Culture

How to watch Samantha Bee’s “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner”

The Full Frontal host’s “toast to the free press” is Saturday and will air on TV and online.

Updated Apr 29, 2017, 2:52 PM UTC

Tanya Pai headed the standards team at Vox, focusing on copy editing, fact-checking, inclusive language and sourcing, and newsroom standards and ethics issues. She’s also a founder of Language, Please, a free resource for journalists and storytellers focused on thoughtful language use.

On April 29, the White House Correspondents’ Association, as it has every year since 1921, will host its annual dinner in Washington, DC, to honor members of the press. Also on April 29, less than two miles away, Full Frontal host Samantha Bee will hold a rival event to, as a press release put it, “finally answer the question, ‘What if Washington D.C.‘s annual nerd prom were hosted by a lady nerd and had way more curse words?’”

Bee’s “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” aims to “toast the free press — while we still have one,” as the host cracked in a teaser for her “alternate” event. The live one-hour taping of her show, at DAR Constitution Hall, will no doubt feature plenty of the unflinching, furious humor that made Vox’s Caroline Framke call Full Frontal “the defining late-night show of 2016.”

And while the actual White House Correspondents’ Dinner is apparently struggling to attract its usual roster of A-list celebrity guests (President Trump is also skipping it), rumored guests at Bee’s event include actors such as Keegan-Michael Key, Kal Penn, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend creator and star Rachel Bloom; The Leftovers creator Damon Lindelof; Gloria Steinem; and a host of comedians such as Retta, Jessica Williams, and Jordan Carlos.

The good news if you don’t happen to have an invitation: You can catch all the “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” action two ways. It will air as a one-hour special on TBS at 10 pm Saturday, and then will stream in its uncensored, curse-studded entirety on Twitter at 11 pm. (You can watch the Twitter broadcast via this link or by following the @FullFrontalSamB handle.) Twitter will also air a one-hour red-carpet special hosted by Full Frontal correspondents at 9 pm.

TBS is donating the proceeds from ticket sales for “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” to the Committee to Protect Journalists. And in a year that’s anything but usual, the event may provide a cathartic break with tradition.