Samantha Bee Talks to David Remnick About Responding to Tragedies

Summary

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode: Samantha Bee Talks to David Remnick About Responding to Tragedies

Release Date: June 20, 2016
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Samantha Bee

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Overview

In this candid and thoughtful discussion, David Remnick speaks with comedian and "Full Frontal" host Samantha Bee about navigating the challenges of responding to national tragedies on a comedy program. The conversation centers specifically on Bee's impassioned and unflinching response to the Orlando nightclub shooting, and expands to explore her approach to political comedy, her personal sensibility, and how her show differentiates itself in the crowded landscape of late-night television.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Responding to Tragedy on Television

• Immediate Decision-Making After Tragedy

  • Samantha Bee and her staff began discussing how to address the Orlando shooting on their Sunday morning editorial call.
  • Bee shares that the decision to address the event head-on, setting aside their planned first act, was unanimous and instinctive for her team.

    “It was really a no brainer for our show. Everybody got behind that immediately.” — Samantha Bee [03:03]

• Breaking Away from ‘Standard Operating Procedure’

  • Bee refused the usual platitudes of late-night responses ("love wins", etc.), opting for honest anger and direct engagement:

    "I am too angry for that. Love does not win unless we start loving each other enough to fix our problems." — Samantha Bee (monologue) [03:55]

• Balancing Grief and Comedy

  • Bee admits she wrestled most with her own tone and performance, struggling to keep from crying on air:

    “I really didn’t want to cry. I really didn’t want to cry.” — Samantha Bee [04:36]
    “It took a long day of crying... I think that's really healthy. ... But I really didn’t want to do it in this performance.” — Samantha Bee [04:57]

Navigating Anger, Humor, and Purpose

• Comedy in the Face of Horrors

  • Bee’s team operates largely on instinct, working from the gut even amidst tragedy:

    “We do recognize that we’re a comedy show. ... Our gut tells us when we can make a joke.” — Samantha Bee [06:22]

  • Her writing and research staff contribute heavily to finding this difficult balance.

• Influence of Jon Stewart and ‘The Daily Show’ Legacy

  • Samantha credits Stewart’s authentic response to 9/11 as transformative for her, shaping the expectation that topical comedy must address major events:

    “His reaction was monumental for me. ... There was a Jon Stewart effect from that.” — Samantha Bee [07:09]

The Unique Voice of “Full Frontal”

• Making the Show Distinct

  • For Bee, the ambition for her show isn't glory, but the shared pleasure and authenticity of creating the program with her team:

    “My ambition for the show at the moment is to keep this feeling of pure enjoyment.” — Samantha Bee [08:52]

• From Shyness to Stage Presence

  • Surprisingly, Bee confides she is still quite shy and masks it skillfully. For her, performance is a communal, energetic exchange with the audience:

    “Their energy and their desire to be there... feeds my tender ego ... there is a back and forth.” — Samantha Bee [10:03]

Political Climate & Media Responsibility

• Covering the 2016 Election

  • Bee acknowledges this election cycle is uniquely extreme, citing the rise of “authoritarian demagogues,” but maintains that all serious and unserious candidates must be covered:

    “Many unserious people have run for president, and you have to cover them. They are running for president.” — Samantha Bee [11:09]

• Comedy’s Obligation to ‘Fairness’

  • Bee explains her evolution from the ‘Daily Show’ structure (with its fake reporter persona) toward more transparent and honest conversations with interview subjects, exemplified in her frank exchanges with Trump supporters:

    "We’ve just completely lost that artifice here. Now it’s much more about me just having conversations. ... I don’t hide my point of view at all." — Samantha Bee [13:21]

Facing Ongoing Tragedy in America

• The Grim Normalcy of Mass Shootings
  • Bee and Remnick reflect on the tragic expectation that more mass shootings will occur. She reluctantly recognizes that preparing to address such events has become a grim routine:

    “That is the saddest thing that anyone could say. ... But it’s really not fun to try to put a comedy show together after something like that has happened. And we really deserve better.” — Samantha Bee [14:16]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Rejecting Platitudes After Tragedy:

  "I am too angry for that. Love does not win unless we start loving each other enough to fix our problems."
  — Samantha Bee (monologue) [03:55]

• On Laughing and Mourning Simultaneously:

  “How do you figure out this very uncanny balance of rage and anger and at the same time making some pretty amazing jokes?”
  — David Remnick [06:03]

• On Her Goals for 'Full Frontal':

  "My ambition for the show at the moment is to keep this feeling of pure enjoyment... how much pleasure it gives me to do the show."
  — Samantha Bee [08:52]

• On Audience Connection and Stage Shyness:

  “I’m still quite shy. I’m just excellent at masking that now. ... There is a back and forth.”
  — Samantha Bee [09:39], [10:03]

• On Media Responsibility in the Trump Era:

  “Many unserious people have run for president, and you have to cover them. They are running for president.”
  — Samantha Bee [11:09]

• On Open Dialogue and Authenticity:

  “I don’t hide my point of view at all. ... That conversation is a great example of that.”
  — Samantha Bee [13:21]

• On the Recurrence of National Tragedy:

  “We really deserve better.”
  — Samantha Bee [14:46]

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Suggested Timestamps for Reference

• [03:37-04:05] — Samantha Bee’s post-Orlando monologue, rejecting empty platitudes
• [04:36-04:57] — Bee discusses her emotional struggle not to cry, and the catharsis of grief
• [07:09-07:32] — Samantha reflects on the influence of Jon Stewart's response to tragedy
• [08:52-09:03] — On the ambition and spirit behind "Full Frontal"
• [11:09-11:19] — Samantha on the necessity of covering all candidates
• [13:21-13:42] — Bee on shifting to honest, open field conversations from fake reporter shtick
• [14:16-14:46] — Confronting the likely recurrence of gun violence and mass shootings

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Tone & Language

Samantha Bee is frank, self-deprecating, and passionate throughout. The conversation is direct, emotionally open, yet laced with Bee's signature humor—even when the issues are at their most grave. The tone is empathetic, engaged, and never detached.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode offers a rare, intimate look into how a satirical news host handles the emotional, political, and creative demands of responding to tragedy on a comedy show. Samantha Bee’s candor about her anger, grief, and ambition for authenticity, as well as her refusal to cloak discomfort with platitudes, sets her apart. The episode is illuminating for media and comedy fans, and for anyone thinking about how public figures articulate a call to action in the aftermath of violence.

Transcript

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[David Remnick]

I'm David Remnick. On today's Politics and More podcast, I talk with Samantha Bee, the host of Full Frontal on tbs. We met at her show's production offices.

[Interviewer]

Hey.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

Hey. How are you? How's it going?

[Interviewer]

We're here in an office. We're at your office. It's kind of a corporate looking office here on $0.50.

[Samantha Bee]

Kind of corporate looking. It's so.

[Interviewer]

I was being polite. I'm a bit.

[Samantha Bee]

It's a cubicle matrix. This is a.

[Interviewer]

It's not that I don't like this color paint, by the way.

[Samantha Bee]

Oh my gosh, that's nice. Well, it's so flattering. And that's why we've chosen these drop ceilings and the fluorescent.

[David Remnick]

Late this week, I went to see Samantha Bee at her office. For years she was a star cast member on Jon Stewart's the Daily Show. And a few months ago, she struck out on her own with Full Frontal on tbs, making her in the realm of late night tv. Anyway, amidst all those white guys at their desks, a kind of solitary woman, there was never any doubt that she'd be a unique comic voice. We just had no idea of the degree until this week on Sunday morning, after hearing the awful news from Orlando, Samantha Bee and her staff channeled their grief and their sense of political outrage, particularly at the NRA and its congressional lackeys. And they formed an opening monologue unlike any other.

[Interviewer]

Samantha, Monday night you had a decision to make a creative decision, an emotional decision how to handle this horrific incident in Orlando, Florida. And you'd been at the Daily show for years and unfortunately, God knows, with 9, 11 and then onward, there were any number of disasters to confront. What was the discussion like here about how to approach it?

[Samantha Bee]

Well, I mean the discussion about how to approach it really began first thing Sunday morning. You know, are we going in on it? Are we just throwing out or not throwing out the first act, but basically putting it aside to face the event head on. And that was really a no brainer for our show. Everybody got behind that immediately.

[Interviewer]

But you did something different than usual and something different than all other shows really before or that night. Let's listen to the way you approach this horrendous incident in Orlando, Florida.

[Samantha Bee (Monologue Voice)]

Now after a massacre, the standard operating procedure is that you stand on stage and deliver some well meaning words about how we will get through this together, how love wins, how love conquers hate. And that is great, that is beautiful. But you know what?

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

It.

[Samantha Bee (Monologue Voice)]

I am too angry for that. Love does not win unless we start loving each other enough to fix our problems.

[Samantha Bee]

That's the first time I've heard it back. I don't.

[David Remnick]

And it was as if you were.

[Interviewer]

Leaping through the screen physically. You looked furious.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

I.

[Samantha Bee]

We all, I mean, obviously, and I hope that the fury continues unabated until we actually put our actions behind our words and our thoughts and our prayers for sure. It was very difficult to do. I wrestled with it a lot. We all did. We sat with it.

[Interviewer]

You wrestled with what? Because there's a standard way of doing this, a kind of emotional we are one and you had had it.

[Samantha Bee]

When I say we wrestled with it, it wasn't wrestling with the decision to actually engage with it for the entire first act. The wrestling was the tone, you know, my tone, my personal tone. So I guess I should say I wrestled with my performance a tremendous amount. I really didn't want to cry. I really didn't want to cry.

[Interviewer]

You didn't completely succeed, did you, in not crying?

[Samantha Bee]

I didn't. I think I did the best job that I could possibly have done. And it took a long day of crying. Actually, I'm a big crazy. I'm a real baby. I mean, I do cry a lot, and I think that's really healthy. And I do do that, but I really didn't want to do it in this performance. And so, you know, it's a struggle. Of course, we're all struggling. We were all crying the whole country.

[Samantha Bee (Monologue Voice)]

Mass shootings have become so frequent in this country. It seems like the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is another bad guy with a gun who coincidentally came to shoot up the same place. Our mass shooter du jour was Omar Mateen. Born in New York, he beat his ex wife. He'd been reported multiple times to his employer as homophobic and unhinged.

[Samantha Bee]

And the FBI had twice questioned him.

[Samantha Bee (Monologue Voice)]

For ties to terrorism. But none of these things disqualified him from legally buying a gun that shoots 45 rounds a minute. Not even his terrible mirror selfies. I think we can all agree that if you don't have one friend to hold the phone for you, your lone wolf ass doesn't get you get a gun.

[Interviewer]

How do you figure it out? I'm moved just. And laughing at the same time listening to it now a few days later. How do you figure out this very uncanny balance of rage and anger and at the same time making some pretty amazing jokes?

[Samantha Bee]

I think that we, the team that we have built here, you know, from our showrunner Joe Miller, to the writers to the researchers, I mean, we just have. It's very instinctive, even in the face of tragedy. We do recognize that we're a comedy show. You know, we do recognize that. And there is.

[Interviewer]

And a new one. I mean, you're in episode a new.

[Samantha Bee]

One, 1516, somewhere in there. I mean, it's fledgling, but we've always delivered this show and we always knew that we wanted to deliver this show from our gut and our gut. It tells us that we can make a joke. It tells us when we can make a joke.

[Interviewer]

You had been at the Jon Stewart show for years and years, and he had unfortunately had to react to 911 and any number of incidents thereafter. What were you learning from that? How did you want to approach it? The same or different?

[Samantha Bee]

I didn't live in New York when 911 happened. I came shortly thereafter. But I watched the show in Canada, and his reaction was monumental for me. I thought it was amazing. I mean, it just truly was. And then I do think that there was a bit of. There was a Jon Stewart effect from that. You know, the ripple effect of that is now when you have A show like this, you do have to address it. You know, it's become part of the norm.

[Interviewer]

Did it become a kind of cliche for late night television?

[Samantha Bee]

No, I don't think it is. I don't think it's a cliche. I don't know how you could possibly avoid it. You're doing a topical show. You're in the moment and you just can't. You just cannot open a show and do like, isn't this election bananas? Guys like, you cannot ignore. It's more than an elephant in the room. It's just you do have to react. You know, I didn't think too much about what everybody else was doing, but we did know on a very visceral level what we needed to do and what we needed and how we react to things. And we are just angry, and I am just angry. And I felt like it was the correct point of view and the correct tone for our show.

[David Remnick]

What are your ambitions for the show?

[Interviewer]

It's pretty new. There's gotta be for everybody of this generation of late night a little bit of kind of the anxiety of influence with, you know, Jon Stewart living out there in Jersey taking care of animals and all that stuff. I mean, he's. He's the. Everybody comes from something. Stuart is related to a lot of the shows and a lot of the performers that we see now. What are your ambitions for it? What do you want it to be? How do you want it to be distinctive? Other than it's just coming through your voice? What's the plan?

[Samantha Bee]

My ambition for the show at the moment is to keep this feeling of pure enjoyment. Like I'm just not that person who goes for the glory of it. I really, really try to keep it really focused on the experience of doing the show and how much pleasure it gives me to work here with these people and how much pleasure it gives me to do the show. And I think that's true of. I think that's true of a lot of us.

[Interviewer]

What I can understand about you is.

[David Remnick]

That apparently you were as a kid, very shy.

[Samantha Bee]

Very. I'm still very shy.

[David Remnick]

So you picked this to do.

[Samantha Bee]

It's so common, though. I mean, that's the. I mean, that's the psychology of indie film.

[David Remnick]

What did you leap into?

[Interviewer]

How did you leap out of your shyness? What stage did you come come to?

[Samantha Bee]

Well, again, I'm still quite shy. I'm just excellent at masking that now.

[Interviewer]

Is it psychoanalysis?

[Samantha Bee]

I think so. You know, it's not something that it doesn't torture Me, but I am terrible at parties. I'm just the worst. The world's worst mingler.

[Interviewer]

So if you're shy, when you get out in front of an audience here and with the knowledge that many Yankee stadiums fulls of people are gonna watch you.

[Samantha Bee (Monologue Voice)]

I don't think about it.

[Samantha Bee]

I think about the audience. I definitely think about the audience. But I consider it to be kind of a. I'm such a hippie. Oh, my God. I do consider it to be a bit of a communal experience with the audience. Their energy and their desire to be there is something that is. Feeds my tender ego, but it does. You know, there is a back and forth. There's a give and take in that room.

[Interviewer]

You've been covering elections since, I think, 2004.

[Samantha Bee]

Yes. Mm.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[David Remnick]

How much more.

[Interviewer]

How to put this insane. Is this one. For the obvious reason, they're all.

[Samantha Bee]

I'm not gonna say that the Sarah Palin year wasn't.

[Interviewer]

That was good.

[Samantha Bee]

That was a pretty good.

[Interviewer]

But that didn't get that way until the summer and her nomination. This has been good from the get go.

[Samantha Bee]

This has been good from the get. This has been a really good.

[Interviewer]

I mean, if you like authoritarian demagogues.

[Samantha Bee]

And I do, who doesn't? We know this, but do you ever.

[Interviewer]

Get the complaints that we do in the, you know, the news business that somehow, by covering Trump and by covering him a lot, that we're somehow also responsible for the rise of Trump and the success of Trump.

[Samantha Bee]

How are you going to. I don't understand. I mean, you cannot. Many unserious people have run for president, and you have to cover them. They are running for president.

[Interviewer]

As to certain who's been remotely as unserious.

[Samantha Bee]

No one has been remotely as unserious.

[Interviewer]

Okay, but, you know, fact checking department.

[Samantha Bee]

Yeah. No, I'm not saying there's no. There's no real. There's no real equivalent here, but you have to cover them.

[Interviewer]

Does comedy have to be fair? Sometimes you'll go and you'll interview a person, and that person is gamely sitting there, and they're kind of excited to be on tv, let's face it. And you go to a black, gay Trump supporter and you interview him. And the standards. The goal is different from straight up journalism. Let's listen.

[Interviewee (Black, gay Trump supporter)]

We've had these disasters in neoconservatism and neoliberalism, and I think that he is an alternative to both of those paths and sort of like a return to. Not old style, like ethnic nationalism, but like a civic nationalism where it's not like, you know, like racist or anything like that.

[Samantha Bee]

What he says is not racist. You don't think. You separate. Okay, you did a beat. You did a big sigh. All right, he's not racist. He's not.

[Interviewee (Black, gay Trump supporter)]

I don't.

[Samantha Bee]

He's a.

[Interviewee (Black, gay Trump supporter)]

He's like. He speaks in an old way. He speaks in an old way?

[Samantha Bee]

Like an old racist.

[Interviewee (Black, gay Trump supporter)]

Well, I mean, in the. In the definition of, you know, where we have, like microaggressions in safe spaces, probably, yes.

[Samantha Bee (Monologue Voice)]

But is that okay for you, that.

[Samantha Bee]

He'S representing the country in an old timey racist way?

[Interviewee (Black, gay Trump supporter)]

If it is a negative, I would say it's like a minor negative.

[Samantha Bee (Monologue Voice)]

I'm so confused by you watching someone choke down a piece of their soul just to belong broke.

[Interviewer]

My fact checker is he ain't on the joke. Does he know what's going on?

[Samantha Bee]

Of course he knows.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

What?

[Samantha Bee]

Oh, my God. He completely knows what's going on. But there's no.

[Samantha Bee (Monologue Voice)]

I mean, what I.

[Samantha Bee]

There's no joke. We're just having a conversation. We're not putting anything over on him. That was a natural conversation that we had together. You know, one of the best things that we're doing at our show that we are doing differently. You know, when I worked at the Daily show, we had. There was such a structure to the field pieces and there was such an act that you would put on that you were a fake reporter. And we've just completely lost that artifice here. Now it's much more about me just having conversations. I don't.

[Interviewer]

Is that liberating?

[Samantha Bee]

It's completely liberating. I don't hide my point of view at all. We go into these conversations, we make agreements to talk to each other, and we really have conversations. I do not hide my point of view from people at all. I am completely free to speak my mind. And that conversation is great example of that.

[Interviewer]

Let me ask you this. I think we both know or we feel it in our hearts that this is not the last mass shooting that we're going to experience.

[Samantha Bee]

No, of course not.

[Interviewer]

And we're going to be here, God willing. It'll be a long time, but it probably won't.

[Samantha Bee]

I mean, when we did in our original first draft of the show for Monday, we definitely were like, this is the only mass shooting that we, you know, we tape our show at 5 o'.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

Clock.

[Samantha Bee]

So who knows what has happened between 5 o' clock and 11 o'? Clock? And that's.

[Interviewer]

Or 10:30, which is a horrifyingly real joke. But we'll be back.

[David Remnick]

What do you do then?

[Samantha Bee]

I mean, I hope that we do not have to cross that bridge ever again. I really do. I think we probably will. And that is the saddest thing that anyone could say. So I don't know. I guess we'll deal with it when we deal with it, but it's really not fun to try to put a comedy show together after something like that has happened. And we really deserve better. We really deserve better.

[Interviewer]

Samantha, thank you.

[Samantha Bee]

Thank you so much.

[David Remnick]

Samantha Bee, the host of Full Frontal on tbs.

[Katie Drummond]

What the hell is going on right now and why is it happening like this? At Wired? We're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are, too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun. I want a shark that that eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.

[Brian Johnson]

So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.

[Katie Drummond]

Week, we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times, meaning and context. True or false? You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point, as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False.

[Samantha Bee]

Tell me more.

[Katie Drummond]

Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

From. PRX.