Liberal former late night host slams 'SNL' creator for telling cast not to be like her in new book
Former TBS late night host and far-left comedian Samantha Bee slammed "Saturday Night Live" creator Lorne Michaels for calling her too political in an upcoming biography.
According to the book "Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live," the legendary head of "SNL" said that Bee's style of comedy is too "strident" and political for his show, prompting the ex-"Full Frontal" host to hit him back.
"I mean, literally — imagine calling anyone strident when you have built a career out of elevating the loudest guy in the room," Bee said during a recent episode of "The Daily Beast Podcast."
The spat comes just ahead of the legendary NBC sketch series' 50th anniversary episode that airs this Sunday.
The book, written by author Susan Morrison, gives an account of Lorne trying to explain to his cast in 2016, two weeks before then-candidate Donald Trump was elected to the presidency for the first time, that he wanted the show to stay "non-partisan" and used Bee as a way to make his point.
Morrison's book recounted how Lorne was trying to calm his writers, cast, and viewers after they were up in arms over Trump hosting the show in 2015.
The memoir quotes Michaels, stating, "It's the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan. We have our biases, we have our people we like better than others, but you can't be Samantha Bee."
Reportedly, the book follows Michaels' quote by clarifying that he "meant one-sided and strident" about the TBS host, whose late-night show, "Full Frontal," was canceled on the cable network in 2022.
In her interview with "The Daily Beast Podcast," Bee owned the criticism, stating, "I get referenced in the book as being someone that [Michaels] does not want to emulate in any way. I concede the point. He's right. I am one-sided. And I am strident, and proudly so."
Still, the former host praised the long-running show that she watched as a kid. "As a young kid, it felt like an illicit pleasure. It's just all in my consciousness and I love it. I love the performers, I love the writers, I love the writing."
Bee had been one of cable television's loudest left-wing voices in recent years until her show ended. In one of the last episodes of "Full Frontal," Bee raged against the leaked Court draft opinion suggesting the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision could be overturned.
"While the opinion isn't official yet, it's basically a trailer for how f------ horrible life is to become for a lot of people," she said, elsewhere adding that the pending ruling, which later overturned Roe v. Wade, would cause women "to die."
Bee also got into hot water in May 2018 when she called Ivanka Trump a "feckless c---."
She and the network were forced to apologize after losing viewers and several of the program's advertisers.
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