Getting nominated for the prestigious screenwriting award in the world, Writers Guild of America Award is a huge deal. Again is on the entertainment world map as two of Uganda’s comedy exports, both on Trevor Noah’s The Daily Show support team as staff writers, is nominated for an award in the Outstanding Achievement in Comedy to be held on February 19, 2017.
One is the comedian David Kibuuka, previously based in South Africa. The other is Joseph Opio, a Kampala-born comic who rose to notoriety as the ex-host of the political satire talk show LOLUganda, or as Opio refers to it, The Daily Show’s “shameless and poorer Third World cousin.”
Television critics pit The Daily Show to easily fend off competition from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
It need be noted that Opio and Kibuuka have had a tremendous outing this year with top-notch praise about The Daily Show’s evolution and money credited to them besides celebrating their first anniversary and covering a historical USA presidential debate.
Opio branched into comedy full time after quitting Vision Group. He is a former sports journalist with the New Vision and Urban TV as one of the architects of the show.
Kibuuka, a 34-year-old comedian whose family settled in South Africa after fleeing Idi Amin’s regime joined local boy (South Africa) made good Trevor Noah just the same way Opio while performing on the New York comedy scene, had the good fortune of crossing paths with Noah at The Comedy Cellar. They bonded over our mutual passion for comedy, did some work together and regularly kept in touch with the 32-year-old Johannesburg-native. When Trevor was hired as the new host of The Daily Show, he invited Kibuuka and then Opio to go onboard.
The rest is history as the Ugandan rookies in an extremely talented, richly experienced and lavishly decorated American writing team now look more than able to win their biggest award so far.
Watch Opio on LOL:
