'I’ve gone full witch': the fire and fury of TV satirist Samantha Bee

Samantha Bee is recounting how she landed her first major job in TV on the seminal US late-night news parody, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. “They were having trouble finding a woman who they thought was funny,” she says – and she’s being deadly serious.

This was 2003, and Bee, then 34 years old, was part of a female sketch comedy troupe in her native Toronto. Their audiences sometimes barely reached double figures. “I was at the point of giving it all up; I was done with being impoverished,” she recalls. Then producers from The Daily Show arrived in the city to scope the Canadian comedy scene. “Even as I was auditioning for them, I thought it was ridiculous,” Bee admits. “Really? In all