Samantha Bee Claps Back at Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels caught a lot of flak for booking Donald Trump as a Saturday Night Live host in 2015 — even from his own comics — but he’s never been particularly apologetic about it. Even as Trump was about to win his first election in 2016, Michaels had little patience for cast members who decried the decision. “It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan,” Michaels told Susan Morrison, quoted in her new book Lorne via The Daily Beast. “We have our biases, we have our people we like better than others, but you can’t be Samantha Bee.”
What the heck did Michaels mean by that? Morrison clarified that “being Samantha Bee” translated to delivering comedy that was “one-sided and strident,” at least in Michaels’ world.
Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live doesn’t hit bookstores until Tuesday but it’s easy to understand why Bee would be blindsided by the diss. “It’s never exciting to be referenced in a negative way in someone else’s biography that’s gonna do really well,” Bee explained on The Daily Beast Podcast.
This article not your thing? Try these...
The remark had to sting considering Bee, like many comedians, grew up as a fan of SNL. “It was like such a delicious treat to sneak down to the basement and watch SNL as a young kid. It felt like an illicit pleasure,” she said. “So it’s just always in my consciousness. And I love it and I love the performers and I love the writers. I love the writing. I don’t watch it every week, but I certainly have admired it through the years.”
Michaels’ insults strike Bee as an example of the pot calling the kettle black. “I mean, literally,” she said, “imagine calling anyone strident when you have built a career out of elevating the loudest guy in the room.”
Look on the bright side, said Bee’s co-host, Joanna Coles. Wasn’t it fantastic for Bee to be held up as an example of a comedian with strong opinions?
“He’s right,” Bee said defiantly. “I am one-sided, and I am strident and proudly so.” You don’t make Time’s list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World for standing by silently while Lorne Michaels books whoever will set social media on fire this week.
So Bee has decided to own the slight, even opening the Daily Beast podcast by adopting a new professional identity: “I’m Samantha Bee, the Chief Content Officer of being one-sided and strident.”