Late-night-show comedian Samantha Bee routinely hits you like a wet fish across the face. We’ve come to expect it. Her monologues on her show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee are outrageous, alarming, hilarious, and ridiculously informative. It’s like Bee sucks in the world and lets loose with a giant but precisely calibrated exhale. That Bee, however, was in little evidence last Thursday night, November 9, at The Arlington Theatre. The comedian was interviewed onstage by writer and Santa Barbara Independent columnist Starshine Roshell, and Bee’s remarks — smart, reflective, thoughtful and unfailingly gracious — were more subdued than the four-alarm WTF fire drills we’ve come to expect.
Bee, famously, is the only woman currently to have her own late-night show. Roshell wondered why she wasn’t selected to replace Jon Stewart when he stepped down from The Daily Show two years ago. “I don’t know,” she said. “Next question.” Who makes her laugh? “Sarah Silverman.” She praised her squad of writers, highlighting how intensely researched her monologues are. When an episode on rape kits helped plug a loophole in Georgia law, Bee insisted the credit belonged to activists on the ground turning the soil long before she showed up to cover it.
She talked about meeting her husband, Jason Jones, while working on a stage production of Sailor Moon and falling in love despite the fact that he wore mirror sunglasses, a clear indication, she noted, that he “was a douchey guy.” Famous for her F-bombs on-screen, Bee said she makes a point not to swear in front of her kids, who are not allowed to watch the show. They wouldn’t want to even if they could, Bee said, “because we don’t know anything anyway.”