Samantha Bee: on political anger, comedy
For a late-night comedy show host, Samantha Bee’s midtown Manhattan office is fairly understated. On her desk, however, is one unusual feature: a big bowl of bite-sized chocolate squares with her photo on each wrapper.
“Just what I always wanted,” says Bee, “my face on chocolates.”
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 — edible or otherwise. 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 is rendered as an Andy Warhol knock-off, complete with pastel-coloured Campbell’s soup cans.
Bee says Moore’s recent election loss and a crazy year of Trump headlines has been “the best of times, the worst of times, for sure. Nobody’s happy that (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 whole 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.”
Despite the Time magazine endorsement, she’s modest about her own role as an influencer.
“It would make it hard for me to do my job if I thought I was some sort of a philosopher for the ages. I don’t know how you could wear that moniker and still be a cool person and have a fun day.”
She’s happy “Full Frontal” and her producers and writers are seen as having “kicked a door down here in the late-night space, for sure,” she says.
If it seems as if she gets away with more than satirists in Canada, Bee says credit should go to her American cable network, TBS.
“We’re lucky to be working for a very risk-taking network.”