Tribeca Taps Samantha Bee for ‘Full Frontal’ Talk

Nine episodes into her new TBS show Full Frontal, Samantha Bee has quickly risen to the top of the late night game. In aptitude, her only rival may be HBO’s John Oliver with Last Week Tonight. Even before the show aired, the organizers of the Tribeca Film Festival recruited Bee and her showrunner Jo Miller to discuss her show with them, fully trusting Bee’s abilities to produce an excellent television program. Bee’s new network home also held the same confidence in her. After years of being a correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Bee proved her worthiness and value as a comedian and as a political satirist. At the Tribeca talk, Bee said TBS, who had already been working with her husband Jason Jones, “just trusted us because we had already been working with them. They put a lot of faith in Jason and they put a lot of faith in me. I’m very thankful for them.”

The attitude of Full Frontal is apparent right from the intro where Peaches’ “Boys Want to Be Her” plays over the credits. Bee knew right away she wanted Peaches, “almost from the moment of knowing we were gonna be doing a show it came to me in a moment where I went, ‘Well, Peaches will do the song.’ Because, Peaches.” before reaching out to Peaches, another edgy Canadian female, via Twitter. Peaches, ever so generously provided additional cues, cuts and backing bits for the show to supplement her song.

Bee also discussed voting in the New York State primary earlier in the day (“It felt good to me”), making a passing joke about voting for Cruz, and admitting “I made them give me a sticker!” — she is now a U.S. citizen.

At one point, Bee and Miller talked about a hotline where people could call and leave messages for the show (the number had something that used “trollz” as a numeric?). They receive a lot of graphic rape threats via the number unfortunately, so moderator Stacey Wilson Hunt promised the Tribeca audience would only call in with kind words. Bee also mentioned one male caller used the term “clamsplaining”, a new word to me which I immediately presumed was a female variation of mansplaining but swapping in the crude slang for female genitalia. Fortunately, Bee proved my assumption correct as she demonstrated how one might clamsplain.

Another time, Miller and Bee discussed the reactions a piece they did on a rape kit testing bill in Georgia that was being obstructed. According to Miller, “at the 11th hour, after our piece ran, [the bill] got a lot of attention and they managed to get it passed by attaching it to another bill — a legislator sacrificed her part of a bill that had to do with background checks for guns and they put in the rape kit in a way that it wouldn’t go through committee. So it got passed at like, one till midnight and the supporters were tweeting at us and letting us know.”

Fortunately, threats and negativity will not stop the show from continuing to have a positive impact. TBS extended their order for episodes from 13 to 39 — so we’ll be getting a lot more Full Frontal from Bee throughout the year and into the election. She looked forward to the prospect of attending conventions, “staffers fully intend to take Full Frontal to the coming political conventions” but because they are late to arrive on the scene their accommodations will be less thrilling. “We are going to be living in a Winnebago in a Walmart parking lot,” joked Bee.