Don’t Call Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Liberal – Vanity Fair

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Jo Miller doesnt need an Emmyshes already got three, thanks to her work on TV Academy darling The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Now an executive producer for Stewart descendant Samantha Bee's TBS series Full Frontal, Miller says shed love for her staff to snag an Emmy nod when nominations are revealed July 13not to mention a statuette. For her, though, its just not a big deal.

I honestly don't care; I really don't, she says in a phone interview. I get the lettersthey mean everything to me. They keep me getting up in the morningthe things I hear from the fans who love [the show], and who get it, and the articles written in college papers by college kids who find the show important and meaningful.

Its pretty much the answer youd expect a creative type to give when asked about awardsbut Miller sounds like she really means it. Still, Full Frontals omission from last years Emmy variety talk series category was particularly egregious. Many wondered why the buzzy new show got sidelined in favor of a nod toward Jerry Seinfelds long-running Comedians in Cars Getting Coffeewhich felt less topical than Sam Bee, to say the least.

Maybe Emmy voters, most of whom live in Los Angeles, had not yet caught wind of the New York-based newcomer; Full Frontal does, after all, air just once a week on a network that, at the time of the show's launch, was just dipping a toe into original programming. And before the show moved from Monday to Wednesday nights, Bee had just one days worth of headlines to distinguish her coverage from that of another Daily Show veteran: John Oliver, whose show airs on Sundays.

Theres one more possibilityone that, during last year's nomination season, seemed pretty hard to ignore. Bee is late nights only female host. Whether that factored into the snub or not, the optics werent great.

Whatever the reason that Full Frontal got overlooked in 2016, most comedy fans outside the TV Academy recognized that it was a shame. Bees weekly episodes offer a distinct voice within late nights increasing bevy of comedians and monologues. Her trademark rage and fearless candor are singular, and Bee can often be found chasing stories that others neglect to cover both light-hearted ones, like Ivanka Trumps book, and serious ones, like the current administrations apparent intent to destroy the environment. When asked what she thinks the series has brought to the late night landscape, Miller says, When we burst onto the scene back in February [of 2016], we said exactly what we thought. We never pulled punches, ever. And we never focus-grouped in our head and worried who'd like it, and who wouldn't like it, and how it would land, and who it would offend.

Ill leave it up to other people to say whether that influenced the other shows to do the same and maybe tip their rage and pain a little more than they might have before, Miller adds. But we were doing it forwhatlike nine months before the election? And I think it was appropriate then. Everyone knows it's appropriate now.

Miller wrote for The Daily Show from 2009 right up until Stewart's last episode in 2015. The prevailing wisdom there, she says, was, you have to keep your foot on the neck of the story, or it will eat you. Bees segments, which leave nothing on the tableand nothing unsaidclearly abide by that mantra as well.

Compared with other late-night audiences, especially on broadcast networks, Full Frontals viewership is relatively smallbut its pieces make an outsize impact. Bee beat Stephen Colbert to the punch by going to Russia first, for a fascinating set of interviews with pro-Trump Russian trolls. (Oliver went to Russia before either of them, but his trip was to interview Edward Snowden in 2015, and occurred before any election-related hacking came to light.) When plans for the traditional White House Correspondents Dinner started to fall apart after Trump was elected, it was Bee who jumped on the opportunity to provide some counter-programmingrounding up a sizable collection of celebrities, including Will Ferrell, who showed up in character as George W. Bush, to back her up at her Not the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

For the record, Miller says she never wishes that Full Frontal were a daily show. She would give her "left tit for a few more minutes of air time, but not a full hour: No one wants to watch an hour of comedy. Theres S.N.L., but you have musical guests and its variety. . . It seems like 30 minutes is the right length.

While Bee was often, reductively, labeled late-nights resident female host when the show launched, Miller thinks descriptions of the series have grown more nuanced since. (And Bees status as late-nights lone woman really is important: after all, its what makes her authoritative on subjects that male comedians cant hit in the same way.) The terms in which she's described by people who hate us are highly gendereddisturbingly misogynist. That is always going to be their take, she adds.

Miller saves her ire for another label. What annoys me more is that people who don't watch the show regularly call us liberal, she says. Which, if you watch the show, is not accurate. We are passionate about feminism, and civil rights, and justice, and black lives, and women's livesbut we're radical centrists. And were not party affiliated. I think youll find a lot of our values reflect left of center rather than right of center, but to characterize us as partisan or liberal is lazy and its just something that people do who dont watch the show. And I think its also galvanized by the right wing trolls who do hate us, and want a clickbait narrative. Thats more annoying than noticing Sam has a vagina. Because she actually does have a vagina.

The assumption of bias bothers her. That is annoying. Its a lazy way to dismiss somebodyto say, Oh, this is just a liberal spin. We have an office full of trained journalists here, and academics, who are very serious about following the truth wherever it leads us. I mentioned David Frum in previous interviewsmy opinions seem to be most closely aligned with his these days, and Sams a fan, too. So I think the fact that we are left of center just reflects where center has moved to these days. . . Black people shouldnt be shot for sitting in their cars should not be a partisan position.

On issues like gun control and reproductive rights, Miller says that Bee also comes down on the leftbut, she emphasized, none of our takes are automatic, and we never check to see who else espouses them.

The show has plenty of detractors on the left, as well as the right, Miller notes, perhaps because Bee has mocked Bernie Sanders diehards on multiple occasions. Even the shows fans dont agree with it 100 percent of the time, according to Millerwhich is why she doesnt believe that late night is the liberal echo chamber its sometimes claimed to be.

Being left of center, I guess, on the spectrum, helps with thatbecause in my experience, people who are right of center are able to laugh at things that shun their dogma a little more easily than people, at least from the far left, Miller said. When we went to the Republican convention, delegates were coming onto the bus and saying that they're fans. My family has Hannity on at any moment when my shows not on; they love the show. My neighbors upstate in a very red county are fans. Because they just think it's funny. They dont always agree with everything. I cant really speak for the dogmatic left. I don't think an enjoyment of humor is maybe the dominant thing there. . . We're Satan for sitting down with Glenn Beck.

Seth Meyers

John McEnroe and Diane von Furstenberg

Claire Bernard

Jimmy Buffett

Kelly Meyer, Carey Lowell, and Jean Pigozzi

Peggy and Mickey Drexler

Rhea Suh and Hasan Minhaj

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Seth Meyers

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

John McEnroe and Diane von Furstenberg

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

Claire Bernard

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

Jimmy Buffett

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

Cocktail service at the after-party.

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

Andy and Betsy Kenny Lack and Imran Khan

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

Robyn Todd Steinberg and David Steinberg

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

Harvey Weinstein and Lloyd Blankfein

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

A box of popcorn was placed at each seat ahead of the performance.

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

John Oliver

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

Mike Birbiglia

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

A scene from the after-party, also held at 583 Park Avenue.

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

Leslie Moonves, Tom Freston, and Bryant Gumbel

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

Jane Buffett

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

David Zaslav, Len Blavatnik, and Richard Plepler

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

Ronald O. Perelman

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

George Lopez

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

Kelly Meyer, Carey Lowell, and Jean Pigozzi

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

Peggy and Mickey Drexler

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

Rhea Suh and Hasan Minhaj

Photograph by Hannah Thomson.

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Don't Call Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Liberal - Vanity Fair