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Contents
Cover Story
She Objects!
Samantha Bee is the late-
night host who can handle
this era, and it’s because she
knows what is—and what is
certainly not—worth her while
page 20
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vol. 61, no. 19 | 08.20.20
The Green Room
12 Walt Disney World settles its feud
with Equity over COVID-19 testing
14 This week’s roundup of who’s
casting what starring whom
15 Giancarlo Esposito discusses his
journey from stage to screen
Advice
17 NOTE FROM THE CD
Marketing yourself
18 #IGOTCAST
Tony Jackson
18 SECRET AGENT MAN
Choose the right school
Features
6 BACKSTAGE 5 WITH...
Seth Meyers
16 MEET THE MAKER
Don Roy King,
“Saturday Night Live” director
17 THE ESSENTIALISTS
Ashley Nicole Black, writer
19 IN THE ROOM WITH
Dixie Chassay and
Rose Wicksteed
26 THE CREAM OF THE CROP
Get to know the 2020 acting
Emmy nominees for lead and
supporting
40 ASK AN EXPERT
Clay Banks on the advantages and
disadvantages of incorporating
Casting
32 New York Tristate
34 California
37 National/Regional
Samantha Bee photographed by Jason Jones
on July 16 in the Hudson Valley, New York.
Cover designed by Ian Robinson.
 Samantha Bee is the late-night host who
can handle this era, and it’s because she knows
what is—and what is certainly not—worth her while.

By Casey Mink
Photographed by Jason Jones

YOU WOULDN’T BE ALONE IF EVERY

morning these last few months has felt a bit
like “Groundhog Day.” But the notion takes
on new meaning for Samantha Bee.
“The true story is that we have a ground-
hog in our backyard,” says Bee, speaking via
Zoom from what looks like a wood-paneled
cabin. “When all of this was starting, my hus-
band’s version of COVID panic was to grow
vegetables. He eventually grew this majestic,
towering broccoli. And then a groundhog
came and gnawed them down to little
stumps, and he was brokenhearted. So I want
to have the groundhog humanely trapped
and relocated to someone else’s backyard.”
She’s laughing as she explains the exas-
perating situation. Bee has made a career
out of finding humor in hysteria, from the 12 episodes. I was like, ‘Let’s just make it the does not win unless we start loving each
years she spent as a correspondent on “The most kick-ass six episodes. Let’s approach it other enough to fix our fucking problems.”
Daily Show with Jon Stewart” to her own like we’re going to kick the barn doors in and “I do think it has allowed us to process
news-based talk show, “Full Frontal with just attack, because that’s what’s needed.’ It things and be slightly useful in these
Samantha Bee,” which she kicked off in the was the right moment for a show like this.” moments, which is a good feeling,” she says
heat of the 2016 election. But TBS did not cancel the show after six of the show, whose creative team is nomi-
In many ways, Bee’s has been the seminal episodes, which left Bee with another prob- nated for four 2020 Emmy Awards: variety
late-night show for this era. Crudeness that lem: “We were like, ‘Oh, we have to do a lot talk series, writing for a variety series,
would have been unthinkable a decade ago more episodes now.’ I had to keep it up!” Now, short form nonfiction or reality series (for
is standard in the daily news cycle, and the in Season 5, Bee’s burn-it-down approach “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Presents:
paper of record has taken to printing phrases hasn’t waned as she tackles matters ranging Pandemic Video Diaries”), and short form
like “shithole countries” on its front page from child separation at the border to the variety series (for “Beeing at Home”). “It isn’t
because it’s directly quoting the president of rumored “pee tapes,” matching the mood of easy for anyone to process the world, but I
the United States. every moment. In one of her most-watched think it’s been helpful for us to have a point
“When ‘Full Frontal’ came along, we were segments to date (clocking 3.6 million of focus. And, of course, it’s a gift to have this
certainly on the cusp of a raucous—and YouTube views at the time of publishing), Bee platform. With every show, we’re trying to
such a dumb—political campaign. There opens the show the day after a mass shooting make the most of it while we can. It’s nice,
was promise in the air,” the host says. “The at a gay club in Orlando killed 49 people with each episode, to just make a statement
driving force behind doing the show was by rejecting congressional “thoughts and about where you are, like you’re planting a
that I thought I would get canceled after six prayers” with straight-to-camera fury: “Love flag on the right side of history.”

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 “The driving force
behind doing the
show was that I
thought I would get
canceled after six
episodes. I was like,
‘Let’s just make it
the most kick-ass
Though “Full Frontal” has been a balm for six episodes.’ ”
Bee over these last few years, and especially
these last few months—she and her team
have been producing new episodes remotely
since March, with Bee broadcasting from
her backyard—comedy itself has been Bee’s
savior for much longer. Born and raised in
Toronto, Canada, she didn’t come to per-
forming of any kind until college, when she
started studying acting. It piqued something
in her, though it wasn’t quite right.
“There were so many times where I
thought [I’d] be a very serious actor, because
I love drama. I was like, ‘One day, I’ll play
Lady Macbeth,’ ” she says, adopting a chin-up
posture. “And then every time I tried to do
something serious, people would laugh. I’m
not a very good dramatic actor. It’s OK. I
accept what the universe has told me now.” It
wasn’t until she began dating her now-hus-
band and frequent collaborator, Jason Jones,
whom she met while he was performing with
his sketch comedy team, that Bee realized
what was possible.
“I didn’t know you could want to do
comedy and just start doing it. Like, it just
didn’t compute for me,” she remembers. “I
didn’t particularly aspire to do comedy, even
though I think I was naturally comedic. It
wasn’t something I thought you could really
make a career of. So, when we started dating
and I observed him doing that, I was like, ‘Oh,
that’s very interesting.’ ” Comedy exploded Bee’s world creatively. “For me, it never worked to actually really
But even then, it didn’t just “happen.” Bee She first performed with a partner, pro- invest in getting a job,” she adds. “It only
had been buttering her bread with Canadian ducing their own shows with abandon. She worked when I was like, ‘I’m very busy right
children’s theater, at the time performing went on to co-found an all-female troupe, the now. What am I reading for? Fine, I’ll do it.’
a show for teens called “Out of the Closet,” Atomic Fireballs; she still works with some And they’d be like, ‘You’re hired!’ ”
which follows “a kid coming out to his of its members today. But comedy broke Part of Bee’s journey in giving both less of a
friends and [their] acceptance. It was really barriers for her in other realms, specifically damn and less of herself to an industry keen
great.” It was there that one of her co-stars commercials, which she needed to pay the to swallow aspirants whole was also about lean-
asked her to sub for a night in their comedy bills but was having trouble booking. Then, ing into, rather than against, the tides of type.
troupe. That was, as Oprah would put it, Bee’s thanks to her comedy endeavors, “not every In practice, this meant injecting her wardrobe
“aha moment.” audition meant everything to me.” with a selection of high-end casualwear.
“I walked out onto stage, and the light hit “Comedy saved me. I came to it late in life, “I realized pretty quickly that the way
me, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ Everything but it saved me because I cared about that so the room would see me, the way they just
connected for me,” she says. “I couldn’t wait much,” she says. “It’s tragic, in a way, that the looked at my body and face and thought of
to hear people’s laughter. It was a full mind- more you want a specific job, the further out me, [was] as a suburban mom in chinos and
body connection to this act of standing of reach it gets, because they can smell your a button-up shirt. So I went out and I got
onstage and doing jokes that I wrote. I can’t hunger in the room. It’s almost like you have some chinos,” she says. “It was very much not
really explain it, but I freaking loved it.” to have this weird, practiced indifference. who I was, but for the purposes of getting

BACKSTAGE 08.20.20 22 backstage.com

paid, I realized it would be good if I dressed
how they were all going to see me no matter
what I did. That was fruitful. It was so dumb.
It took me so long, but then I was like, ‘OK,
gotta go get coral shirts.’ ”
Realizing that the T-shirt she is currently
wearing is audition coral, she lights up and
pinches a bit of cloth near her shoulder.
“This is the audition color that gets you the
job. It’s not for everyone to bend to the will
of the universe and conform to how other
people see you,” she says, pausing for a
moment, “But I also truly just didn’t care,
because I had my other shit going on. I was
mentally healthy.”
When “The Daily Show” came along,
however, Bee couldn’t pretend not to care.
It had been her favorite show for years, but
she was also in the midst of giving up on
the biz-as-career, having chosen to keep
doing comedy while working full time at an
advertising agency. It was 2003. The story is
a familiar one: She yearned for stability to
pay her bills, “to not cry every time the phone
rang.” The “Daily Show” audition arrived at
just the right time. “I thought, ‘This is perfect,
because I won’t get the job. I love the show. I
know it backward and forward. I’ll train for
it like the Olympics, and then I’ll peace out of
the acting industry.’ ”
“Daily Show” producers were scouting
in Toronto for a woman correspondent and
were considering members of the famed
Second City company, which Bee was not in.
“Second City would never hire me—but my
agent was friends with the agent for all of
the Second City women! There weren’t that
many women, so they were like, ‘Can you just
send some of your female clients so we can
round out the day?’ ” she recalls. “Just some
sawdust around these women from Second
City, who will definitely get the job.”
BACKSTAGE 08.20.20
The audition was also on a Saturday.
“You’re like, ‘Is this a porno?’ ” she recalls. It
wasn’t, and Bee had something that day that
no one else did: a zealot’s knowledge of the
show. She was also present in a way that let
her relax into the material. “One of the [other
women auditioning] brought a collection of
crazy hats, like, ‘I’m gonna wow them with
my hats,’ ” she remembers. But Bee knew the
tone of the show in her bones—so, of course,
she got a callback a few weeks later, and was
then flown to New York for an in-studio test.
She was nervous, but prepared—she ate
fish the night before! Plus, she had another
secret weapon: “I wore my coral shirt! My
dependable Club Monaco coral shirt.” She
24
was hired. And though she may not have
had the Second City pedigree or a degree
from Harvard or, well, a penis, she thrived
there—eventually.
“It’s an unusual experience, or certainly
frightening, to be this girl from Canada who
just beat all these people for a job. And then
all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Come into this room—
here’s 20 Ivy League writers who’ve been
doing this for 10 years. Do you want to pitch
them some ideas?’ ” she says. “It took me a
long time to build trust among everyone.
Mainly, what I would do is travel to places the
more experienced correspondents refused to
go. They’d be like, ‘Hey, Stephen Colbert, do
you want to go to Sioux Falls, South Dakota?’
And he’d be like, ‘Fuck no. Send her.’ ”
Throughout her tenure, Bee was fine-tun-
ing her own editorial voice and learning
more each day about how to tell the stories
that were meaningful to her in a way only
she could. She and her husband—who joined
the show two years after she did and with
whom she shared an office—also started
pitching their own films and pilots, until one
of them, “The Detour,” got picked up to series
at TBS. The network offered Bee her own
show, too, which she built around a loose set
of guidelines.
“If I don’t really want to do the thing I’m
being tasked with, it’s never very good. I have
to really want to do it, or it needs to meet
certain criteria,” she says. “Is there a growth
experience? Do I love this? Why am I doing
this? What is the thing I’m doing here? I don’t
feel that way with everything I do, but I try to
feel that way with everything I do. That’s how
we try to build the show, so that it really comes
from a place of, ‘Oh, we have to do this.’ ”
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