Career beginnings

Bee started auditioning for acting roles in Toronto while working as a waitress.^[6] At age 26, Bee toured with a stage production of Sailor Moon where she played the titular role.^[6][8] Bee performed in Sailor Moon's "A" cast and future husband Jason Jones was a member of the "B" cast.^[6]

Bee was one of the four founding members of Toronto-based sketch comedy troupe The Atomic Fireballs.^[9] The Fireballs were all women. Demonstrating mutual support, the group would try to perform as many of each other's ideas as they could.^[10]

2003–2014 at The Daily Show

Bee became a correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on July 10, 2003.^[11] Bee was the sole female correspondent on The Daily Show from her debut in 2003 until Kristen Schaal joined the show in March 2008. She was The Daily Show's first non-US citizen correspondent.^[12] On that program, Bee demonstrated an ability to coax people into caricaturing themselves—particularly in segments like "Kill Drill", on hunters and fossil fuel executives claiming to be environmentalists;^[13] "They So Horny?",^[14] on the dearth of Asian men in U.S. pornography; "Tropical Repression", on Ed Heeney, a Florida politician running his campaign based on opposition to gay rights;^[15] "The Undecided", an over-the-top look at the undecided voters leading up to the 2004 US presidential elections; the "Samantha Bee's So You Want To Bee A..." report series, which humorously caricatured the way in which one can easily obtain a certain job, like becoming a 527 group; and a segment entitled "NILFs" ("News I'd Like to F#@k"), discussing the sexiness of news anchors: "CNN has the wholesome girl-next-door NILFs, the kind you can bring home to meet your mother. MSNBC has the dirty-over-30 NILFs. Fox has the filthy NILFs who will report anything. They're the Hustler of NILFs."^[16]

Bee had her first starring role in a feature film in 2004 with the Canadian independent film Ham & Cheese, co-written by her husband Jason Jones and starring Canadian comics Scott Thompson and Dave Foley.^[17] The film marked Bee's first starring role.^[18] She won a Canadian Comedy Award for "Pretty Funny Female Performance" for her role.^[18] Jones joined The Daily Show as a correspondent in 2005, two years after his wife.^[19][20] Jones became a freelance correspondent for the show while Bee reduced her workload during her pregnancy.^[20]

In December 2005, on The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly used a clip of Bee from The Daily Show as an example of "The War on Christmas", presenting it as having aired recently. The satirical clip featured Bee mentioning how Christmas was the only religious holiday that's also a federal holiday in the United States, with O'Reilly talking about "Secular Central...excuse me, Comedy Central".^[21][22] Jon Stewart responded on his show; inviting Bee out for a discussion, and unlike in the clip that aired on Factor, Bee was visibly eight months pregnant. Bee joked it was obvious that the footage O'Reilly showed was a year old (it originally aired in 2004) because she had different highlights in her hair, before stating that her water had just broken.^[23][18] Bee was recognized with a 2005 Canadian Comedy Award for Best Female TV Performance for her work on The Daily Show.^[24]

On January 20, 2008, Bee finished as the highest scoring celebrity in the CBC game show Test the Nation. She had a minor role in Episode 15, "Spy Something or Get Out", of Little Mosque on the Prairie. Bee also appeared in the 12th episode of Season 20 of Law & Order ("Blackmail", episode 445), which aired on January 15, 2010. She played a minor role in an episode of the HBO series Bored to Death. She appeared as herself on the "Madame President" episode of The Electric Company. Bee also did a guest voice role of a talk show hostess named Pam in the Season 2 finale of Bob's Burgers, in addition to providing the voice of Lyla Lolliberry for two episodes in Season 4 of Phineas and Ferb. She appeared on Sesame Street during Season 42 as Mother Goose. In 2009, Bee appeared in the original cast of Love, Loss, and What I Wore.^[25] That same year, she had a small role in the comedy Whatever Works, written and directed by Woody Allen.^[26]

Bee authored a book titled I Know I Am, But What Are You?,^[4] which was published in 2010.^[27] She became the longest-serving regular Daily Show correspondent after passing Stephen Colbert's record in 2011.^[3] The same year, Bee collaborated with her longtime friend Allana Harkin on the parenting blog "Eating Over the Sink" for the online magazine Babble.^[28] In 2012, she appeared in Ken Finkleman's series Good God as Shandy Sommers, a devoutly Christian cable news host. She has also played roles in the series Bounty Hunters and Game On. In 2014, Bee was a panellist on Canada Reads, the CBC's annual national book debate. She defended Rawi Hage's novel Cockroach.^[29] On October 7, 2014, in the absence of Jon Stewart, she co-hosted The Daily Show with Jones.^[9]

2015–2022: Full Frontal with Samantha Bee

In March 2015, it was announced that she would leave The Daily Show – after 12 years – to host her own satirical news show on TBS.^[30][31] Bee departed The Daily Show on April 30, 2015.^[32] Her new show, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, debuted on February 8, 2016.^[33] With the program's debut, Bee became the first woman to host a late-night satire show.^[10] Bee also tried to implement a hiring process which would give her show a more diverse staff than what is typical for a late night comedy show.^[10] The first season of Full Frontal generated critical acclaim^[34][35] and in November 2016, the show was renewed for a second season throughout 2017.^[36]

Bee is an executive producer of the TBS comedy series The Detour (2016–present), which she created with her husband, Jason Jones.^[37] One year into Bee's run on Full Frontal, Time named Bee one of the 100 most influential people in the world.^[38] On April 29, 2017, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee hosted "Not the White House Correspondents' Dinner" which aired on TBS the same evening.^[39] In July 2017, Bee's "Nasty Woman Shirt" campaign raised over $1 million for Planned Parenthood.^[40] In January 2018, TBS renewed Full Frontal for a third and fourth season, set to air through 2020. Bee's deal with Turner runs through 2022.^[41]

In 2018, Bee faced backlash on social media and from the White House for calling Ivanka Trump a "feckless cunt", while criticizing her stance as a mother regarding the immigration policy of Donald Trump. The comments were made in the context of highlighting the administration's actions on immigration and the separation of undocumented children from their parents. Critics on Twitter started a hashtag calling for a boycott of TBS network until Bee's show is canceled.^[42] The day after the segment aired, Bee apologized and "deeply [regretted]" the comment.^[43] Comedians Kathy Griffin, Michelle Wolf, Sarah Silverman, and Jon Stewart defended Bee, with Stewart suggesting much of the outrage over the joke was strategic rather than genuine.^[44] The show featured fewer national advertisements the following week.^[45] Bee began the episode with an apology to any women she had offended and lamenting that one bad word had overshadowed the policy of detaining illegal immigrant children which she had been criticizing.^[46][47]

In 2018, Bee formed a production company called Swimsuit Competition, focused on creating original content for television, aiming to work with underrepresented talent and those whose work has been underestimated in the past. The company signed a first-look deal with TBS. Full Frontal producer Kristen Everman was named head of development.^[48]

She appeared as Jillian on the revived The Kids in the Hall, released in May 2022.^[49]

On July 25, 2022, Bee's representatives announced that TBS had not renewed Full Frontal for a seventh season, and was officially canceled by TBS.^[50]

In 2023, Bee was named as the host of the 11th Canadian Screen Awards broadcast on April 16.^[51]

Film

Television