Playboy Interview: Tina Fey

A candid conversation ivith TV's comic "goddess of the geeks" about 30 Rock versus SNL, having a Jillhy mouth and those disappearing sexy glasses

Tina Fey can't seem to shake her image as queen of the comedy nerds.

In the beginning it probably had something to do with the glasses. When she was co-anchor of Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live, her trademark black-rimmed glasses made her look like it cross between a naughty librarian and Velma from Scooby-Doo. But her geeky charm wasn't in appearance alone. Fey's caustic wit and wry delivery wade it clear she wasn't another airhead comedienne willing to play dumb for laughs. If the world needed reminding that smart girls can be funny and sexy, Tina Fey proved it.

While she has often been called the think­ing man's sex symbol, she would probably pre­fer something a little less pretentious. After all, this is a woman who frequently refers to herself as a supernerd. Time magazine came closest to summing up Fey's appeal when it crowned her "goddess of the geeks."

Fey rarely wears glasses since leaving SNL, but the nerd spirit remains. On the NBC sitcom 30 Rock, now in its second sea­son, she plays Liz Lemon, the head writer for a late-night comedy sketch show bearing more than a passing resemblance to Satur­day Night Live. Liz is the antithesis of a perky, self-confident leading woman. She's insecure, clumsy, rotten at love and, above all, dorky as hell.

// would be easy to dismiss Fey's geeky per­sona as a carefully calculated veneer designed to win over fans. But Fey the Emmy-winning comic isn V till that different from Fey the shy and gawky teenager who grew up in Upper Darby, Pennsyhania. Born Elizabeth Stama-tina Fey in 1970, she had a mostly sheltered upbringing with parents Donald and Jeanne and older brother (by eight years) Peter. B\ the lime she got to high school she hw.v already establishing herself as an outsider. Fey was a slraight-A student and active in extracurricu­lar activities such as choir, drama club and co-editing her high school newspaper.

She was also fiercely opposed to her school's ¦ulture of drugs and sexual promiscu­ity—which, by her own admission, made her unpopular with the cool kids. So she and her iocialcircle—the 'HP-class brainiac nerds,"as the calls them—would sit in the cafeteria and make jokes about the more popular students 'rom a safe distance. Although Fey admits she auld be scathing and even cruel to her class-nates, she was just as hard on herself. In a 'option accompanying her high school year->ook photo, she predicted she would someday >ecome "very, very fat."

After graduating from the University of Virginia with a degree in drama, in 1992, she noved to Chicago to join the legendary Second "ity, u'here she performed sketch comedy six

nights a week and met her future husband, musician Jeff Richmond. In 1997 she was hired as a staff writer for Saturday Night Live and a few years later became the first female head writer in SNLs then 25-year history.

In 2000 executive producer Lome Michaels plucked her out of obscurity to become co-anchor of Weekend Update, first with Jimmy Fallon and then, in 2004, wilh Amy Poehler.

Like every breakout star from Saturday Night Live before her. Fey made the leap to feature films, with 2004'.s Mean Cirls, a bit­ing satire of teenage girls and the emotional violence they inflict on one another. Next up is Baby Mania, Fey's movie collaboration with her former Update co-anchor Poehler, about a single career woman (played by Fey) who hires an eccentric surrogate (Poehler) to have her baby. And ij that's not enough to keep Fey busy, there's 30 Rock, once marked for death but now one of NBC's most highly rated and award-winning shows.

We sent writer Eric Spitznagel to inter­view Fey at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, where they sipped coffee by the pool and talked for most of the day. He reports: "Tina is two very different women trapped in the same body, the yin and yang of com­edy. Half her personality is what you would expect: She's intelligent and poised, like a feminist superhero. But the other half is an

introwrted underdog who makes up for her lack of confidence with a biting sense of humor. If life realh does imitate high school, then she's the hot cheerleader everybody wants to sleep with and the band geek who makes fun of you for being so shallow."

PLAYBOY: Did you want to be the star of 30 Rock, or would you have preferred to remain behind the scenes? FEY: My original deal was to create a show for NBC as a writer only, but when we came up with this idea, I fig­ured, Why not? Let's take a shot. Well, not at first. Before I said yes, I talked to Amy Poehler and asked her, "Am I getting too old for this? Do people want to see me anymore?" She helped

me think like a male come­dian. When Ray Romano and Jerry Seinfeld got their shows, 1 don't think they had a moment like. Am I good enough to do this? I need to stop worrying so much about what other people think. PLAYBOY: How much of 30 Rock is based on your experiences at Saturday Night Live} FEY: It depends. Some of it's personal to me, and some of it's personal to the other writers. 1 tried to remember what it felt like when I started at SNL, before 1 was comfortable man­aging people. It's weird to sit down with somebody my own age and tell them, "You need to try harder."

PLAYBOY: Can you remember a particular moment at SNL when you had to be the boss and didn't like it? FEY: God, yes. Tim Herlihy, who was my co-head writer, threw me to the wolves in the most hilarious way. We had had a siring of bad shows, and he said to me, "Okay, we have to tell the writers they're not cutting it." So we called this big meeting, and I was already a little nervous because I had been co-head writer for only

a couple ot weeks. We walked in, and Tim turned to me and said, "All right, go ahead." He made me scold the writers, who were essentially my peers. I was like, "Me? Wait, what?" PLAYBOY: Did you have a lot of conflicts with the other SNL writers? FEY: Not really, but we did an episode on 30 Rock last year about Liz finding out a co-worker had called her the C word. PLAYBOY: You mean cunt? FEY: Yeah. That happened to me. Some­body at SNL called me that word, and my response was "No! My parents love me. I'm not some child of an alcoholic who will take that kind oi verbal abuse!" It was such a strong out-of-leli-field reaction, so it was easy to turn that into comedy.

PLAYBOY: Is it safe to assume Jack Don-aghy, your fictional boss on 30 Rock, played by Alec Baldwin, is supposed to be Lome Michaels?

FEY: I would say he's Lome Michaels-esque. There's a whole other corporate end of Dunaghy that's nothing at all like Lome. But he was definitely the inspi­ration. I may be the only SNL alumnus who has created a character based on Lome who's not lying about it. PLAYBOY: Who's been lying? FEY: Well, maybe not lying but at least not advertising it. I've always wanted to do a special for Turner Classic Movies, screening all the films with characters based on Lome. There's Scrooged, Brain Candy and the Austin Powers series. I

think there are a few more. When you work for SNL, Lome is such a huge part of your life. It's like the movie The Paper Chase. The guy idolizes his pro­fessor and thinks the professor is mess­ing with him. At the end of the movie the student finally has the courage to talk to him, but the professor doesn't even know who he is. That's what it's like with Lome. Everybody wants this personal relationship with him. PLAYBOY: Did you have that? FEY: To an extent. We aren't best pals or anything, but I consider him a friend. Lome always encourages you to enjoy the finer things in life. He's big on say­ing things like "You should buy a huge apartment because then you will come

home and be like, 'Wow, who lives here? Oh yeah, that's right. I do.'" It's kind of sweet the way he wants every­one to get rich.

PLAYBOY: Was Michaels intimidating to work with?

FEY: Sometimes. We would do dress rehearsals for a live audience on Sat­urdays at eight p.m., and each writer would go under the bleachers and watch his or her sketch on the moni­tor with Lome. He would stand next to you, and it was terrifying. You're accountable for everything. The worst was if the sketch was dirty or had a lot of fart jokes. He would say things like "You must be really proud" or "Mmmm, call the Peabody board."

PLAYBOY: Is he aware he's a character on 3(1 Rock} FEY: Oh yeah. He doesn't always comment on it, but sometimes he will call me and say, "Boy, I was all over this week's episode." PLAYBOY: What about Liz Lemon? Is she basically anoth­er version of you? FEY: There are two big differ­ences between Liz and me. One is that apparently my charac­ter's jugs are a lot bigger. PLAYBOY: Really? We hadn't noticed that.

FEY: Yeah, whatever. I think our costume designer is try­ing to draw the viewers' eyes up until I lose the rest of this baby weight. I was doing a movie with Dax Shepard, and we were talking about 30 Rock, and he said, "By the way. those things are blazing hot on your show." PLAYBOY: And the other differ­ence between you and Liz is...? FEY: She's not married. I was saved by having met my boy­friend before I worked on Saturday Night Live. I was already dating Jeff, who is now my husband. Many times when I was at SNL I would survey the writers' room and

think. Oh. thank Clod I m not coming to this job single.

PLAYBOY: The pickings were slim at .S'AV.? FEY: 1 could've gone on four weird dates with Colin Quinn. Or I could be mar­ried to Norm MacDonald and living in Arizona.

PLAYBOY: Liz briefly considered quitting her plush TV job in New York and mov­ing to Cleveland. Have you ever been tempted to do the same thing? FEY: Oh sure. Sometimes the struggle to live in New York makes you think you're really living your life, but you're actually only struggling to get from place to place. You say things like "I did two errands, and I got home!" But is this my dream life? 1 think everybody

occasionally has the fantasy of moving somewhere else. Sometimes New York gets to you. Some days I win, some days New York wins.

PLAYBOY: What's with all the Star Wars references on the show? Are you a closet sci-fi geek?

FEY: Not at all. I just think it's funny. For a while we tried to have at least one Star Wars reference in every episode, but somewhere along the way we dropped the ball. I think my character knows a little more about Star Wars than I do. I have basic girl-nerd knowledge, but I wouldn't be able to pull a name like Admiral Ackbar out of my butt the way Liz Lemon does.

PLAYBOY: Liz once described her sex life as "fast and only on Saturdays." Does that seem healthy to you? FEY: I think it's an attitude everybody has sometimes. And it's not one I've seen reflected in the post-iV.v and the City world. Especially for married people with kids, there is a lot of fake-it-till-you-make-it. "We're all exhausted. Let's just go ahead and do it." And then you think. Oh, that was a great idea. PLAYBOY: You've done only a handful of kiss­ing scenes on 30 Rock, and you've always looked uncomfortable. Why is that? FEY: I don't know. It wasn't a big deal with Jason Sudeikis, who plays Liz's boyfriend, because he's a buddy. We actually auditioned a lot of actors for that role. How can I sav this so Jason won't be offended? The LA. actors were what Amy and 1 call "L.A. tight." They're all skinny and ripped and don't look like real dudes. Jason will read this and ask, "What are you saying? I need to work out more?" But there's something too perfect about them. I like to keep it East Coast loose.

PLAYBOY: Were you a big fan of sitcoms as a kid?

FEY: Of course. The late 1970s were a sweet spot for half-hour comedy. There was one night of the week—I think it was Saturday, but I'm not sure—that had the best shows. There was The Bob Newhart Show leading into The Mary Tyler Moore Show, or the other way around, and then The Carol Burnett Slwu: That was a big night. I remem­ber getting into trouble once as a kid, and the only threat my parents used was that I wouldn't be allowed to watch that lineup. It was all they had to say: "We're withholding quality television from you." I was really sweating it. PLAYBOY: Did you watch those sitcoms again when you were creating 30 Rock? FEY: Oh yeah. I tried to make Mary Tyler Moore the template for our show. I also watched a lot of That Girl, but mostly because there was a That Girl marathon on TV and my husband TiVoed all of it. PLAYBOY: Was he helping you with the research?

FEY: I think In- just has a crush on Mario Thomas.

PLAYBOY: Well, who doesn't? FEY: I know, right? Actually, every woman he's had a crush on has been a straight path to me. Mario Thomas, Kristy McNichol and Julie Kavner when she played Rhoda's sister. It's a trajec­tory that leads right to me. The only one missing is Dustin Hoffman as Tootsie. PLAYBOY: Did your daughter, Alice, get your comedy genes? FEY: I think so. In our house the baby is the funniest, followed by husband Jeff, and I'm a distant third. I'm too tired. I'm funny, but I'm not room funny. PLAYBOY: How has Alice demonstrated her sense of humor? FEY: She has started doing spit takes. She will take a huge drink of water and let it dribble out. I guess it's not really a spit take, more of a blereh take. Even before we noticed and laughed at it, she was doing it just to crack herself up. PLAYBOY: Does it matter to her if she has an audience?

FEY: Oh yeah. She's not stupid. She won't do it until she has your attention. PLAYBOY: Were you a funny baby? FEY: Not like .-Mice. She likes to engage people and make them laugh. I was more of the weird kid who came home after school, put on my colonial-lady costume from Halloween and did little skits for myself.

PLAYBOY: How long did it take before you realized you could make other people laugh?

FEY: I think it was in middle school. I remember thinking, Oh yeah, I may not be superpretty. This comedy thing may be my best move.

PLAYBOY: Was comedy a way of hiding from your insecurities? FEY: I wasn't really insecure. I was quiet and nerdy, and comedy was a way to ingratiate myself with people. I had a buddy named Jimmy McDonough who was the class clown; he was louder and more outspoken than I was. I could never do that, put myself out there and be disruptive in class. I would sit on the sidelines, coming up with vicious burns about the popular kids. PLAYBOY: You did an independent-study project on comedy in eighth grade. Do you remember anything about it? FEY: I remember the only book I could find as research was Joe Franklin's Encyclopedia of Comedians. It was about old vaudeville guys like Joe E. Brown and Rudy Vallee. But I was way into comedy. I would watch An Evening at (he Improii every time it was on. I miss the golden age of stand-up. I miss the brick wall.

PLAYBOY: Did you dream of becoming a nisi member of Saturday Xight Live} FEY: Well, sure. But that's not a unique dream. Everybody wants to be famous when they're young. 'LAYBOY: When did you decide being a •vriter would be enough? :EY: When I figured out it was an

option. By the eighth or ninth grade a few English teachers were encourag­ing and helped me realize writing was something I could do. When 1 was in Chicago, doing improv at Second City and places like that, it seemed clear the closest I would get to SNL was writing for it.

PLAYBOY: You became Saturday Night Live's first female head writer. Be­fore you. SNL had a reputation for being a boys club. Do you think you changed that?

FEY: Well, there are still more men on the writing staff than women. But it has never been a woman-haters club, at least not when I was there. The more women around, the more integrated the comedy will be. People like what they like. If mostly guys are writing the show, then the material will skew toward jokes that guys like. It's not malicious or intentional. It's what makes them laugh, so that's what they write. PLAYBOY: Saturday Night Live is notorious for being a competitive, cutthroat envi­ronment. Did you ever have a feud with anyone on the show? FEY: Will Ferrell tried to stab me once. We had been up all night writing skits for the guy from Dawson's Creek— James Van Der Beek. And you know, it was SNL, so we were all hopped up on goofballs, out of our minds on quaa-ludes and horse antibiotics. I foolishly made a disparaging joke about Will's skit. I was like, "Really, dude? A hat salesman who's afraid of hats? That's the best you can come up with?" And he lunged at me with a letter opener. I remember thinking. This guy's a genius. It would be an honor to be killed by him.

PLAYBOY: Other than the occasional stabbing, how did the writers and cast members let off steam? FEY: The usual ways. We tried to make one another laugh. There was a lot of same-sex fake rape.

PLAYBOY: What's your happiest memory from .S.VL?

FEY: Besides the same-sex raping? PLAYBOY: Yes, besides the rape. FEY: Well, a few days before a show, every sketch is read out loud in front of all the writers and actors, and you live or die in that room. Making every­body else in the cast laugh was always more satisfying than having something on the show. It happened for me only once or twice.

PLAYBOY: What's your worst memory? FEY: The worst was probably in late 2001. I was sitting in my dressing room on a Friday night, working on my jokes for Weekend Update, and Lester Holt came on the news and said anthrax had been discovered in 'M) Rockefeller Plaza, and I was in 30 Rockefeller Plaza. I stood up, got my stuff and walked out, right past Drew Barrymore, who was hosting. I didn't even tell her there

was anthrax in the building. I went to the elevator, walked up Sixth Avenue to Central Park West and went straight to my house, sobbing the whole way. Those were bad days. PLAYBOY: Were you reacting out of fear, or were you angry you had been put in that situation?

FEY: It was fear. There was a palpable feeling that we were probably all going to die. That was before we knew. Oh, this is the kind of anthrax cats get. PLAYBOY: Did you ever have a bad experi­ence with a host that made you wish you were in another line of work? FEY: Well, in late 2005 Paula Abdul did a guest bit on the show, and she was awful. I was pregnant at the time and probably a little moody, but I remember thinking, She's a disaster! I gotta prop this lady up and get her on TV. PLAYBOY: How was she a disaster? FEY: In the ways she generally appears to be. It was an American Idol sketch, and she wanted to change parts. So Amy Poehler had to play her. A year later I saw her on a flight. We both looked at each other like. Do I know that girl? And then we both had the same moment of recognition, and she was like, L'uuggh. I saw it register on her face that she had had a terrible time with us.

PLAYBOY: Since leaving SNL permanently, in 2006, you rarely wear glasses. What happened?

FEY: I still wear them and occasionally need them to see. They're not props, but 1 don't wear them all the time. Some­times I use contacts. When I was audi­tioning for Weekend Update, I tried doing it with and without the glasses. One of the writers on SXL, T. Sean Shannon, watched my audition and said [in a smarmy, vaguely Southern voice], "You want the job, you oughta leave them glasses on." [laughs] So I followed his advice, and it kind of worked out for me. Getting rid of the glasses was rough. Even now I will go on a talk show and worry nobody will recognize me without the specs.

PLAYBOY: Which used to work to your advantage. It was like your Clark Kent disguise but in reverse. FEY: Exactly. It helped for a while, but 1 don't think it's fooling anybody anymore. PLAYBOY: So losing the glasses wasn't a con­scious decision to change your image? FEY: Oh no, not at all. PLAYBOY: But you do know that by retir­ing the glasses, you're breaking a lot of nerd hearts?

FEY: [Laughs] Yeah, I know it's a nerd fetish that should probably be respected. Just like Mr. T should never show up in public without his Mohawk. PLAYBOY: What do you think of your male fan following? There are websites devoted to you that verge on the obses­sive. Is that flattering or creepy? FEY: It's all good, I guess. As long as

they don't try to kill me. Everyone around me gets upset by it occasion­ally. But I prefer not to think about it or question it.

PLAYBOY: Why do you think your fans are so drawn to you?

FEY: Maybe because I seem very attainable. PLAYBOY: Attainable? But you're married. FEY: Not in that way. Attainable as opposed to a supermodel.

PLAYBOY: Some older male comics like Jerry Lewis have argued that women aren't funny. Does it piss you off, or is it easy to ignore?

FEY: The only people I've heard say that are Jerry Lewis and Richard Roeper. That's not a strong showing. Yeah, Richard Roeper is hi-lahotts. Remember his radio show? Me neither. It's irrel­evant to me that Jerry Lewis doesn't think I'm funny. I'm not writing a movie for Jerry Lewis; he's not run­ning a studio. It's not a thing for me. That's not a burden I need to carry. But what's unfair is when one woman tries to do comedy and isn't funny and it somehow reflects on all women. Nobody watches a terrible male stand-up comic and says, "God. men just can­not do this." There are just as many awful comedians who are men. PLAYBOY: The late Michael ODonoghue, the first head writer for Saturday Night Live, once said, "It does help when writ­ing humor to have a big hunk of meat between the legs."

FEY: I do have one, but it's been flayed open to a vagina.

PLAYBOY: So you don't agree with that sentiment?

FEY: Well, the thing is, he said it. and then he died. So I don't know. Maybe he was wrong.

PLAYBOY: Was he just the product of a different era and a different way of think­ing about women and comedy? FEY: Probably, yeah. But if I had been at S\'L during the 1970s. I think I would've gotten along fine with him. PLAYBOY: Really? You wouldn't have come to blows?

FEY: He liked to be shocking, and I have a filthy mouth.

PLAYBOY: You do? Why are we learning this now?

FEY: Probably because I try to filter all the filth before saying anything out loud. But backstage I have an incred­ibly foul mouth. I've noticed this pat­tern, especially in comedy. There's a big difference between the men and women in the business. The guys prob­ably attended college but didn't finish, and they have a problem with author­ity. Almost all the women attended a very nice college, they graduated and were always obedient, good students, but comedy was their one outlet for expressing themselves and not being so prim and proper. PLAYBOY: Was that true for you? FEY: I think so. Growing up. 1 was a very

good kid. I went to college. I didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't do drugs. Comedy was the one place I was able to misbehave.

PLAYBOY: What's the secret to delivering a mean-spirited joke and making an audi­ence love you for it?

FEY: I know there's a secret, but I don't remember it anymore. It has some­thing to do with smiling a lot. 1 think you can't clamp down on a gag. There's something you gotta do: You can't look like you love it too much. PLAYBOY: What about your comments about Paris Hilton on Howard Stern's radio show?

FEY: Oh right, that, [laughs] PLAYBOY: One could say you were tough on Ms. Hilton. You called her a piece of shit and made fun of her hair. FEY: Okay, here's the thing. I went on Stem, and they were very nice to me and, well. I think part of it was.... PLAYBOY: You were drunk, weren't you? FEY: It was eight in the morning, so as always I was loooaded. No, I think what was going through my head was. How can I protect myself? I don't want to talk to Howard too much about myself. 1 want to throw out some gossip steaks. That kicked in instinctively. I'm sorry I used such terrible language about her. Even my mom said, "Oh, that was awful." Not long after it happened, I went to my gynecologist, and she said, "Are you all right? I read what you said about Paris Hilton in the paper, and that's very hostile."

PLAYBOY: Now that enough time has passed, do you feel any different about her?

FEY: I regret sinking down to that level of discourse. But Paris is a terrible role model and a terrible young woman. She needs to be ignored. I work with people who have 12-, 13-, 14-year-old girls who are fascinated by her. They look up to her, and that's not great. You can buy videotapes in which you can see her bejanis. PLAYBOY: Her what?

FEY: Her bejanis. You know, her lady bits. Her beholio.

PLAYBOY: Those are the most adorable pet names for the vagina we have-ever heard.

FEY: Somebody told me that when she did Larry King she said she had never done drugs. Is that true?

PLAYBOY: It is. She also said she isn't a big drinker.

FEY: I don't know if she drinks, bin she has done some drugs, y'all! There's a generation of girls in Hollywood who think they can say stuff in the press and make it true. It's not only Paris; a whole bunch of them do.

PLAYBOY: You don't seem to have much sympathy for the blonde Hollywood girls with bulimia.

FEY: When I was in high school, bulimia didn't even exist vet. Remember the

movie of the week Kale's Secret} It came out in 1985 or 1986. I think somebody famous was in it. PLAYBOY: Meredith Baxter? FEY: Yeah, that's the one. When it came out everybody was like, "Wait, you can do what now?" It was such a foreign thing to us. Nobody had anorexia or bulimia when I was in school. That movie and when Karen Carpenter died were the first times anybody had heard of those disorders. But now everybody knows, and they all give them a shot.

PLAYBOY: It's like marijuana. Everybody tries it at least once.

FEY: Which, I would like to say for the record, I never did either. I never tried any drugs. I may as well get it in print, so years from now when my daughter is reading back issues of playboy, which I'm sure she will do, she will know her mother was drug-and bulimia-free. And here's the other thing. How can I articulate this prop­erly? When I was growing up, to have a good body you actually had to have a good body. You know what I mean? You had your shape, and whatever your God-given shape was, that was your shape. But now—and this is what these young Hollywood ladies seem to do—even if you don't have a great body, you can lose a lot of weight and get superskinny, get a fake tan and fake tits, and you're in the game. Just get super-duper skinny. Some women are the real deal, like Jessica Alba. She has an amazing, gorgeous body. But for some of these other chicks, the closest they can get to a body like that is to remove everything that's there and add a little something on top. It's like the ladies you see in playboy. PLAYBOY: Wow. You really want to talk about this here?

FEY: I don't want to seem like a bad guest, but I have a few gentle theories. If you look back at old playboys from the 1960s and 1970s, the Playmates represented the girl next door, and some of them had maybe different-size boobies, perhaps with brown nipples or large areolas. There were even ladies with their actual hair or with hair that wasn't blonde. PLAYBOY: Do you say this because you're a brunette? Are you lashing out against blondes for the dark-haired sisterhood? FEY: I just take personal offense. Really, you would be so disgusted to fuck a brunette? It would make you sick? [laughs] It's the Joyce DeWitt part of it. I remember as a little kid watching Three's Company and thinking, Oh man, that's who is representing us? C'mon, can't Jaclyn Smith be the brunette? Joyce DeWitt was cute, but they gave her a bowl cut and made her wear a football jersey and panty hose. That look was rough. So yeah, I guess you could write all this off as jealousy.

PLAYBOY: Would it help if you dyed your hair?

FEY: No, it goes deeper than that. It's this weird fetish with ladies who look like erasers. Holes is holes, as I like to say, but I don't understand the cultural obsession with these weird mental chil­dren with orange skin and bleached-out Barbie hair and boyish hips and big fake choppers. They're so close to being trannies. I sometimes feel like, Who are these creatures? And they certainly don't exist only in this maga­zine. They're everywhere, and that's a reflection of our culture. It's like the difference in our food since the 1970s. It has become overprocessed with all the trans fats. Maybe w:e need to get organic with these ladies. PLAYBOY: You are a feminist role model for a lot of young girls. Do you feel quali­fied to be that person? FEY: Sure, why not? 1 could probably be a better-educated feminist. For my generation, we're all figuring it out as we go along. You have to follow your gut. The line in the sand between what's okay and what's not keeps changing. You can have a strong, empowered character—like a Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City, a show mostly for ladies—and sometimes she's in her underpants. It's easy to forget you can be both.

PLAYBOY: You were in your underpants, or at least your bra, in the opening cred­its of Mean Girls. Was that a statement about your empowered sexuality, or did you just feel the film needed some gra­tuitous nudity?

FEY: I don't think anybody was super-aroused by it, so I'm probably off the hook. But I will admit we didn't execute the joke the right way. It was better on paper. We should have cut it. PLAYBOY: Your Mean Girls co-star Lindsay Lohan has been struggling lately with drugs and alcohol. Have you reached out to her and offered advice? FEY: I haven't because I feel I know-enough about addiction, from a dis­tance, to say that only somebody who is truly and intimately close with a per­son should ever attempt to intervene. I made a movie with Lindsay four years ago. I don't know her. I genu­inely like her, but you can't fix people from the outside.

PLAYBOY: You saw addiction firsthand with Chris Farley. He died a few months after you were hired for Saturday Night Live. FEY: That's right. He hosted the show in October 1997, and he passed away in December. That was the only time I have ever been around someone and thought. This guy is gonna die. He looked really unwell. I guess that's a lesson learned. Sometimes if you sec-people who look like they might die, they might die. And again, it's not something you can do anything about. Because you have to be really close to

them even to attempt to help, and ulti­mately only they can help themselves. PLAYBOY: What about your 30 Rock co-star Alec Baldwin? FEY: What about him? PLAYBOY: There was the scandal this past April when his irate voice-mail message

to his daughter was-----

FEY: That's separate from me. PLAYBOY: You never talked with him about it?

FEY: Oh good lord, no. It's none of my business.

PLAYBOY: Even as one parent to another? FEY: Oh my goodness. No, sir. PLAYBOY: So you and Alec have a relation­ship that's 100 percent professional? FEY: .Absolutely. And 1 wouldn't want peo­ple in the office coming up to me and inserting themselves into my business. PLAYBOY: I guess there's a perception that everybody in show business is family. FEY: I know. Isn't it insane? They think everyone knows everyone. PLAYBOY: It's hard not to laugh at the red-carpet interviews when somebody like David Duchovny is asked if he has any advice for Britney Spears. FEY: li really is.

PLAYBOY: Has that ever happened to you? FEY: Many times. I went to the open­ing of Martin Short's play in New York, and I was talking to a reporter on the red carpet. He said, "What brings you to the show?" And I said, "Oh, I think

Martin Short's really funny-.....Fhat's

great. So anyway, do you think John Mark Karr killed JonBenet?" And I was like, What? I guess there must have been a development in the JonBenet Ramsey case or something. But what does it have to do with me? I am not going to answer that! Because if you do—well, not as much if you're me, but if you're Ben .Affleck and you say something—they're going to clip it on the news. "Ben Affleck thinks that guy killed JonBenet Ramsey!" And you're like, What the hell just happened? I've been sucked into answering those ques­tions, but thankfully nobody cares what 1 have to say.

PLAYBOY: Being asked about JonBenet Ramsey is one thing. But Baldwin is someone you actually see and spend time with, so it's not unreasonable to think you may have an opinion about him. FEY: But Alec and I have never really hung out. We've talked about trying to have dinner together for the better part of a year now, but we've never got­ten around to it. .And it's not only Alec. I don't have a social life with anyone on the show. There's no time. It's an unbelievably intense work environment. Sometimes 1 write for 10, 12 hours a day. Then at night 1 have huge amounts of homework: reading what everyone else is working on, going over out­lines and polishing my own scripts. It's like a marathon. PLAYBOY: A marathon, eh? So you need

to drink a lot of water, and sometimes when you're getting close to the finish line you fall apart physically? FEY: Oh yes. And there's also vomiting and pooping in your pants. And the Kthiopians always win. PLAYBOY: In your new movie. Bab\ Mama, you play the straight person to Amy Poehler's wacky surrogate mom. Is it weird to let somebody else get all the funniest lines?

FEY: Not at all. I love it. I'm not one of those actors with a big trunk filled with characters. I've got maybe two or three at most. I enjoy being the one who reacts to all the funny things happening around her. It's different when you're only an actor and you feel like. Oh, I have all the setups and everyone else has the punch lines. For me it's just as satis­fying to write something for somebody-else and watch them take it to another level and get the laugh. PLAYBOY: Baby Mama is a comedy about, well, babies. Isn't there an old show-business rule about not acting with chil­dren or animals?

FEY: That's right. They will upstage you because they're adorable. The same can be said of Amy Poehler. I shouldn't have acted with Poehler. She climbs every­thing and curls up in your lap, and she's cuter than babies.

PLAYBOY: That's a pretty bold statement. FEY: Amy Poehler is cuter than a baby and a monkey combined. PLAYBOY: Now you're going too far. FEY: I never should have done it. I never should have agreed to do this movie with her.

PLAYBOY: Could you ever give it all up? Just abandon the movies, TV and your comedy career and never look back? FEY: I could definitely live a quieter, less work-filled life. It happens to everyone at some point. It doesn't matter if you're ready to give it up; it gives you up. No one stays this busy all the time. There's such a small window of time when I will be allowed to do this. Right now they fly me out to L.A., and I get to stay in nice hotels and get taken out to dinner. But in 10 years, and probably much sooner, I will be Hying on my own dime, and it will be coach and I will be staying at a hotel near the airport. At that point I hope I realize it's over. 1 don't want to be on some horrible reality show just because I'm desperate to be on TV. PLAYBOY: Will a small part of you be relieved when it's over? FEY: It will be a sad day. Because the min­ute the camera stops and it's not pointed at me anymore. I will probably gain a hundred pounds.

PLAYBOY: Isn't this exactly what you pre­dicted in high school? That you would become "very, very fat"? FEY: [Ijiugks] That's right. I still say it all the time, so when it happens, I'm covered.