TINA FEY, star of 30 Rock, is the current Queen of the US comedy scene, and she’s got a host of Emmys, Golden Globes, and Screen Actors Guild Awards to prove it.
So with her new movie, action-comedy DATE NIGHT out this week, My Movie Mundo caught up with her to talk pole-dancing, rollercoasters, and Sarah Palin.
Breaking and entering... all part and parcel of date night for Tina Fey and Steve Carell
MMM: You and Steve Carell, who plays your on-screen husband, work so well together in Date Night it looks like you’ve worked together hundreds of times before, but this is actually the first time, isn’t it?
Fey: It was the first time we had worked together. And now we are nemeses. [Laughs]
MMM: You’re known for your writing (30 Rock, Mean Girls, SNL) as well as your acting, but how do you see yourself?
Fey: I definitely still think of myself as a writer first and, with the lucky exception of this, any acting opportunity I’ve got is because I’ve been writing on it. But this is like a wonderful vacation. If you’ve ever sat in a writers’ room, it’s the most disgusting, torturous place. So it’s a treat to be treated like a movie actor.
MMM: What was it like bringing another writer’s words to life on Date Night?
Fey: It was a luxury to have a script come in that’s in really good shape and you just have to be an actor. [Director] Shawn [Levy] was very inclusive of myself and Steve, because Steve’s a writer too, in all the drafts, so we had input the whole time but didn’t have to do the actual labour.
MMM: Do you think it’s harder for women to be taken seriously as comic actors in Hollywood?
Fey: I don’t know. I work in television and in American television there have always been a lot of women and a lot of comedies centred around women. But it does seem that, maybe in the last 15 or 20 years, it’s not as much in feature films but I don’t really know why. I don’t think it’s any kind of institutional prejudice. I think people just follow money.
Mark Wahlberg's pecs... prettier than Fey's face?
MMM: There’s a scene in the movie where you and Steve do a pole dance together. How was it shooting that?
Fey: [Laughs] It ends up being fun and I was really happy when finally I saw it edited together. But it was the kind of thing that, in the weeks leading up to it, every time I would remember that that day was coming, I would have a stomach ache.
MMM: Your co-star Mark Wahlberg spends a lot of the movie shirtless. How much of your character’s admiration for his six-pack did you share and how much was just acting?
Fey: My appreciation for Mark’s physical attributes is more of a scientific one… they are empirically superior. People ask was it hard for Steve, but it was hard for me because Mark’s chest is prettier than my face… which is hard to deal with! [Laughs]
MMM: What’s your own worst date night experience?
Fey: Every so often the memory of one will come back to you in a flash and you go ‘Oh god!’ I had a gentleman at college tell me during a date that I could be really pretty if I lost some weight. On a date! [Laughs]
MMM: In the movie we see Steve’s character taking part in a book group to keep you, his on-screen wife, happy. Is there anything you’ve done just to please your other half?
Fey: My husband enjoys large rollercoasters, the kind that spin you upside down, and before I was married I would go on them with him. And then the moment I was married, I was like: ‘I’m not fuckin’ doing that!’
Crashing cars may be part of Fey's date night with Carell, but rollercoasters are strictly off the menu during evenings out with her real-life husband
MMM: There can’t be many people who haven’t seen your portrayal of Sarah Palin. What did you think the first time you saw her?
Fey: Well, I just thought ‘Ok, she’s got brown hair and glasses, but we don’t really look alike’ but then my husband said we did. Then I got a flood of emails from cousins and calls, and it was becoming apparent that whether or not we did look alike, people thought we did.
MMM: Portraying her must have been a gift.
Fey: It did end up being a gift, yeah. Every time I played her, I made $400. [Laughs]
DATE NIGHT IS OUT ON DVD NOW
By film journalist Jan Gilbert
