Samantha Bee Reflects on 'Full Frontal's' Beginnings and Finding Her Place in Late Night
Bee received seven Emmy nominations this year.
When Samantha Bee left Comedy Central’s The Daily Show to start her own late-night satire show Full Frontal on TBS, she kept her expectations for her new project pretty low. “I mean, I didn’t have any idea that the show would last,” she told The Hollywood Reporter, weeks before the series received four Emmy nominations. “I thought, ‘Okay, we have an order for six episodes so we’ll make six episodes of TV that we’ve always wanted to make and then when we get canceled, we will know that we have this little gem of this six-show run.’ And as it turns out, it had legs and it was fine and it was sustainable.”
The show has received critical acclaim since its 2016 launch. On Thursday, the show received four Emmy nominations this year, with the host earning a total of seven nominations herself.
When Full Frontal made its debut in 2016, Bee became the first woman ever to host a late-night satire show. “It’s amazing that the show had not existed before,” she said. “Now there’s room for other people’s voices and so I’m not sure why it took so long, but I benefited from it.”
Bee went on to discuss the episodes from the past season that she’s most proud of, and she pointed to the Puerto Rico special and added, “I think our Weinstein coverage was really strong. I was really, really proud of that. I’m proud of the way we’ve handled that material. I’d say that really stands out for me."
She added: “I think we work really hard and we’re really an awesome team of people, and we really care about everything and I hope it shows.”
