Samantha Bee covers the new issue of The Hollywood Reporter. First off, it’s a lovely cover and shoot. I’m glad that THR didn’t default to making Bee do a jokey editorial because do you get it, she’s FUNNY! Like funny women can’t be hot and vice versa. They let her be hot/pretty. Anyway, Bee covers THR because her TBS show Full Frontal is going like gangbusters and because she’s hosting the Not the White House Correspondents Dinner this weekend. That’s right, the WHCD snuck up on me. I forgot it was this weekend. This year’s WHCD will be the first dinner in 36 years without an appearance from the sitting president. Emperor Baby Fists hates the free press and so he canceled on the WHCD months ago. Bee will be hosting an alternative for the media: an event to roast Easy D. I’m sure there will be cocktails. Bee talked about all of this and more with Lena Dunham (eyeroll) – you can read the full piece here. Some highlights:

Bee on checking out Twitter following the election: “I really felt a geyser of hatred was the day after the election — actually, the night of the election. I checked my Twitter mentions, and it was one of the last times I’ve checked it. I just went off. I just went dark…. actually my assistant took my phone from me, and she changed my passwords on me, which I really appreciate because it was unbelievable. It was a torrent of hatred. That night, at about 10 o’clock, I could not believe what I was seeing in my mentions. I could not believe it. And the days following the election were very hard. There were a million reasons why it was difficult, and it’s been really difficult ever since. That’s when I really felt like, “Oh, life has changed here. I don’t know what’s going to happen now. Everything is on the table. The whole world feels very unpredictable.” I will not say that that has changed.

The origin of Not the White House Correspondents Dinner: “Well, really, right after the election, we were broken. It was very emotional, especially at the beginning… So we were sitting around in my office. It was me and Jo and producer Alison Camillo, and we were just joking, and Newt Gingrich had [said] something really stupid that day like, “Why do we even need a White House press corps?” Our minds wandered to the [White House Correspondents’] Dinner. And we were like, “I wonder if it’s even going to happen. Would [Trump] even show up for it? He’s marginalizing people. He’s going to abolish the White House press corps, perhaps. Who even knows?” And we were like, “I don’t think the dinner’s going to happen. Why don’t we have a dinner just to make sure something happens on the night?”

How people can use their voices in the next four years: “I have no idea… I really don’t know. Personally just as a private, personal citizen, I’m really hoping for some stability. I would love to feel confident that we’re not going to war. I don’t know what the future holds at all. I am so sorry to not have any answers for you.

She would have given a President Hillary Clinton a hard time: “We looked forward to holding President Hillary Clinton’s feet to the fire. We were so excited about that. We thought, “We’ll be able to tell a diverse range of stories. This will be so interesting. We’re not going to let up on her. We want her to be president.” But we don’t see anyone as the messiah. It’s not like she wouldn’t have failures and make terrible mistakes and do things we wouldn’t like.

Being Canadian & American: “It does lend a certain perspective. I was not a citizen until a couple of years ago. Our children are American-born. So we were in it but not of it for a really long time, working at The Daily Show, and I didn’t like that feeling, actually. I felt like if I was going to comment on a place, I should take ownership of it and invest in it. And so getting my citizenship was extremely important. I’ve kept dual citizenship. And I got dual citizenship for my kids. But it was very significant for me. I cried when they played the [Lee Greenwood] song. I was weepy all day and really, really excited. So I feel like if I’m going to live here and I’m going to pay all those taxes here, I really want to be in it. Like, I just feel like I’m in the thick of it, just in the dirt. My whole family lives in Canada still.

[From THR]

I like everything Bee says here. There’s no talking around things and she’s not sugarcoating anything. The worst part of the interview was Lena Dunham, actually. I guess I understand why Dunham gets these assignments but she kept interrupting Bee to talk about herself and what she’s going through and how everyone hates her because of her politics too. Lena Dunham = exhausting. Samantha Bee = Canadian-American treasure.

Photos courtesy of THR.