A cleansing, cathartic comedy experience
Toronto-born Samantha Bee has become a key satirical voice in the age of Trump
PASADENA, CALIF.— Slouched onto a high-back couch in the Lobby Lounge at the Langham Pasadena Hotel, Samantha Bee snatches a throw pillow and cuddles it into her stomach.
She sinks back and settles in for one final interview of a press day that began at the crack of dawn. It’s now approaching 6 p.m. and, while her black leather dress remains unwrinkled and her smile reaches her eyes, she seems to be bracing herself for the inevitable: more questions revolving around Donald Trump.
Ever since Trump’s election to the highest political office in the United States, Bee has been one of the loudest female — not to mention Canadian — voices to hold him accountable through comedy, thanks to her Comedy Network series Full Frontal.
In fact, she just announced this week that she will host a counterevent the same night as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — the Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — to roast the president.
As the sole woman representing an increasingly popular genre of satirical news, Bee is aware of her status among the likes of Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Bill Maher and Trevor Noah. But that doesn’t mean she celebrates her position.
“I disengage from that stuff; it’s impossible not to sometimes feel the weight, but I try not to feel the weight of that where possible,” she says. “I’m really too busy to navel gaze that much, which is a good thing.”
Aside from fronting her series on camera, Bee is a producer and writer behind the scenes, working to craft each half-hour of the weekly offering alongside showrunner and longtime friend Jo Miller, whom Bee worked with when she was a correspondent on The Daily Show.
Between her 6 a.m. texts to her producer breaking down the latest truelife twists, and long hours at the office with the writing team, Bee’s passion certainly translates onscreen for those 21 minutes of airtime. Her powerful delivery has been noticed by critics and fans alike, and makes Full Frontal even more relevant as movements like the Women’s March and fundamental female and minority rights have come into play postelection.
“There’s plenty to be outraged about,” she says. “It’s a tiring experience to go to bed at night and wake up and have a fresh new world presented to you every day with things that you would have never expected to see. That presents challenges as well for our souls . . .
“The only thing we really wanted from the show was that it came from a very gut place, a very visceral place
. . .I’m very glad I only have to do it once a week. It’s a very cleansing and cathartic experience for me, which permits me to live my life as I wish to live it outside of that time frame.”
Last November marked the first time Bee, now a dual citizen, voted in a U.S. election, a fact she shared with audiences on the post-results episode of her show. She was a vocal Hillary Clinton supporter, so she pulled no punches when it came to her feelings about the results.
“I’ve jinxed a lot of things, I’m not gonna lie,” she says. “That’s the one thing that I do take responsibility for. I’m a cooler. If you’re winning at something, I’ll come in and make sure you go off the rails.”
Bee is aware of the shift in store for her series with the “new overlord” and his government to pick apart, and she maintains that everything is fair game for the show — so long as it’s funny. That may prove to be an even bigger challenge for Bee as time moves on. Although it may seem that the election would provide even more comedic fodder, that’s not a silver lining Bee necessarily sees.
“It’s hard. It’s actually really hard talking about him,” she says. “I would vastly prefer trying to find comedy in a nerdy policy wonk. Pokemon Go to the polls would be such a joy right now. Anywho, here we are. But you know, it’s not just us going on this particular journey. We’re going on it as a nation and globally. ”
For now, Bee isn’t thinking about making a difference or healing through comedy.
“You can’t really make a comedy show if you make it with the intention of making a difference. You kind of tip over the line into activism, which isn’t funny,” she explains. “We really just do the show for ourselves and hope that other people receive it. It really is for us first. It’s selfish, but it’s true.”
As for any future interactions with Trump, Bee takes a hard pass.
“If he was in the same room with us right now, I don’t think I would approach him at all,” she shrugs. “There’s no reason to meet him. I would probably just hide behind this pillow.”