable, he’s so funny. I don’t know how he does what he does. He never stumbles, he never hesitates. He’s always so earnest and heartfelt. He’s also a music guy. You see him when he’s not on camera. He’s singing, he’s dancing, he’s rapping. I feel like he’s one of us now.”

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Movie Review: A Weird ‘Superman’ Is Better than a Boring One

Cast member David Corenswet attends a premiere for the film "Superman" at the TCL Chinese theater in Los Angeles, California, US, July 7, 2025. (Reuters)
Cast member David Corenswet attends a premiere for the film "Superman" at the TCL Chinese theater in Los Angeles, California, US, July 7, 2025. (Reuters)
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Movie Review: A Weird ‘Superman’ Is Better than a Boring One

Cast member David Corenswet attends a premiere for the film "Superman" at the TCL Chinese theater in Los Angeles, California, US, July 7, 2025. (Reuters)
Cast member David Corenswet attends a premiere for the film "Superman" at the TCL Chinese theater in Los Angeles, California, US, July 7, 2025. (Reuters)

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a ... a purple and orange shape-shifting chemical compound?

Writer-director James Gunn’s “Superman” was always going to be a strange chemistry of filmmaker and material. Gunn, the mind behind “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “The Suicide Squad,” has reliably drifted toward a B-movie superhero realm populated (usually over-populated) with the lesser-known freaks, oddities and grotesquerie of back-issue comics.

But you don’t get more mainstream than Superman. And let’s face it, unless Christopher Reeve is in the suit, the rock-jawed Man of Steel can be a bit of a bore. Much of the fun and frustration of Gunn’s movie is seeing how he stretches and strains to make Superman, you know, interesting.

In the latest revamp for the archetypal superhero, Gunn does a lot to give Superman (played with an easy charm by David Corenswet) a lift. He scraps the origin story. He gives Superman a dog. And he ropes in not just expected regulars like Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) but some less conventional choices — none more so than that colorful jumble of elements, Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan).

Metamorpho, a melancholy, mutilated man whose powers were born out of tragedy, is just one of many side shows in “Superman.” But he’s the most representative of what Gunn is going for. Gunn might favor a traditional-looking hero at the center, like Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord in “Guardians of the Galaxy.” And Corenswet, complete with hair curl, looks the part, too. But Gunn’s heart is with the weirdos who soldier on.

The heavy lift of “Superman” is making the case that the perfect superhuman being with “S” on his chest is strange, too. He’s a do-gooder at a time when no one does good anymore.

Not everything works in “Superman.” For those who like their Superman classically drawn, Gunn’s film will probably seem too irreverent and messy. But for anyone who found Zack Snyder’s previous administration painfully ponderous, this “Superman,” at least, has a pulse.

It would be hard to find a more drastic 180 in franchise stewardship. Where Snyder’s films were super-serious mythical clashes of colossuses, Gunn’s “Superman” is lightly earthbound, quirky and sentimental. When this Superman flies, he even keeps his arms back, like an Olympic skeleton rider.

We begin not on Krypton or Kansas but in Antarctica, near the Fortress of Solitude. The opening titles set-up the medias res beginning. Three centuries ago, metahumans first appeared on Earth. Three minutes ago, Superman lost a battle for the first time. Lying bloodied in the snow, he whistles and his faithful super dog, Krypto, comes running.

Like some of Gunn’s other novelty gags (I’m looking at you Groot), Krypto is both a highlight and overused gag throughout. Superman is in the midst of a battle by proxy with Luthor. From atop his Luthor Corp. skyscraper headquarters, Luther gives instructions to a team sitting before computer screens while, on a headset, barking out coded battle directions to drone-assisted henchmen. “13-B!” he shouts, like a Bingo caller.

Whether this is an ideal localizing of main characters in conflict is a debate that recedes a bit when, back in Metropolis, Clark Kent returns to the Daily Planet. There’s Wendell Pierce as the editor-in-chief, Perry White, and Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen. But the character of real interest here is, of course, Lois.

She and Kent are already an item in “Superman.” When alone, Lois chides him over the journalistic ethics of interviewing himself after some daring do, and questions his flying into countries without their leaders’ approval. Brosnahan slides so comfortably into the role that I wonder if “Superman” ought to have been “Lois,” instead. Her scenes with Corenswet are the best in the film, and the movie loses its snap when she’s not around.

That’s unfortunately for a substantial amount of time. Luthor traps Superman in a pocket universe (enter Metamorpho, among others) and the eccentric members of the Justice Gang — Nathan Fillion’s Green Lantern, Edi Gathegi’s Mister Terrific and Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl — are called upon to lend a hand. They come begrudgingly. But if there’s anyone else that comes close to stealing the movie, it’s Gathegi, who meets increasingly absurd cataclysm with wry deadpan.

The fate of the world, naturally, again turns iffy. There’s a rift in the universe, not to mention some vaguely defined trouble in Boravia and Jarhanpur. In such scenes, Gunn's juggling act is especially uneasy and you can feel the movie lurching from one thing to another. Usually, that's Krypto's cue to fly back into the movie and run amok.

Gunn, who now presides over DC Studios with producer Peter Safran, is better with internal strife than he is international politics. Superman is often called “the Kryptonian” or “the alien" by humans, and Gunn leans into his outsider status. Not for the first time, Superman’s opponents try to paint him as an untrustworthy foreigner. With a modicum of timeliness, “Superman” is an immigrant story.

Mileage will inevitably vary when it comes to Gunn’s idiosyncratic touch. He can be outlandish and sweet, often at once. In a conversation between metahumans, he will insert a donut into the scene for no real reason, and cut from a body falling through the air to an Alka-Seltzer tablet dropping into a glass. Some might call such moments glib, a not-unfair label for Gunn. But I’d say they make this pleasantly imperfect “Superman” something quite rare in the assembly line-style of superhero moviemaking today: human.