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Meet Samantha Bee: the woman who’s changing late-night television
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Right now, every late-night show on television is hosted by a man — except for one.
Samantha Bee is shaking up the late-night world with her own weekly show, “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee,” which premiered Monday on TBS.
A 12-year veteran of “The Daily Show,” Bee’s ready to take her well-honed comedy skills into the spotlight. She’s tackling topical material in a way that’ll remind many longtime “Daily Show” fans of Jon Stewart’s heyday on Comedy Central.
Keep reading to learn more about how Bee went from a Canadian sketch-comedy troupe to a big name in late night.
Samantha Bee is a 46-year-old comedian who is the only woman currently hosting a late-night television show.
She was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Growing up, Bee split time living in divorced parents’ houses, as well as with her grandmother. “I never knew who I was,” Bee told NPR of her unorthodox childhood. “I was a different person in everybody’s home.”
Source: NPR
Her childhood later served as inspiration for her 2010 memoir “I Know I Am, but What Are You?”
After graduating from the University of Ottawa, Bee cofounded an all-woman sketch-comedy troupe The Atomic Fireballs, which helped launch her career in comedy.
“It was a great training ground, because we worked for free for so long that we learned to please ourselves and almost nobody else,” Bee told Entertainment Weekly. “That was really good training for ‘The Daily Show.’”
Source: EW
In July 2003, she joined “The Daily Show” as a correspondent. She was the first non-US citizen to hold this title.
Bee was on the Comedy Central show for the next 12 years, making her the series’ longest-running correspondent.
She became known for tackling tough topics with her signature, deadpan humor.
You can watch this entire clip here.
Bee met her husband, Jason Jones, doing children’s theater in the late 1990s. Jones also joined “The Daily Show” as a correspondent in 2005.
Source: Cracked
The couple have three children and regularly appeared in scenes together over Bee’s 12 years on the show.
Some of Bee’s favorite times on “The Daily Show” were spent covering the presidential nominating conventions.
“We’re always in big arenas with thousands of people. It’s electric,” Bee told The New York Times in 2010. “You have this huge selection of people to talk to.”
Source: The New York Times
Bee left “The Daily Show” in April 2015 to pursue her own show, “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee,” which premiered February 8 on TBS. She says the network approached her after she wasn’t offered Stewart’s hosting position. (She and Jason Jones are also working on an upcoming sitcom, “The Detour,” for TBS.)
Source: The New York Times
“We want to take issues that don’t receive enough attention and stab them with the hot poker of comedy,” Bee told TV Guide of what to expect on the new show.
Source: TV Guide
Bee knows she’s entering into a world that is heavily male-dominated, but it doesn’t seem to phase her. Check out her edited version of Vanity Fair’s controversial, and male-only, “Titans of late-night television” cover from October 2015.
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While she’s not the first woman to headline a late-night comedy show, Bee is the only female late-night host on the air at this moment.
“When I wake up panicking at 3 in the morning, it’s because I’m thinking about how best to do the show, not worrying about those external forces,” Bee said of the pressures of being the only female late-night host.
Source: The New York Times
In her first episode of “Full Frontal,” the host took on the Democratic and Republican presidential nomination races with foul-mouthed yet intelligent frankness. She said Ted Cruz has “stage-four cancer of the personality.”
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Source: Business Insider
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