Samantha Bee Claps Back at ‘SNL’ Boss’ Diss

Samantha Bee responded to Saturday Night Live boss Lorne Michaels’ “negative” mention of her in the new biography Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, wherein he’s quoted describing Bee as “one-sided and strident.”

“I mean, literally—imagine calling anyone strident when you have built a career out of elevating the loudest guy in the room,” Bee said on the latest episode of The Daily Beast Podcast in conversation with co-host and Daily Beast chief content officer Joanna Coles. Michaels made the comment to biographer Susan Morrison for the book, while recalling how he tries to keep SNL from leaning too far politically left or right.

“It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan,” Michaels told Morrison two weeks before Donald Trump was elected the first time, according to the book. “We have our biases, we have our people we like better than others, but you can’t be Samantha Bee.”

“I get referenced in the book, as I learned on the Daily Beast, as being someone that [Michaels] does not want to emulate in any way,” Bee said in the episode. “I concede the point,” she continued, “He’s right. I am one-sided. And I am strident, and proudly so.” All that said, Bee has only positive things to say about SNL, which she watched growing up.

“It was such a delicious treat to sneak down to the basement and watch SNL as a young kid,” she said. “As a young kid, it felt like an illicit pleasure. It’s just all in my consciousness and I love it. I love the performers, I love the writers, I love the writing” she added. “I don’t watch it every week but I certainly have admired it through the years.”

Despite her respect for the show, Bee admits that hearing seeing Michaels’ name-drop didn’t feel great.

“It’s never exciting to be referenced in a negative way in someone else’s biography that’s gonna do really well.”