Samantha Bee tells 'Rolling Stone' the recipe for her 'Full Frontal' success
Samantha Bee is one fierce female at the helm of her own late night talk show.
The former correspondent for The Daily Show, who tackled subjects like rape and racism, spoke with Rolling Stone about her current gig, Full Frontal and how it differs from her past job.
"It wasn't a conscious decision," Bee said of the way in which she tackles topics like the shootings in Orlando.
"I don't think you could put in a document, 'The character will be Furious Woman. Just trust me. People will go for it,'” she said. “That would have been a really tough sell at the network.” But she admits she doesn’t know how she could report on such topics in any other way.
Bee said her writers’ room, which boasts women and racial diversity, is filled “with people who have been underestimated their entire careers.”
“It is so joyful to collect a group of people who nobody has ever thought could grasp the reins of something and (expletive) go for it," she said.
Along the way, Bee has picked up some critics, which she doesn’t mind one bit.
“People love to hate-watch, and we're cool with that," Bee said. "The more the merrier.”
Even the evil eyes of hate-watchers are appreciated by a once-upon-a-time struggling actress. Bee was even toying with the idea of giving up on her dream before getting a call that The Daily Show, must-see TV for her and her husband, Jason Jones, was looking for women.
"No one else who was auditioning that day was familiar with the show at all,” she said. “I knew it completely. I understood the tone they were going for."
Though Bee booked the job, that doesn’t mean her nerves subsided. "I remember just being terrified," she said. "I had no idea what the job actually entailed, and no one really has time to baby-step you. I just tried to stay quiet as much as possible so nobody would figure out that I had so many questions that it would render me completely incapable of doing the job."
When Jon Stewart announced that he was leaving The Daily Show in Feb. of 2015, Bee recalls being “surprised, but not surprised.” “The signs were all there. We all knew that he wasn't loving it anymore, that it was really grinding on him, but I think that we all thought that he would go through one more election cycle. I remember walking down the street after we heard, totally panicked. I mean, you are just jumping out into the unknown.”
And though Stewart’s seat would soon be vacant, Bee wasn’t confident that she would land the gig. "It was really flattering that people were talking about me in that way," she said. "But it didn't seem like a reality to me, to be perfectly honest."
And it seems Bee is quite content with her TBS series. "There was a setup to it on The Daily Show, pretending to be something you're not, and here I've completely dropped the artifice," she said. "There's no pulling the wool over people's eyes. I have a point of view, and you can know it. It's a more fun way for me to do the stories. People don't freak out."