“Full Frontal” host Samantha Bee joined the Variety Streaming Room to discuss how she and her team have been working on her topical TBS comedy series during the pandemic.

While speaking to Variety’s Kate Aurthur, Bee recalled a moment when she got emotional thinking about the current state of the nation. She contemplated whether it was the right call to film a comedy show while “people are dying” and as the world remained on lockdown.

“I’ve never really wrestled so much philosophically with the idea of ‘is now the time to do a comedy show?'” said Bee. “I’ve never really thought that it wasn’t possible to make a show in a moment. But this time I did take a pause and think, ‘Is now a time for this show? Should we be doing a show right now?’ Ultimately, it’s all that we know how to do, and this is how we express our own frustrations or our own feelings in this moment. So I overrode that.”

“But for the first time really ever in the history of the show, I thought, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t.’ Anyway, we did. I’m glad that we are,” she added.

As far as returning to a studio audience, Bee says that will not be happening for “a great while.”

“I’d really much rather have our audience feel safe and me feel safe and our crew keep everybody healthy and not have an audience,” she said.

Watch the full interview with Samantha Bee above, which kicks off with the first episode of the “Full Frontal” digital series, “Pandemic Video Diaries.”

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