WHILE IN high school in Upper Darby, Pa., Elizabeth Stamatina Fey was a “high-functioning nerd: editor of the school paper, in choir, but not cool.” Yet with her work on Saturday Night Live, Mean Girls,
30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Tina has done more to make “nerdy” the new “sexy” than almost anyone else. “If you retain nothing else, always remember the most important rule of beauty, which is: Who cares?” And that self-assurance has served her well, not only in her 20-year marriage to husband Jeff Richmond, but also in raising daughters Alice and Penelope, who have “made me so happy.” Now Tina, who turns 52 on May 18, says she’s happy to play it cool even if she may not feel that way. “I feel like I am at an age where all the things I ever thought I wanted to do,
I did them. And so like I’m kind of trying to be quiet and take things in. I’m waiting for something inside me to tell me what the next thing is I want to do.”
“Confidence is 10 percent hard work and 90 percent delusion.”
—Tina Fey
1994 FIRST
ACT “You have to go wherever you need to go to study what interests you,” shared Tina of starting out with the comedy troupe Second City. “In Chicago, I worked a cruddy job folding towels at a YMCA from 5:30 in the morning until 2:30 in the afternoon. I’d nap, then go to improv class all night. I made, like, $7 an hour, and it was freezing in Chicago — but I was so happy.”
After joining SNL as a writer in 1997, Tina began co-anchoring Weekend Update with Jimmy Fallon. “You never have that fear and disappointment that sketch players have. And it’s the only segment where you tell America your name. So it’s career changing.”
2000 ANCHORS AWEIGH
2008 YOU BETCHA!
Her turn as VP candidate Sarah Palin on SNL was “probably the biggest thing I was ever a part of,” but it came not without criticism. “She’s not fragile. And I’m not mean. To imply otherwise is a disservice to us both. No one ever said, ‘Oh, that Will Ferrell. He should be ashamed of the way he’s conducting himself playing George W. Bush.’”
2021 ONLY ME Even with a guest spot on TV’s Only Murders in the Building, Tina is “always thrilled to meet somebody who says that they were inspired to become a writer or an actor or something because they saw me. A lot of times I can see them coming .... I’m, like, you look exactly like me at 22. And, yes, hello.”
“I don’t really have a nemesis like [in Megamind,] but I have hundreds of small enemies that fuel me,” she’d quip about her turn in the animated hit. “Everyone I meet I assume is out to get me, and that fuels my fire on a daily basis.”
2010 KEPT IN MIND
2019 COUNTRY COUSINS
Produced and directed by Amy Poehler, the film Wine Country was a perfect way for Tina to reinforce bonds with other longtime friends, including Rachel Dratch and Maya Rudolph. “As all working moms, to have people to commiserate with when it’s difficult or you feel judged about it [is good].”
“Some of Mean Girls was about this period in my life when I felt like I was an outsider,” she confessed about writing the pic, which was also turned into a Broadway show. “You need to be fearless, not be afraid to be yourself .... In my teenage years, I was obsessing about people that I was jealous of. [But after a while,] it was like, ‘I don’t want to feel like I ate poison anymore.’ ”
2004 GIRL TALK
2015 NO JOKE “My new goal is not to explain jokes,” she’d confess after an episode of her sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was called racist by some. “We put so much effort into writing and crafting everything, they need to speak for themselves. There’s a real culture of demanding apologies. I’m opting out of that.”
“I feel like we made a lot of good episodes of the kind of show that usually gets canceled,” joked Tina of 30 Rock, which won her Emmys for both writing and acting. “[It’s] the kind where there’s 20 episodes and ‘only me and my hipster friends know about it.’ That part’s still true. But we made 140 of them!”
2006 ROCK ON
2013 GOLDEN GIRLS
“[We’re] like the Cagney & Lacey of comedy,” cracked Tina about hosting the Golden Globes three years in a row with good pal Amy Poehler. “Not only is she not afraid to look silly, she’s not afraid to let you throw her in the air like a basketball and catch her.”