Bee Not Afraid

Prime time’s lone female comedy host  on loving America and ridiculing its president.

- David Corn

SAMANTHA BEE picked a great moment to crash TV’s comedy host fraternity. Just over a year ago—after 12 years as a correspondent on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, and just as Donald Trump was mounting his hostile takeover of the Republican Party—the Canadian-born comic launched her own tbs prime-time show, Full Frontal With Samantha Bee. Her sass and wit are a good match for a billionaire bully president who once bragged about grabbing women by the you-know-what. Bee pummels Trump like a piñata, sprinkling her brainy, lightning-speed satire with plugs for Planned Parenthood and protest marches. Her weekly show caught on quickly, nearly tripling its viewership in its first year— Full Frontal now beats Trevor Noah and Conan O’Brien in the ratings game. When I first met her, last summer outside the Republican convention, Bee enlisted me to help her snag an interview with Roger Stone, the veteran GOP dirty trickster and longtime Trump adviser.

SAMANTHA BEE: You were my Roger Stone concierge!

MOTHER JONES: That’s right. You wanted an interview in which he would bare that big Richard Nixon tattoo on his back. He said he’d do it if you showed up bare-chested. Whatever happened?

SB: He said he absolutely would be willing, but I’m trying to figure out the exact purpose of that meeting. I want it to accomplish something.

MJ: It’s been a year since Full Frontal launched. Any surprises?

SB: All of it. Showrunner Jo Miller and I kept the goal small and simple. It was hard to imagine that we’d get to do it past about six episodes. I just knew what our sensibility was. So in lieu of thinking, “Are people going to like it?” I tried to focus on, “Will we like it?”