Late night television has become as much about politics and current events as it’s been about celebrity interviews and musical guests. Shows like “The Daily Show” have been doing political satire for years, but lately that responsibility has also fallen to Stephen Colbert on CBS or Samantha Bee on TBS. A huge portion of late-night programs’ agendas over the past seven months have been about covering President Donald Trump, health care, race issues, or anything else that pops up in the news.
It’s not enough to turn headlines into comedy because now headlines are comedy.
But what has that been like for the writers behind the scenes, the ones saddled with much of that responsibility? TheWrap sat down with “Full Frontal” correspondent and writer Ashley Nicole Black at the Television Critics Association press tour to get insight.
Does the constant politics ever get exhausting?
It can. I think that comedy, the first comedy that our America comedy tradition traces itself back to is commedia dell’arte and people were speaking truth to the king, so there has always been that history in comedy of speaking truth to power. There’s also definitely room for things that are just silly. I think right now everyone is so interested and engaged in politics, which is great, and I think the shows allow people the chance to have that engagement, but also have a laugh because just watching the news can get very anxiety-ridden and scary. You’re still going to get some information but you’re also going to have that release of laughter with it.
You’re talking about the stuff that’s at the forefront of people’s minds anyway.
Definitely. It’s like, addressing people where they are. People are worried about their healthcare, or whatever it is, and they want that information. Also, weirdly, comedians have become a trusted source of information. There’s so much distrust of the media right now — some warranted, a lot of it not at all — but it’s there. So I think that as a comedy show, we’re telling you upfront “this is satire. This is who Sam [Bee] is. We are here to make jokes.”
Does it feel weird to be a trusted source?
It definitely does. I came out of sketch comedy. I came out of a fart joke-writing background, for sure. We do have a lot of journalists on staff and fact checkers and so everything we put on the air is accurate — we really strive for that — but it is a big transition for someone who just came from writing funny characters to getting fact checks back on your jokes and having to massage the language to make sure it’s accurate.
When making jokes, do you ever feel like you fall into the easy trap of “Trump supporters are idiots?”
I really don’t feel that they’re idiots. If I have any anger for anyone it’s at the media outlets that have been giving them incorrect information. The first piece I ever did as a correspondent we went to the RNC and asked people to say Black Lives Matter. And people weren’t stupid or hateful or mean. They were literally repeating back to me incorrect statistics and everybody said the same ones to me, so they got them from somewhere. They didn’t make them up. Someone is lying to them. Personally, my anger is more toward that person — whether it’s Fox or Breitbart — than it is toward a person who is a good enough citizen to actually take time out of their day to read the news and watch the news and the news lied to them? The citizen is not the problem. The news is the problem.
You can view the segment here:
It’s that whole constellation of right wing media. They actually did a study. We thought that media was breaking apart but actually it turned out that the left stayed where it always was and the right moved to the right. And they were doing such crazy conspiracy theories that even Fox was forced to move in that direction because [viewers] were like “why aren’t you talking about Pizzagate?” So there are humans who chose to do that, the architects of that lie… and I think they’re much more at fault than the people. When you read the article it’s not so crazy to think that it’s real.
I remember the Black Lives Matter segment. What was that whole experience like?
I definitely went into it thinking they would just refuse to say Black Lives Matter and that they were just racist. I would say that accounted for maybe five percent of people and 95 percent of people either just knew nothing about it and were afraid to talk about it — because it’s a difficult subject — or wanted to understand but had been told so much misinformation. That was kind of right before ‘fake news’ became a story, but I really came away from that thinking “oh we have a problem.”
It’s one thing if we get the same information and you choose to have a different opinion. That’s great, but if we’re getting two different sets of information how are we ever going to have a conversation?
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.