Trevor Noah showed the six feet of separation at the 2021 Grammy Awards.
“This is not a Zoom fund; this is real, ”said the first-time presenter outside the Los Angeles Staples Center and showed off the new socially distant and safe setting for COVID. “This is real. My uncle is not going to walk after me naked, even though I told him I have an important meeting.”
The presenter of “The Daily Show”, 37, also showed the new configuration for the award show in his opening monologue, with Billie Eilish, Black Pumas and Haim all separated by almost two meters.
But he couldn’t resist telling a political joke.
“Tonight is going to be the biggest outdoor event this year, apart from the invasion of the Capitol,” he joked.
He also plunged into royalty amid the Meghan Markle scandal.
“There is more tension in that tent than at a family reunion at Buckingham Palace,” he joked.
But before the broadcast, Noah, who is in a “very serious relationship” with Minka Kelly, said he hoped the program “could be a moment of hope” amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“Hopefully, this can be a pause for a moment and then we’ll be like, ‘Oh yeah, that was the beginning of when we started living our lives again,'” he told Billboard.
However, the South African native said he was planning to limit himself to music – not politics – for the show, to keep it light.
“An award is very different from ‘The Daily Show’,” he told Billboard. “We are talking to a wider audience, it is not politics. I’m not there to do politics, I’m there to make music ”.
Without politics, the show itself was scandal enough this year. Tiffany Haddish reportedly received an unpaid offer from a hostess for the pre-broadcast of the Premiere Ceremony, in which she would have to pay for her hair, makeup and wardrobe.
“It’s like a guy asking you out on a date, but saying you have to pay for it,” she told Variety, adding that she refused and called it “disrespectful”.
The Recording Academy said that hosts, presenters and artists usually appear for free, even this year, since the Academy is a non-profit organization. Acting chief Harvey Mason Jr. launched a one-minute apology on Instagram, saying he was “frustrated with the decision”.
“It was a lapse of judgment, it was in bad taste and I disrespected the creative community – I am part of the creative community and I know how it is, and it is not right,” he said. “I expressed to her my regret and my discontent about how it happened and how it was treated. And I will say, Tiffany, we are sorry and thank you for allowing me to talk about it. “