Samantha Bee and Jane Pauley Are Breaking the News
“Jane Pauley! You’re all in leather,” said Samantha Bee, as Ms. Pauley walked into the private dining room at Asiate restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental hotel in New York. And she was: in a sleek, black leather suit.
“My husband calls it my biker-chick outfit,” Ms. Pauley said, surveying a sleeve warily. “It doesn’t get out much.”
Even in that early exchange, the women established life-size versions of their television personas: Ms. Bee, 47, a comedian and host of “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee,” is fearless. She will say, out loud, the thing the rest of us are thinking, if not (in restaurants, anyway) with the same fierce humor she brings to her critically acclaimed satirical news program. “Full Frontal” was named one of the best television shows of 2016 by The New York Times. It returns on Wednesday on TBS. Before “Full Frontal,” Ms. Bee was a longtime correspondent for “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.”
And Ms. Pauley, 66, the new host of the venerable television newsmagazine “CBS Sunday Morning,” is trustworthy and relatable. And she has a 40-year legacy in broadcast news to prove it. In 1976, she became a co-host of “Today,” at 25, following Barbara Walters. After 13 years at “Today,” and the first of many messy handovers in morning television, Ms. Pauley moved to “Dateline,” a prime-time newsmagazine on NBC, where she was co-host for 12 years. More recently, she wrote a best-selling memoir, “Skywriting,” in which she discussed her bipolar disorder.
Over lunch recently (arctic char for Ms. Pauley, and pork tenderloin for Ms. Bee), the pair discussed navigating a television landscape dominated by men; the place of news (real, fake and satirical) in today’s polarized world; and their mothers’ takes on their successful careers.
Samantha Bee (to waiter): Can I have two pieces of bread, please?
Philip Galanes: Considering the 2016s you’ve had, you can both have as many as you like. “Full Frontal” was renewed through 2017. And viewership of “CBS Sunday Morning” is way up since Jane took over.
Jane Pauley: But I’m riding momentum that pre-existed my arrival.
SB: That’s not true.
JP: Well, that’s what I do: put little asterisks next to my achievements.
PG: Still?
JP: Uh-huh.
PG: Let’s go back 40 years: You’re a pioneer, one of the first women behind the anchor desk of a national news show. Were you getting a million production notes from men about how to be a woman on TV?
JP: I would have appreciated notes. I felt like a girl, and I had no idea how to be a woman. Remember, I was replacing Barbara Walters. I don’t think Barbara was ever a girl. She was grown-up and confident and an actual pioneer.
PG: Did you hear that?
SB: I’m sorry to tell you, Jane, you’re an “actual pioneer” too.
JP: But, wait. Barbara was a self-made woman; Sam is a self-made woman. They created their opportunities. What I give myself credit for is when opportunities presented themselves — and many did — I always said yes. And I made it work, even if it was scary or I didn’t feel quite ready. But that’s different. About a dozen years ago, NBC showed me my audience research for the first time. For years, the quality most associated with me was authenticity. I thought, “Yeah, I believe that.” I would have argued if they’d said anything else. But somehow, through the fear and learning and work, some authenticity broke through.
PG: Flash-forward 40 years, and there still wasn’t a woman in the late-night arsenal. Was gender a selling point for “Full Frontal”? The way you’re leaning into misogyny is so righteous. And fun to watch, like a woman just let out of prison.
SB: We do our righteous fury for 21 minutes, and then we just exist in the world as normal people. It’s very satisfying for a short period of time. But I don’t carry a heavy burden of … no, wait. I can’t accurately say that I don’t carry a burden of anger now. It’s toxic to be swimming in the news stream these days. But you have to find a way to peel away from that. Nobody enjoys this answer, but I’m saying it anyway: I haven’t faced an incredible amount of misogyny in my career. I know it’s real; it exists. But I’ve been lucky to work with a lot of woke men. Jon Stewart gave me my biggest opportunity. But I gave myself opportunities too. I did the work.
JP: You were ready.
PG: And ferocious.
SB: But it isn’t just anger though.
PG: I don’t know another show that comes at the viewer as hard as yours.
SB: That’s because we want to cram so much excitement into 20 minutes. But it doesn’t just come from outrage. It comes from fascination and confusion and learning. The stories that excite us most are the ones we’re learning from. You can see everyone on the staff swarming around them.
PG: Has being fiery ever been effective for you, Jane?
JP: Behind the scenes, absolutely. When I really believed in something, I surprised people by being powerful. But never on air. Once I was in a taxi, and another cabdriver did something to offend mine. Horns are being honked and suddenly the drivers are out of their cars.
SB: And Jane Pauley gets out of her car ——
JP: Jane Pauley does. She gets out of the taxi and uses — not her TV voice, but her mom voice. I said, “Stop being children and get back in your cars.” And they did. That authority came from an easy place.
PG: Let’s take a look at authority in the news. First, there was just news: stuff that Jane and Tom Brokaw told us. Then there was cable news that often comes with an ideological slant. Then satirical news, like “The Daily Show” and “Full Frontal,” which aims at the absurdity of news and newsmakers. And now, fake news, just outright lies and the scourge of our past election season. Did you see any of this coming?
JP: Not at all. Sometimes I feel like an ambassador from the 20th century. For me, everything changed when they started putting that crawl beneath the anchor, as if to say: “Pay no attention to the man on the screen! Ignore him and read this instead.” I’m still quavering over that, and it was a generation ago.
PG: One of the things that’s been so awesome about your work, Sam, is ——
SB: That sentence stopped for me when you said “awesome.”
JP: I’d consider repeating it.
PG: You’ve been so skillful at interviewing public figures on camera and demonstrating, without any fancy footwork, that they’re idiots. Is there any connection between doing that and just calling them idiots — like the trolls do? Or making stuff up?
SB: Are you asking me if I’m responsible for fake news? No! But when I was 7 years old, I made a cassette entitled “News for Goofs,” and I still have it.
JP: So, you invented satirical news?
SB: I did. It all came from this brain right here. Sorry, everyone.
PG: I was watching “Full Frontal” on my DVR yesterday. I can’t watch live; it’s too close to bedtime.
SB: Because it raises your blood pressure?
JP: It does.
SB: Oh, no! Am I scaring America? These are good conversations for me to have.
PG: And I heard a brilliant bit of writing. You called Trump a “tangerine-tinted trash-can fire.” It was very funny, but are you not afraid of saying that?
JP: Does she look afraid?
SB: I’m not.
PG: There are scary people out there. That guy from Maryland who went to Comet Ping Pong pizza with an assault rifle because he really believed that Hillary Clinton was running a child-sex ring in the basement ——
JP: He thought he was being a superhero.
PG: Not to mention the trolling repercussions of a Twitter war with Donald Trump. Has that happened to you yet?
SB: No, we’re still looking forward to that. I don’t think we’re on his radar.
PG: And when you call him a “trash-can fire,” you’re not worried about half the nation changing the channel?
SB: I don’t, but maybe I should. You won’t believe this, but we don’t hear much about how people receive the show. I’m sure TBS knows. But we’re doing this for ourselves. It’s as pastoral as kids putting on a show in the barn for their parents. We’re just trying to make the tightest 21 minutes of artful satire we can.
JP: I’m part of a real “we” at “CBS Sunday Morning.” I’m presenting a feast that was not prepared by me personally. But when you’re working on a high wire, without a net and maybe some wild beasts and trolls beneath you, you can’t be worried about the audience. You have to be unmindful of the danger to do the dangerous tricks you do.
SB: That’s 100 percent correct. But I hear you, Philip: We’re facing a new reality after the election. These next four years are going to require a broad coalition of straight-up decency. And we’re going to need to be able to talk to people who would normally feel alienated by my show. I’m trying to think how those conversations can take place. I’m starting to imagine America as a giant Thanksgiving table where we may need some ground rules before we break bread. Maybe some things will have to be off limits if we’re going to find the humanity on the other side of the aisle — some contact points.
PG: Maybe there’s a way of going forward by looking back: recruiting measured voices, like Jane’s, to help us.
JP: But the danger is blandness. You can’t overthink it, or you’ll end up being uninteresting to everyone.
PG: I can’t believe you heard, “Jane is bland,” when I was thinking, “Jane is empathic enough to do it.” Do you think you’re bland?
JP: I used to be. I was too careful at the beginning. I wanted approval. I wanted Tom Brokaw’s approval and my executive producer’s. So, at some level, I would pre-roll a thought through a “how will they react to this?” filter. Then I finally stopped, decades later. In your late 40s, early 50s, all the baggage of daughterhood and sisterhood just falls away. You can’t even remember why it was important to be so careful. I’ve never felt freer.
SB: Same here! Jo Miller, our incredible show runner, and I have been joking that we’re in our “I don’t give a damn” years. We’re not trying to impress anyone anymore. We’re just doing what we find satisfying, and hope others will too.
JP: Is she evolving toward the Thanksgiving table concept, too?
SB: We talk about it all the time. I went to Texas last week and sat with Glenn Beck all day. It was really interesting. I love doing things that can change me as a person.
PG: That search for commonality reminds me of the profile Jane did of Hillary Clinton. Hands down, the most human profile of her I saw during the election cycle.
JP: I went back to her girlhood, showed her pictures of her coed years. I think it made her feel safer. There was the great belly laugh. But that was before she declared her candidacy. Everyone gets more careful then.
PG: And your curiosity shone through.
SB: There’s no other reason to do this work. I guess you can make money from it, but what a terrible burden that would be.
JP: Do you think you’re in showbiz?
SB: I don’t think of it that way. Do you?
JP: No, I’m a journalist.
PG: That’s not how your then-teenage daughter saw it. The most delicious thing I read is when she accused you of being a “bad celebrity.”
JP: Guilty! Garry [Trudeau, Ms. Pauley’s husband, the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the comic strip “Doonesbury”] and I were very wary of the fame thing as parents. So we were careful about being an ordinary family. We raised the kids in a succession of five minivans, which our kids’ friends thought was hysterical.
SB: We have a minivan too.
JP: Well, my daughter, Rickie, grew up seeing other women in my line of work on magazine covers and red carpets. She might have enjoyed some of the perks of having a mother who would take her places. But my kids never appeared on camera until I had a daytime show and was really, really desperate, and I recruited them to appear. But they were over 20 by then. But for years, there was never a photograph of Jane’s kids. We were protecting them.
PG: You were a struggling actress for a long time, Sam. What would have happened if you’d booked a great Woody Allen film instead of “The Daily Show”?
SB: Well, there was no Woody Allen movie on the horizon for me. I lived in Canada, and I was just about to quit acting when I booked “The Daily Show.” I guess I wasn’t very good at it. I wasn’t working enough to pay my mortgage and do other things that a person likes to do. It was just a fluke that I got the audition. It happened to be my favorite show. Now I’m not interested in acting at all.
PG: But are your kids old enough to scream, “I hate you!”?
SB: They definitely are.
JP: Do they watch the show?
SB: They do not. They think it’s ridiculous that their mother is on posters occasionally.
JP: Really? That’s the only thing that impressed my kids. When my face appeared on New York City buses — that, for the first time, got their attention.
SB: My daughter is in fifth grade, and they played a clip from my show in her class. And she didn’t tell anyone she was my daughter! I said, “I’m not trying to blow my own horn here, but you didn’t think that would be interesting for your class?”
PG: There’s that terrible age when you don’t want to stand out for any reason.
SB: Maybe. But they really don’t seem to care about my show.
PG: Before we leave the subject of celebrity, let me thank you, Jane, on behalf of a great friend, who’s bipolar. Your book about being bipolar, “Skywriting,” came out exactly when she needed to read it.
JP: I’m thrilled to hear it. That makes fame worth something, that I could use it for some good. I hope she’s doing well now.
PG: She is. Was it hard to do?
JP: Not if it was going to help some people.
PG: Let’s close with a question about identity. For me, hearing about people’s obstacles — as women or gay people, the white working class or people of color — is always interesting. The stories connect us, as long as we’re not dismissive of anyone. So, how did identity politics become the scourge of the year?
JP: I can see how it cuts both ways. Identity politics can let us know each other in a human way, but it can also be tribal. I can retreat into my identity group and resent people who aren’t in it. Given a choice, we don’t necessarily choose unity.
SB: It’s all identity politics. Why isn’t being a white working-class male an identity in itself?
PG: But did we give the impression that a white working-class guy struggling to find a job was something we didn’t respect?
JP: My mother was an organist at church, unpaid. She was an intelligent woman, very conservative, a housewife. They didn’t call them “stay at home” moms then; she didn’t have that identity. So the women’s movement felt diminishing to her, and she resented it. I think something similar was going on this year. Some populations felt diminished in their identity.
SB: I want to live in a world where all voices are heard. I don’t think putting aside the concerns of transgender people or gay people to chase votes is ever the right move. Identity politics is like civil rights. And chasing our tails after a loss, the way we seem to be doing now, is not working for me.
PG: Now I’m dying to know how Jane’s mother felt about her giant career.
JP: She didn’t trust journalists much. That was possibly inspired by Walter Cronkite coming back from Vietnam and saying that we had not been told the truth about the war. Still, she was absolutely proud of her daughter and son-in-law. Garry was this liberal satirist, and she loved him. Boy, could he make her laugh. But she had an issue with the media, and my being part of it didn’t resolve it for her.
PG: How about your parents, Sam?
SB: My dad is very in there; he watches the show regularly. My mom watches it after the fact. But they’re supportive. They live in Canada.
JP: What’s that supposed to mean?
SB: They’re low-key. It’s just the new reality: Their daughter has a TV show. They’re not overly impressed. My mom will still call me up and go, “I didn’t care for that red blazer.”
JP: Did your father ever tell you that you had to be a lady?
SB: Never! I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, who sounds a bit like your mom. She would see women on TV and think they were snippy or full of themselves. She would not enjoy the content of my show, but she would be so proud.
PG: The eternal distinction that parents make for us.
P.C: http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/fashion/table-for-three-samantha-bee-jane-pauley.html
Post a Comment