Queen Bee of late-night TV
Full Frontal host believes today’s real-world antics are better than fiction
Full Frontal Wednesdays, The Comedy Network
NEW YORK After a dozen years on the Emmy Award-winning The Daily Show and now two years into hosting Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, the Toronto native is no stranger to tributes. Earlier this year, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Hosting Full Frontal is a dream job, says Bee, combining her twin passions.
“I’m obsessed with the news, but I’m also obsessed with comedy,” says the 48-year-old. “I’m not super interested in things that are fictional right now. The real world is much more interesting.”
And what a year of non-fiction it has been. On the floor by her desk is a prop poster depicting failed Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore. It’s rendered as an Andy Warhol knock-off, with pastel-coloured Campbell’s soup cans.
Bee says Moore’s election loss and a crazy year of Trump headlines have been “the best of times, the worst of times, for sure. Nobody ’s happy (Moore) almost won, but we have to allow ourselves to be happy that he didn’t win.”
As for Trump’s presidential win last year, Bee, like many Canadians, never saw it coming.
“We planned an entire postelection show that had no mention of Donald Trump,” she says. “In no world did we think he would win.”
Then there’s the issue of inappropriate behaviour in the workplace.
“This is a reckoning, for sure,” says Bee about the almost daily revelations. She doubts the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace will be solved in one year, but feels “once you start tilling the dirt, things can get better for future generations.”
Bee is happy Full Frontal and her staff are seen as having “kicked a door down here in the late-night space. But I don’t think I’m the leader of this movement. I’m not sure it requires a leader.”