If you’re one of those people who loves watchingKeanu Reevesget puppy revenge with a whole lot of guns, but is horrified by real-life reports of mass shootings, know thatSamantha Beegets it. And that’s why the host ofFull Frontalis devoting a special episode Wednesday, May 12 to taking on the conversation — the societal attitudes which celebrate guns, and the political institutions which make it difficult for Americans to do something about the issues.
Since 2016, Bee has been using her platform on TBS to take on key issues of the day, but beyond that, she wants to use the show to explore these topics on a personal level. In fact, when you talk to her about it, the whole show seems like a deeply personal experience for her.
In this one-on-one interview, Bee explains whyFull Frontal’s pandemic-era shift to an audience-less show is going to be a permanent one, why it was so important to her to take on the question of gun violence, and why you’ve never seen her make a cameo in TV shows or films as herself, reporting on a fictional event. (And she did it all while making banana muffins for her kids.)
Collider: So, it’s been really fascinating to see how different shows have dealt with shooting in a pandemic and trying to figure out ways to do it safely. How are you feeling about it right now, from your perspective? You’re back in the studio, but no audiences at this point, right?
SAMANTHA BEE: Yeah. We’re back in the studio, but we’re back in a different studio actually. So, we have changed studios to accommodate this change of lifestyle. So, we’re permanently in a no-audience facility now. So, we completely downsized our … We shared a space with a lot of other shows, and that felt unsustainable to me. And I wanted to really long term pandemic-proof the show.
So, our operation is much smaller on the ground now. And we can basically run a studio with 10 to 12 people in the building and about six people in the actual studio space, and we’re using remote cameras and all of that stuff. And that feels like a really permanent change for us. That has been great. It doesn’t bother any of us. We’re quite happy keeping it the way it is, because we didn’t have control over who came and went in our previous space. We needed a lot more crew members. And so, this is a much tighter, smaller operation and it’s working really well for us.
Why do you think this will be permanent?
BEE: Well, I think that I learned or we all learned that things are very unpredictable. Obviously in the pandemic, the one thing that I really wanted to do was create continuity for the staff. There’s nothing more scary than feeling like you might not have a job or like, “Will your job go away for a while?” So many people experienced that and I find that personally terrifying.
And so, one of my goals was to create consistency in the lives of the people who work at the show, because I really deeply care about them and I feel responsible for them. And so, making the show in a different way was my mission. And now, because I just feel like anything can change at any time, I thought there’s no reason to not make this a permanent change. We all miss each other, but there’s no reason for us to have to gather all together on show day the way that we used to.
Everything looks different now. These processes are really working for us. Why not codify them? Why not? Why not? Anything that makes it possible to keep the show chugging along is what I endeavor to do.
On an aesthetic and a production level, I imagine not having the live audience is probably is the biggest thing to cope with. What has that aspect been like for you?
BEE: Yeah. I miss the audience. There’s no question. I really do because there’s a lot of, “Well, it’s great to get that feedback.” We have an amazing audience. They’re very dedicated and they really show up for you. And they’re so engaged in the process. I did like that kind of communal experience of building the show with them present. We would talk to each other, they would get this inside baseball of how the show comes together.
And I was really did try to make the live experience of the show as fun as I possibly could for them, and to make them feel like they were a part of it because they really are a part of it. In fact, the way that they reacted to things dictated the energy of the show to a very large degree. So, I do miss that and I do miss them.
But we don’t need an audience to make the show. I think that’s really been made really clear. I don’t need the sound of other people’s applause to feel like I’m doing a good job or to feel the show is good. I’m not that needy. This just feels like a really low key, really sustainable way for us to do the show. So, this is what it is now. Hopefully, in six months from now, we won’t be talking about the pandemic with every second breath. But who knows? Who knows?
Indeed. I imagine it’s a more intimate feel on set. Do you feel like that helps you when it comes to tackling some pretty intense topics?
BEE: No, not really. If anything, that’s the part that is the hardest, is doing those intense topics with not many people around because when doing it in front of an audience, you could feel their energy, you could feel them listening. That was really palpable and that would really help me. And it’s a little harder for me to gauge. It’s a little harder for me to kind of assess my own energy level with no one around.
So, that has been a learning curve for me, for sure. I had to make them play music in between things, so that it just didn’t go too inside my own head. I don’t need the feedback, but it is helpful. It makes it more obvious how things are going.
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It makes a lot of sense, but I’m glad that you’ve figured out ways to work around it.
BEE: Yeah. I think in the future, because we’re just trying to figure it out as we go, just like anybody else, I’m sure that we’ll start doing things like more live events or we’ll do something outside that we can invite audience members to. We’ll do things in a different way. It just won’t be in the original space that we shot the show in. And it’s pretty seamless. We are using the same set, so it’s not so obvious that we’re in a completely different space.
So, you have a special episode on gun violence coming up, and I’m very interested in seeing it — because candidly, I have this incredible problem where I genuinely do not like guns and I do not think it’s a good thing that people can buy incredibly deadly guns so easily. But also, I cannot stop watchingJohn Wickmovies.
BEE: You’re just describing me. I know exactly what you’re saying. And it’s such an inner conflict. I loveJohn Wickmovies, and also I can’t believe that people can buy guns. And I do understand that that’s not going to change. And our half hour comedy special is not going to change that. But I feel so overwhelmed by the issue. I feel so overwhelmed all the time.
The moment I start thinking about the gun issue and issues of gun violence, I am immediately sucked into a vortex of despair and anger and confusion and vexation, and I can’t believe that you can just walk into a store and buy a weapon that can kill a maximum amount of people in 10 seconds. All of this is so unfathomable to me. And so, I really wanted to do the special to un-overwhelm myself a little bit.
I know that things are changing on the ground. I know that progress is being made, even though you’re able to’t necessarily always feel it. And I wanted to hear that. I needed to hear that, to stay in the game. There’s so much that can be done, but you have to be thinking about it all the time. Not just when individual crises flare up, not just when headlines are big. It’s such a huge, huge problem. It behooves us to think about it all the time, but that’s really hard to do. That’s really hard to do. Impossible.
It feels like one of those things where… I mean, you look at other countries and you see that they have stricter laws regarding guns, and thus fewer people get killed with guns. And so, it feels simple on that level. But then you have to contend with America being America.
BEE: Of course. Yeah, that’s the complexity of it. We’re just trying to unwind this ball of complexity in the only way that we really can, which is to somehow frame it within the context of a comedy special.
In the case of this special, was there a key point of inspiration that led to taking this on?
BEE: Well, I think when we began to conceive this special, we had just come off a series of obviously alarming mass shootings. It was day after day for a couple of weeks, it felt like. And so, as a response to that — it just felt like we certainly tackled on violence on the show before, but we never really gave it a full episode.
It felt like it was time to do that. It’s so cyclical how much attention we pay to shootings because the headlines are so big and so dire. But the truth is that the underlying levels of gun violence — the numbers are incredible. The numbers are incredible on a daily basis. What we’re doing is obviously completely inadequate to the scale of the problem, but because my name is on the show, I get to explore my own desires and curiosities.
And I really personally felt really overwhelmed by the issue. And I was like, I know that the gun lobby now is not as powerful as it used to be. And I want to know why, and I want to know what I can personally do, because I don’t think I’m doing enough. It’s such a huge issue. And the issues are myriad, and they’re so difficult to talk about and think about, and I just wanted to end this special with a list of three things I could do every day that would move this issue forward.
Also, actually another thing that really put this whole special in motion, was just thinking about the midterm [elections]. That is an unsexy thing for me to say to you right now, and I apologize for that. But the midterms are about 18 months away, and you never know what’s going to happen. There can be terrifying turnover.
It feels to me like we have such a narrow window of opportunity to make some pretty big changes. And if we don’t do that, then what are we doing? If we can’t make change happen in these once-in-a-decade conditions, then I guess we’ll never do anything. The vast majority of Americans want reform in this space. So, there is a disconnect between what we seem to want and what our leaders are giving us.
We are just asking for help. We are just asking for something. Please. Somebody do one thing, please. Please, buddy, do one thing. Do two things. Do 10 things, but start with one.
To wrap things up, I’m curious — there’s that trope in movies and TV shows where you have the montage of talk show hosts making cameos, reacting to the fictional news that’s just happened in the world. And I’m curious from your perspective, how much do you want to be a part of those sequences?
BEE: Oh. I actually usually turn those down. I don’t do those. I don’t know why I haven’t done one. This is so crazy. This is going to sound so dumb to you. I have a kind of a personal rule against that. I just really don’t want to do it. I don’t like it when I see … It’s different for late-night people, and everybody can do what they want to do, but I’ve never wanted to do anything like that.
I think it’s particularly weird when actual news people do it, when they appear in an earthquake movie and they’re like, “San Francisco just slid into the sea,” and then they’re just reporting on things that are fictional in a fictional movie. It drives me crazy. It actually drives me crazy. So, I have been asked to do it and I have said no. It’s a personal quirk. I can’t explain it.
It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t feel that I am a newsmaker in any way or that I have a responsibility to say things that are only true, because we make so many dumb jokes on the show and that will never change. So, I’m not really sure why it bumps me so much.
Honestly, I’m just glad that you’re getting the offers — that people are asking you to do them.
BEE: Well, occasionally. Not that much. It has happened. Not as much as the others, that is for sure.
But at the same time, it totally makes sense. Do you feel like the host ofFull Frontalis a character?
BEE: No. I’m probably not separated enough from the Sam BeeFull Frontalto make that extra fictional leap. I don’t think I’m all that separated. This is probably not healthy at all. Sam Bee, right now, is baking banana muffins and talking to you. A normal mom walking around the city, getting my kids from school — if, God willing, they’re physically in school that day. But there’s not that much distance. I’m very closely connected to the material, and that’s the way I like it. I don’t put things on the air that I don’t stand beside, that I don’t stand behind with my full body. It’s just not the kind of show that I want to make.
I respect that.
BEE: Oh, thank you. It’s interesting. I never really think about these things. So, you’re asking me great questions and I’m kind of working it out for you real time, because I’m like, “Yeah, that is kind of crazy. What in the world?” It doesn’t happen often that I articulate these things, even for myself. So, I appreciate the opportunity. It’s good for me.
Quite sincerely, anytime. I’m pleased as punch to be able to do this. But I want you to have time to finish your muffins.
BEE: Oh, they’re in the oven. They’re done. They’re cooking. All is well. All is well with the world. If I don’t have these muffins for my kids every day of the week, it is like full revolt. It’s very important for me to keep this consistent.
Full Frontal with Samantha Beeairs Wednesdays at 10:30 PM ET on TBS.
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