Samantha Bee is all about authenticity when it comes to portraying a character in Cats, despite not being cast for any parts in the forthcoming film. “I’ll pee in a box. I will barf on your wooden kitchen spoons,” she says in a clip from Wednesday’s Full Frontal cold open. “I only seem to remember my name 40 percent of the time.”
In the clip, Bee says she was surprised seeing the trailer because she had auditioned, and apparently did not get a part. But, as she hilariously demonstrates in scenes where she is filmed rehearsing in a cat costume, she feels she was more than prepared to take on any of the characters. “I’m a mezzo-soprano,” she proclaims. “Thirty years of dance training … Not what they teach you in schools.”
She hisses, poses and also gets cozy with a large stuffed panda bear to apparently prove she was perfect for the film. “There are so many horrors in this world, it makes you ask, ‘What is important?’” she says. “And the answer is a movie about a bunch of trash cats competing for who gets to die.”
Eventually, Bee seems to come to terms with being overlooked. “Maybe they were just too cowardly to have a late-night host to be a cat on the silver screen,” she concludes, before she’s informed that fellow late-night host James Corden stars in the film and her angry reaction is indeed quite cat-like.
