Munya Chawawa Is Breaking Out of the Box

If you’ve spent a single minute scrolling TikTok or Instagram Reels over the past half-decade—or, to put it another way, you are a human being with a smartphone in the 2020s—odds are you’ve encountered British-Zimbabwean sketch comic Munya Chawawa. The zany political satirist, who came to prominence in lockdown with his lightning-fast online shorts skewering UK politicians and bizarro news stories, has become one of the most recognizable figures of the content creator era. Now, he’s going longer. “A thousand blows of second-second satire is how I made my name,” says Chawawa, speaking over Zoom. “But I’m really ready for the bigger fish.”

To this end, he has made a handful of TV documentaries: Race Around Britain, a takedown of racial prejudice in the UK, earned him a BAFTA nomination in 2021, while 2022’s How to Survive a Dictator delved into the life of Robert Mugabe. And with his latest, he looks to layeth the smackdown on the most divisive figure of our times: Donald Trump. That’s Wrestling With Trump, in which Chawawa draws a remarkably convincing parallel between the strongman brand of the POTUS and the soapish ultra-machismo of professional wrestling, as well as investigating Trump’s long-standing relationship to the sport. There’s the braggadocio, the name-calling, the shit-talking, and yes, the makeup; he also explores Trump’s direct ties to institutions like the WWE, and how they might have influenced his political rise.

Wrestling is a make-believe world of heroes and villains—or, in the parlance of sports entertainment, “faces” and “heels”—not unlike our cartoonish modern political era. And historically, it has often paid to be the bad guy.

“I was wondering how Trump was so impervious, and was almost invincible to accountability, and why even when he got it wrong, he got it right in the eyes of his fans,” Chawawa explains. “I thought, Where else does this work? Where being the villain can mean being the biggest hero?” He evokes the late, great Eddie Guerrero, an immensely popular wrestler in the aughts whose entire brand was based on three words: Lie, cheat, steal. (Who does that remind you of?) “And the crowd’s going crazy for it,” Chawawa explains. He also brings up the bird-flipping anti-authority figure “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, the WWE’s chief mascot in the so-called nineties Attitude Era. “Those are people who were chewing up the rule book, spitting it out and then urinating on it, and yet somehow managed to collate this huge [fanbase],” he says.

The other spark for Wrestling With Trump came by way of a YouTube thumbnail: the image of all-American hero Hulk Hogan, once the most popular wrestler on the planet, announcing his full-throated support for Trump at a MAGA rally ahead of the 2024 election. “I thought, Hang on a minute. What is this collision of multiverses? Again, his entrance music, ‘I’m a real American, fight for the rights of every man,’ is now parading a man [in Trump] who is very much the antithesis of those themes,” Chawawa says. “And that’s where the rabbit hole fully opened.” Other famous names from the business have come out for Trump too: take former champion and WWE chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque, who has called the President’s media image “genius” and himself drew similar comparisons between Trump’s ability to get “under people’s skin” and the best, most charismatic wrestling stars. Former WWE CEO Linda McMahon is the current Secretary of Education.

Of course, Trump has had direct involvement with the wrestling universe. In the eighties, Trump Plaza in Atlantic City played host to two consecutive WrestleMania events. And at WrestleMania 23, he took part in the “Battle of the Billionaires,” wherein a pair of wrestlers—Bobby Lashley and Umaga—fought on the behalf of Trump and then-WWE head-honcho Vince McMahon. (Umaga lost, and McMahon had his hair shaved off as a result.) “Now, number one, for all of the wrestlers watching, they would’ve been applauding the fact that this guy was willing to step away from the scripted world of The Apprentice, and actually step into the ring,” Chawawa says. In 2013, Trump was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. “In recognition of, ‘You are a key cog in wrestling at some point,’” Chawawa continues. With that in mind, it’s hard not to see how Trump’s style might’ve been influenced by his time in and around the ring. Or, as Chawawa puts it: “I’m going to use it to win an election and become one of the most powerful men in the world.”

In the documentary, Chawawa travels across the US, meeting MAGA adorants and wrestling-world Trump skeptics alike. His style is disarmingly direct—he isn’t afraid to pose tough questions. It’s a little evocative of fellow British documentarian Louis Theroux. “I think I like my documentaries with a side serving of mischief,” Chawawa says. “I’m all about sticking it to the man and being bold and very unwavering in my stance against who I perceive to be the bad guys.” Another subject he’d like to take on in the future: the “enigma” of Elon Musk. “All these kids’ movies, like The Incredibles and Despicable Me, always paint out this super rich villain with a weird laugh and terrible social skills,” he says. “That’s Elon Musk.” In a similar vein, Chawawa wants to explore the billionaire preppers who seem to be getting ready for the end of the world, “making sort of flammable moats around their bunkers instead of fixing world hunger.”

The bigger picture for Chawawa is that he’s ready to “evolve as a storyteller” and to “tell stories that have a bit more elbow room” than social media snippets allow. Last year, he launched the Black Boys Theatre Club, a community-led initiative to deliver more access to the arts for young Black men. He has diversified as an actor, too—he’s currently making his stage debut playing Bottom in a new adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Chicester Festival Theatre in the UK, the Shakespeare play reimagined in the world of nineties rave culture. There are more documentaries to come. “For a while, I’ve been put in this box of TikToker, YouTuber, or creator,” he says. “And for me, the mission is now, how do you make yourself undeniable in those other fields?”

He lets me have a glimpse of his “vision board,” which sits above his computer screen, out of camera sight. There’s Daniel Kaluuya holding up his BAFTA. Michaela Coel holding up her BAFTA. “We’ve got Fleabag up there. We’ve got a picture of The Rock,” he says. “We’ve got a picture of Kendrick with all of his Grammys. Dumbledore, weirdly.”

Social media remains a “really nice engine for visibility,” he says. But secretly, there’s a part of him that would love to see it all shut down. “I would love to see us reconnect, converse more—debate, discuss, argue,” he says. “And then maybe turn our faces towards the theater and cinema, stuff that takes longer and is harder to do.”

“Basically, I don’t want to see creativity die out, and I don’t want to live in a world where creativity is, you know, three seconds at a time,” he continues. “But yeah, I’ll pop up every now and then to ridicule some politicians.”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream continues through October 17 at the Chichester Festival Theatre. Wrestling with Trump is now streaming on Channel 4. Be the first to read this story and many more in print by preordering your copy of our twelfth issue here.