Canadian comedian Samantha Bee predicts tears for final ‘Daily Show’

TORONTO – Samantha Bee says she’s stocked up on waterproof mascara and waterproof eyeliner in preparation for her final episode of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

After 12 years with the satirical nightly news show, the Toronto-born comic makes her final appearance as Most Senior Correspondent on Thursday.

There will be tears, she promises.

“I have been really emotional since the news broke and all that stuff. So I’m going to be crying for sure,” Bee says of how she’ll handle her last taping.

“I went to the drugstore today and I literally bought waterproof mascara and waterproof eyeliner. Just to get through the next week.”

Reached by phone recently in New York, Bee noted she had cried earlier that day when she taped her final podcast for the show.

As luck would have it, that also happened to be the first episode of a videotaped version.

“My lucky day,” Bee quipped in her trademark snark.

“Today they got to (see) me weeping — not just hear it silently muffled over the course of the podcast.”

Besides tears, Bee says Thursday’s “Daily Show” episode will feature a “best-of” retrospective of her most memorable moments.

She’s just the latest in a string of personalities exiting the CTV/Comedy Network show: her husband and fellow correspondent Jason Jones left on March 26, and host Jon Stewart is set to make his last appearance as host on Aug. 6.

Bee says she’s excited about a slew of ambitious new ventures, including her own comedy series for TBS and a comedy pilot for TBS she created and writes with Jones, who will also star.

The 10-episode series will be a comedy following a family on a road trip, she says. It will be serialized, and not for young audiences, she adds. Writing began three weeks ago.

“It has a narrative arc that really doesn’t happen in comedies,” she says. “It’s almost like if you took an independent movie and chopped it into 10 parts, that’s what we’re aiming for.”

As for details of Bee’s new show, those are still being worked out, she says.

“It’s definitely a show, hosted by me, that will be mostly current events-based,” she says cryptically.

“If you’ve enjoyed my work on ‘The Daily Show’ there will be something tonally similar, I would say. A continuation of the things I like to do.”

The time slot has yet to be determined, she adds, but she doesn’t rule out the possibility of late night: “Let’s call it a late-night show, for now.”

“I’m super-excited about that, I’m really ready for a breath of fresh air in that world,” she says, noting few female hosts have been able to break into that domain.

“Wanda Sykes did it, Joan Rivers did it, certainly, Chelsea (Handler) had a show and she has a show coming out on Netflix, I’m not sure when…. So it’s not like it’s never happened but it hasn’t been done in a sustained way.”

Bee says she’s ready “to move on to the next stage.”

“It’s definitely what you hope for,” she says of her insane schedule.

“I feel like I was in training camp for 12 years and now I actually have to go out and hit the ball.”

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