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Samantha Bee to Host Canadian Screen Awards Special
Samantha Bee to Host Canadian Screen Awards Special,Canada’s national cinema TV awards will be a private event for 2023, hosted by Samantha Bee and with no live broadcast.

Samantha Bee to Host Canadian Screen Awards Special

Samantha Bee Dominik Bindl/Getty Images

Samantha Bee is set to host a Canadian Screen Awards one-hour special. The country’s national film and TV awards will not be broadcast or streamed live this year, as happened pre-pandemic.

Instead, the former host of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee will emcee a pre-taped, one-hour special, The Canadian Screen Awards with Samantha Bee. The recap show will feature celebrity interviews and highlights from prize giving during CSA award shows held in private and in person for the first time in four years.

Canadians featured during the TV special will include Ryan Reynolds, Catherine O’Hara and Simu Liu, who will receive special awards during this year’s CSAs. Last year, the national awards show handed out top prizes during a one-hour virtual awards show on the CBC and CBC Gem that had no TV commercials and saw winners mostly accepting trophies remotely from their homes.

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During the previous two years, the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television experimented with online formats because of the pandemic, which limited the traditional glitz and glamor of in-person award shows set to return this year for industry attendees only.

Bee, born and raised in Toronto, hosting a pre-taped CSAs special follows TBS canceling her late night show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee and just after her live touring show Your Favorite Woman kicks off on April 7.  

“I am thrilled to be hosting this very glamorous event, and excited to subtly drop my resume to all of the Best and the Brightest in Canadian TV and film,” Bee said in a statement on Tuesday.

Canadian producers and broadcasters traditionally used the glamorous sheen of the CSAs broadcast live on its final night of high profile prize-giving as a marketing tool for their homegrown film and TV series.

But low ratings for the CSAs that pre-date the pandemic prompted yet another revamp of the marquee Canadian awards show by the Academy, which tapped Katie Lafferty and Roma Ahi of Makers to pull off the TV special to air April 16 on the CBC network and CBS Gem, the streaming service.  

The absence of a live broadcast or stream for Canada’s main film and TV prize-giving event also follows the Academy naming Tammy Frick as its new CEO in Oct. 2022. Prize giving will take place during the Canadian Screen Week from April 11 to 14 in Toronto.

The nominees for the 2023 CSAs will be unveiled on Feb. 22.