For the very first episode of her podcast Good Hang, Amy Poehler invited her long-time comedy partner, Tina Fey. Thirty years of friendship later, the two talk about auditions they were never going to win, their relationship to work, Fey’s Netflix series The Four Seasons, and what still makes them laugh.
“You have to kill every time”
Fey recalls a remark Steve Martin made when she was a writer at Saturday Night Live: after a talk show appearance, he told her that a comedy person has to “kill every time”. It has haunted her since. Neither woman, they agree, ever landed a job through a brilliant audition. In Chicago, Fey went to commercial castings knowing that, with her teeth and the scar on her face, no brand would pick her for a “bite and smile” advert.
A carriage horse who learned to rest
Fey describes herself as a working animal, “a carriage horse”, who spent decades doing twelve-hour days and then homework at night. Only recently has she had evenings with nothing to write. Peace, for a writer, lasts about 36 hours after handing something in.
Going back to a set for The Four Seasons, adapted from Alan Alda’s 1981 film, she deliberately built a healthy workplace with humane hours and people she trusted not to make trouble. Many actors and crew told her it was the most pleasant job they had ever had. The cast includes Colman Domingo, Steve Carell, Will Forte, Kerri Kenney-Silver and Erika Henningsen. She hopes viewers will enjoy a gentle show on a human scale: “There are no zombies, there are no mysteries.”
What makes Tina Fey laugh
Her guilty pleasures include videos of people attempting Beyoncé’s Homecoming dance break and, above all, her local weekend news on NBC4 New York, with its produce and book segments. She once watched presenter Pat Battle help neighbours push their cars during a storm: “That is what America should be.”
The friends also remember a roast by the Harvard Lampoon they both hated, and Fey talks about the portraits she paints on holiday, “terrible” but improving. Her late father, Don Fey, she adds, used to paint caricatures of Fred Armisen, who still keeps one.