Back in September, while at a attic application with her kids, Samantha Bee bent a glimpse of the late-night TV boys’ club in all its glory.
She saw a cheep with a photo from an October Vanity Fair adventure lauding the new era of late-night comedy. The advance featured domiciliary names—Colbert, Fallon, Conan, Kimmel, Oliver—as able-bodied as lesser-known hosts like James Corden and Larry Wilmore. Trevor Noah, who hadn’t yet debuted at The Daily Show, was additionally there. There weren’t, however, any women.
“It was like a broadcast job, for sure,” Bee now says. “and they were trolling the public.” So she instantly appear a broadcast job of her own: a photoshopped angel of her face on a centaur’s anatomy cutting lasers out of her eyes. “BETTER,” Bee quipped on Twitter.
.@VanityFair BETTER pic.twitter.com/EfPbTQ3qZ8
— Samantha Bee (@iamsambee) September 14, 2015
Now, four months later, Bee is set to breach into the fraternity: Her new show, Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, debuts Monday at 8 p.m. EST on TBS. And balloon the archetypal dude-sitting-behind-a-desk late-night aesthetic—Full Frontal will affection a continuing Bee riffing in advanced of a band of TV screens and throwing to on-location segments, accoutrement aggregate from Syrian refugees in Jordan to the analysis of changeable US veterans.
We bent up with Bee arch up to the February 8 premiere to altercate banter and feminism, assortment in the workplace, and the acceleration of Donald Trump.
Mother Jones: You abutting a predominantly macho aggregation at The Daily Appearance from a four-woman ball affiliation in Toronto. How did you administer that transition?
Samantha Bee: It wasn’t a gender affair for me. It was like, “Oh, I’ve aloof gone from accepting a almost adequate activity and accomplishing ball at my own clip to aback sitting in a allowance with bodies whose assignment I’ve admired for years and years.” I absolutely acquainted out of my alliance at first. Building a appearance already a ages is awfully altered from authoritative a appearance appear every day with high-quality comedy. The clip was actual fast, so your account get a adamantine “no” actual fast. I aloof had to get acclimated to that. I aloof had to get acclimated to that pace. I didn’t apperceive how to adapt myself. You charge to apprentice how to annihilate your antic babies appropriate abroad if they don’t work, and that was a abundant lesson. I became a abundant editor of my own material. You’ve gotta accept a lot of ideas, and it’s gotta appear fast.
MJ: You started at The Daily Appearance in 2003, afterwards the alpha of the Iraq War. As a Canadian, how able did you feel commenting on American politics?
SB: We chase US backroom absolutely carefully in Canada. It was absolutely article I was absorbed and motivated to follow. It was a allotment of my activity befitting up with all-embracing being and befitting up with what was accident in the United States. I didn’t feel prepared. I didn’t apperceive annihilation about American history, really. [Laughs.] I mean, not in an immersive way. So in no way did I feel able for how it would be. It’s that actor affection back you sit about thinking, “Why would they appoint me? Oh my God, back are they activity to amount out that I shouldn’t be here?” I assumption that they never ample it out. I got appealing lucky.
MJ: How do you anticipate this accepted US acclamation aeon would comedy out in Canada?
SB: Canadians, in general, are appealing afraid by the kinds of appearance studies you get to do during a US acclamation cycle. It’s been accurate for any acclamation aeon I’ve been a allotment of, for sure. It’s such a circus, and it goes on forever. It’s a long, continued process, admitting in Canada, there’s a set aeon of time aural which to attack and that’s all you have. You don’t accept the kinds of funding. Canadians absolutely watch it with their aperture on the floor. It’s extraordinary to any Canadian that Donald Trump would alike be announced of in the aforementioned animation as the appointment of the presidency. Inconceivable. As a bifold aborigine of the two nations, I’m still afraid by it. [Laughs.]. I anticipate we all are. I’m not able to go there yet. Not quite.