Tina Fey: Funny Girl
Tina Fey talks about Laverne and Shirley, her favorite Stooge, and the fine line between mean and mellow.
By Jancee Dunn
From Reader’s Digest
April 2008

Getting a Good Laugh
As a shy, nerdy student in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, Tina Fey wrote a satirical column for The Acorn, her school newspaper, taking aim at the usual subjects — rigid teachers and even more rigid school policies. Her writing didn’t propel her to cool-kid status, but it did make people laugh. Fey was hooked.

Now 37, she’s still getting laughs as the creator, executive producer and Emmy-winning star of 30 Rock. The show is not so loosely based on Fey’s experiences as the first female head writer on Saturday Night Live and acerbic host of its “Weekend Update” segment. She made the jump to a bigger screen when, in 2004, she wrote, produced and appeared in Mean Girls, a pitch-perfect high school comedy.

While Fey can be pointed, she’s also thoughtful, self-effacing and almost absurdly well-adjusted. She’s close to her parents, likes to sew and bake cookies rather than hit the town, and lives quietly in New York City with her husband, composer and producer Jeff Richmond, and their two-year-old daughter, Alice.

This month, Fey returns to theaters in Baby Mama, a comedy about a single executive who hires a surrogate to have her baby. After a day of filming in Manhattan, she sat down with RD to talk about funniness, family and Febreze.

RD: Do you see your humor as a gift?
Fey: I always think of everything from a mother’s point of view now. Every kid has something they’re good at, that you hope they find and gravitate toward. This is my thing. I don’t think I was supposed to be a gymnast and accidentally landed on this.

RD: Do you still get that hit when you get a good laugh?
Fey: Absolutely. My favorite day at 30 Rock is Thursday, when the show airs. At lunch we screen the episodes. For everyone to watch together, to see the stuff we all worked on, to hear the crew laugh — it’s great fun.

RD: What pleases you more, applause or laughter?
Fey: Laughter. You can prompt applause with a sign. My friend, SNL writer Seth Meyers, coined the term clapter, which is when you do a political joke and people go, “Woo-hoo.” It means they sort of approve but didn’t really like it that much. You hear a lot of that on [whispers] The Daily Show.

RD: Your humor has been described as biting. Are you a mean girl?
Fey: I’m not a mean person, but I have a capacity for it. I have the biting comment formed somewhere in the back of my head — like it’s in captivity. Sometimes people expect that I’m going to be tough. It’s not a bad situation. People treat you better. People are on time.

RD: What’s the difference between male and female comics?
Fey: Every comic way of writing is unique, but I think male comedy is more boisterous. Usually it involves robots and sharks and bears. Female comedy is more likely to be about the minutiae of human behavior and relationships.

RD: Your mom was one of your comedy inspirations. Did you play to her at the dinner table?
Fey: My whole family played to each other. My mom’s a dry wit. Philadelphians have a smart-alecky humor. A college roommate from the South said, “How come when I ask someone in your family a question, they give a smart-aleck answer before the real one?” I think it’s the difference between the North and the South.

RD: What did your dad bring to the proverbial table?
Fey: My dad has a good sense of silliness. He was the one to let me and my brother stay up to watch Monty Python’s Flying Circus. He introduced us to the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy and even the Three Stooges.

RD: What TV shows influenced you?
Fey: There was a great night of TV that was Mary Tyler Moore into Bob Newhart into Carol Burnett. There was SNL. I know I saw those early shows somehow, but they must have been repeats because I was only five in ‘75. Second City Television, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and The Love Boat. Laverne & Shirley might be the direct influence for Baby Mama.

RD: In Baby Mama, your character goes into heavy nesting mode. Before Alice was born, were you nesting a lot?
Fey: Yes. It kicks in. I started spraying everything with Febreze because things started to smell weird to me. You get everything ready. I’m pretty organized — or I used to be. I feel like that part of my brain has atrophied.

RD: You costar with former SNL castmate and good friend Amy Poehler. Did you make each other laugh on set?
Fey: Oh yeah. We improvised a fair amount, which was really fun. She plays my surrogate, and in one scene I try to get her to take a prenatal vitamin the size of a doorknob.

A Working Marriage
RD: Your husband works with you. Does that present any challenges?
Fey: For 30 Rock, he does all the music and he’s also a producer. I think that we complement each other nicely because we’re not in the same room all day. There’ll be whole days we’ll be at work and not see each other until the ride home. And we’ve been working at the same place for a long time — Second City, then SNL. We have a nice shorthand.

RD: Do you have any rules, like no work talk at home?
Fey: Oh, that’s out the window.

RD: He described you as shy. Can it be?
Fey: I think I finally, in my late 30s, am getting over this teenage shyness.

RD: Do you crave being that nutty older woman who just yells out whatever she wants?
Fey: I dread it, but I see it coming. It’s inevitable. You get to a certain age and no matter what you’re saying, people younger than you are going to look at you like you’re crazy.

RD: What’s the best advice you ever got?
Fey: The rules of improvisation are about taking risks, saying yes and jumping in. One of my teachers at Second City was a lovely man named Martin de Maat. He said that learning to be an improviser is like doing the Hokey Pokey: “You put your whole self in and you shake it all about.” You just jump in.

RD: When you got the SNL job, how did you react?
Fey: I called Amy [Poehler] and started crying. She was like, “What will you get paid, again?” I told her. At the time it was certainly the most we’d ever made. She just started laughing. “You’ve got to take the job,” she said. Then the ladies from Second City took me out to dinner at this awesome restaurant in Chicago called Wishbone. I got up from the table because I had to vomit from pure nerves. I’ve never had that before in my life.

RD: Where did you get your drive?
Fey: My parents were extremely supportive and always made it seem like we could achieve anything we wanted. They were generous with their praise and their time but also good, strict parents. The first time one of my friends met them, my mom came in and gave me a million kisses. My friend was like, “I don’t even know what that is. I don’t understand parents like that.” It always just felt like there was a real safety net there. It made it okay to try.

RD: How do you deal with it if you must write some comedy material and you’re just not feeling funny?
Fey: I put on an I Love Lucy costume [laughs].

RD: Have you inspired any younger women to become writers?
Fey: At SNL, when you come downstairs to leave after the show, there are people waiting for autographs. A lot of the young women I talked to there told me they wanted to be writers. I always tried to encourage them. I think the world has too many actresses.

RD: Today’s comics seem a little more type A, a little less self-destructive, than the previous generation. Why do you think that is?
Fey: There have always been different types of people if you look at great comedians. You have John Belushi and Richard Pryor, who lived dangerously. Then you have Jerry Seinfeld and Bob Newhart, who are happily married, mild-mannered guys. And their humor doesn’t come from a place where they need to almost die to make comedy.

RD: It seems like you fit in the latter category, that you’re well-adjusted.
Fey: Yeah, I think so. Jerry Seinfeld once said you don’t have to be crazy to make comedy. To make comedy, maybe you just have to work hard and be funny.

Time-Out with Tina

Which of the Three Stooges do you like best?
Larry. I like the middleman. You can’t really like Moe because he’s always poking people in the eyes.

What’s the most embarrassing song on your iPod?
“Outrageous” by Britney Spears. And Annie. I have the sound track. And it’s in high rotation, yeah.

An item you refuse to spend money on?
T-shirts that cost $120. I hear my mother’s voice: “Are you crazy?” But you can give me one if you’re a costume designer, and I’ll wear it.

Any tricks you use to help you sleep?
I try to do work, knowing that it will immediately make me sleepy. I think I’m descended from opossums. If I really stress out, I start yawning.

I’m not really surprised that Alec Baldwin is a friend of the gays. He’s pretty liberal, he’s on a show 30 Rock that is pretty gay-positive, and he just seems like an awesome guy. But I was surprised to hear that his brother, Stephen Baldwin, is pretty anti-gay. Stephen! What the hell? You’re in show business (uh, sorta) for goodness sake. Stephen apparently called into the Howard Stern show with the following comments:

“I don’t believe that gay marriage is in line with God’s Word, which is found in the Bible. So, what I think doesn’t matter; what I believe is what’s in the Bible and the Bible says that gay marriage is not acceptable.”

And Alec has fired back with the following:

“Well, in the modern political world, people like that — whether or not I’m related to them — only help us raise money. They want to ban gay marriage because those people are incapable of having a biological family — that’s their only argument. You can ban gay marriage, but if you’re going to make it fair, then you have to ban marriage for everybody else who won’t produce children. But they just single out groups of people that they hate.”

Stephen Baldwin is currently a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice. C’mon, Trump, isn’t it time to fire him?

Alec Baldwin, Stephen Baldwin, Donald Trump, Celebrity Apprentice

The cover was shot by the amazing and incredible Annie Leibovitz as part of a photo spread accompanying the article “Who Says Women Aren’t Funny?” Not me, that’s for damn sure.

30 Rock, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Sarah Silverman, Vanity Fair, Annie Leibovitz

So the Buzz Log over on Yahoo! agrees with me …. maybe the Saturday Night Live writers should go on strike occasionally, because they seemed to be on top of their game this past week. The show was one of the best I’ve seen in a long time, in no small part because of host Tina Fey.

One of my favorite parts of Saturday Night Live has always been the parody commercials. Mom Jeans, Corn Chip Nail Tips, Cracklin’ Oat Flakes (with Ecstasy), Excedrin RT, Happy Fun Ball, Oops I Crapped My Pants, Woomba, all classics.

Here’s one of the funniest parts, a parody commercial for a drug called “Annuale.”

This episode of SNL also had some pretty good political humor, with the cold opening CNN debate, where all the debate moderators kiss Barak Obama’s ass and ignore Hillary Clinton. (Although I think they should keep looking for someone to portray Obama — Fred Armison did okay, but doesn’t quite have it yet.) And Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s appearance on Weekend Update was funny, and gave me some new respect for someone I thought was a little bit crazy.

The Digital Short was another winner too, with a old man whose wife put his grandsons into movies so he watches, so they won’t just be full of people he doesn’t know (and to translate slang.) “Hi Grandpa!”

So it may be time for you all to give the show another try. If you are up and you’ve already watched all your Netflix movies, flip on over to NBC at 10:35 on Saturday. Or if you like to go to bed early on Saturday nights, set your DVR and you can watch the show during Sunday brunch and fast forward through all the commercials. This week’s host is Ellen Page (star of Juno) which gives us hope that it will be another good show.

Bitch is the new black!

Tina Fey, Saturday Night Live, Ellen Page

Tina Fey, Saturday Night Live, SNL, Hillary Clinton

Question: Just 50 days until new 30 Rock episodes! Spoilers, please! — Joel
Ausiello: Jack Donaghy’s dream of creating a TV show that strands a bunch of middle-aged whores-for-hire on a deserted island is about to become a reality. Rock is casting a slew of attractive females in their late thirties to early fifties to serve as contestants on the fictitious “MILF Island”. The twist? The male contestants courting the hot mamas on the show-within-a-show are described as being “of eighth-grade age.” Yep, 30 Rock’s back, folks. Rejoice!

MILF Island! Jack’s dream come true. I wonder if this will be written as part of Jack’s rebound after breaking up with C.C. They can’t just let that go with his invitation to Liz about getting drunk. I’d think there would be some more fallout than that, including Jack being cranky, Jack yelling at either Frank or Kenneth, and Jack pushing Liz to write for stupid shows like MILF Island that will not only probably make the network lots of money, but will plop him right in the middle of a casting call full of beautiful, age appropriate women to help him get over his lost liberal lover. And maybe Cerie’s mom will show up as a contestant? Remember Cerie? Wasn’t she getting married and Liz and Jenna were to be her bridesmaids? I wonder what ever happened to that storyline.

But I digress. MILF Island coming to a fake NBC network near you. Who should they get to guest star as some of the MILFs? Helen Hunt? Angela Bassett? Anderson Cooper? Connie Britton? Vanessa Wiliams? Kim Bassinger? So many good and potentially funny options, whether it is a funny actress or an actress that would get a laugh just by being cast.

No matter what, there is only a few more weeks until we get some new episodes. Finally!

30 Rock, Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey, MILF Island, NBC

So we got up early this past Saturday (a pretty big deal for us, two people who really, really value their sleeping-in time on the weekends) hopped in the car and made the five hour drive to Chicago, with only one stop to pee, one stop for gas, and one stop to switch drivers. We checked into our hotel, grabbed some deep dish pizza for lunch, made a trip to the Art Institute, and then went back to the hotel for a quick nap, as we had tickets for the 11PM show, and I know I’m too damn old to get up at 7am and keep going until well, well after midnight without a nap.

After the nap and dinner we grabbed a cab and headed over to the Second City theatre at North and Wells and I have to say I was pretty excited as the cab turned the corner and I saw the marquee.

After we got in and the nice lesbian host sized us up and then seated us at a table right by the stage (even though we were at least a third of the way back in line). And then I started my usual fidgety behavior, because even when I show up to a show thirty minutes early, I decide that “hey, I’M HERE, so why can’t this get started now?”

So the show finally got started and was really enjoyable and funny. I won’t try to recreate any of it here, because I know I can’t do it justice and because you should really try to go see it yourself. But suffice it to say, I saw some really funny stuff regarding Barak Obama, You Tube and Evite, conception, playing the race card, blowing off your vagina with firecrackers, and a cursing llama (just to name a few.) And I was expecially thankful for the drunk people at the next people who repeated all the funny lines right just in case anyone missed them. THANKS DRUNK PEOPLE YOU SUCK.

Because we were there for the second show, we were lucky enough to be able to stay late and watch the players practice some new material they are currently writing, plus watch them play a quick few rounds of the improv game “Freeze.” All in all, a fabulous night of comedy. And who knows, someone we saw on that stage this month may be the next Tina Fey and next season be on Saturday Night Live or MADTv or some sitcom that will last two episodes and get canceled.

Second City Chicago, Tina Fey

Tina Fey, 30 Rock

The New York Times is reporting that the first new show back on the air is likely to be Saturday Night Live which will return February 23rd, with our girl Tina Fey as host. Following on March 1st as host will be Juno star and Academy Award nominee, Ellen Page.

30 Rock will return on April 10th, with five additional episodes. Only five? I don’ want to be complainy, because I am happy to get anything at this point, but really, only five? Entertainment Weekly has some hints to spill about possible plots, apparently straight from an email from one Tina Fey: “Liz has a pregnancy scare” (Go Liz! Get some already!) and “Jack may be called to serve his country.”

There is some hope that more than five episodes may be shot, but Alec Baldwin is scheduled to begin work on a new movie at the beginning of March. The film is called My Sisters Keeper and costars Abigail Breslin and Cameron Freakin Diaz. Jeez, Alec Baldwin, isn’t NBC paying you enough? Why you doing a movie with Cameron “I Used to Do it With Justin Timberlake” Diaz? You know you’re going to have to put up with Drew Barrymore on the set every day and the fact that she and Cameron will constantly be raiding the craft services table with their daily attack of the munchies. Better hide some donuts in your trailer.

Sorry, got off track there. What I meant to say is that the strike is over, 30 Rock will be back on your TV soon, Tina Fey will be there even sooner, and Alec Baldwin is making a probably crappy movie. Back to business as usual!

30 Rock, Saturday Night Live, SNL, Tina Fey, Ellen Page, Alec Baldwin

Here’s one of Tina and Scott. I have an idea that the concept from this sketch won’t make it onto 30 Rock:

Here’s another one of our girl Tina. Very very early to mid 90s there, Miss Fey. The only thing separating this from what I wore every single day in college is holes in the knees of the jeans. She looks like she’s on her way to a Collective Soul concert.

Funny pictures aside, I am looking forward to the Second City show and the chance to see comic actors that might be on Saturday Night Live or some other hip, edgy sitcom in the years to come. And yeah, I admit that I had a little daydream that Fey or Amy Poehler or Rachel Dratch might make a surprise appearance. Unlikely, especially now that the writer’s strike is over(!!!) but hey, who knows, maybe they’ll be out celebrating. Just please don’t bring Horatio Sanz.

Second City, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch, Scott Adsit