by Tina Fey
Saturday, September 13, I got up at six A.M. and filmed my scenes with Oprah at Silvercup Studios in Queens. She was great. She really does smell nice. And I got to hug her a lot in the scenes. (If you’re not into iTunes, you can buy 30 Rock on DVD at your local Walmart.) Between setups I sat with my daughter on my lap and watched Governor Palin on YouTube and tried to improve my accent. Oprah seemed genuinely concerned for me. “How much rehearsal time are you going to get?” “Do you have tapes of her to listen to?” “You’re going there right after this?!” (By the way, when Oprah Winfrey is suggesting you may have overextended yourself, you need to examine your fucking life.) Around 5:30
P.M., Oprah and I wrapped and I went over to SNL, but not before stealing an untouched Edible Arrangements® bouquet from Oprah’s dressing room to serve at the birthday party the next day.
The rest of the night went thusly: I got to SNL, I tried on my wig and outfit, Amy and I did the sketch three times—run-through, dress rehearsal, and live—and that was it. By 11:40 P.M., I had the rest of the show to relax and have a glass of wine. It was actually the first night out my husband and I had in months.
The whole experience was surprisingly serene. Maybe it was because the Oprah footage was “in the can” and my heart could stop eating itself. Maybe it was because I was safe at the side of my sweet friend Amy. Maybe it was because I knew I couldn’t get fired because I didn’t even work there anymore anyway. Obviously a big part of it was that Seth had written a very good sketch. I was not nervous at all, and doing that sketch on live TV was a pure joy I had never before experienced as a performer.
Here is the sketch…
This sketch easily could have been a dumb catfight between two female candidates. What Seth and Amy wrote, however, was two women speaking out together against sexism in the campaign. In real life these women experienced different sides of the same sexism coin. People who didn’t like Hillary called her a ballbuster. People who didn’t like Sarah called her Caribou Barbie. People attempted to marginalize these women based on their gender. Amy’s line “Although it is never sexist to question female politicians’ credentials” was basically the thesis statement for everything we did over the next six weeks. Not that anyone noticed. You all watched a sketch about feminism and you didn’t even realize it because of all the jokes. It’s like when Jessica Seinfeld puts spinach in kids’ brownies. Suckers!
That night’s show was watched by ten million people, so I guess that director at The Second City who said the audience “didn’t want to see a sketch with two women” can go shit in his hat.
The next day’s birthday party was also successful and, I believe, had an equal impact on the 2008 presidential campaign. Special thanks to my sister-in-law Dee, who brought macaroni and cheese, and Jessie, who made jerk chicken. Here is a now-historic photo of my friend Michael’s pirate ship cake.
The next few weeks were very exciting. On Wednesday, my daughter started preschool. The Sunday after that, 30 Rock won seven Emmys. Meanwhile, once a week, I went to my goof-around night job and did these sketches, and this is what I remember about them.
Week 2: Katie Couric Interviews Sarah Palin
I think Amy would want me to say she’s very pregnant in this photo.
Seth had originally written a piece with Sarah Palin “in one,” which means by herself, talking straight to the camera. I asked if we could change it so I could be with Amy again. Since my background
is improvisation and not stand-up, I really prefer the buddy system on stage. The Katie Couric interview was basically a sketch handed to us on a plate.
Seth quickly wrote a draft, and because I was watching Mrs. Palin over and over again on YouTube to try to improve the impression, I asked Seth if I could put in this long rambling run about the bailout that was mostly just transcribed.
By the second week, I realized what made this experience so fun and different. For the first time ever, I was performing in front of an audience that wanted to see me. I had spent so many years handing out fliers, begging people to check out my improv team. I was so used to trying to win the audience over or just get permission to be there that a willing audience was an incredible luxury. It was like having a weight lifted off you. I thought, “This must be what it’s like for Darrell when he plays Bill Clinton.” Or for Tracy Morgan when he does anything. People are just happy to see them.
Week 3: The Vice Presidential Debate
This was my favorite sketch, and there are three reasons why.
One, I felt like I contributed a lot of jokes to this one, so my writer ego likes it the best.
Two, Queen Latifah was there.
Three, I thought the speeches that Jim Downey wrote for Jason Sudeikis as Joe Biden were brilliant. Especially the stuff where Biden is trying to prove that he’s not some Washington elite by talking about how he’s from Scranton, Pennsylvania, “the most godforsaken place on earth.” I thought that was ingenious, because not only was the ad hominem attack on Scranton a hilarious comedy left turn, it also exemplified what the election had become. Instead of talking about issues, everybody was trying to prove how “down-home” they were. “I’m just like you” was the subtext of every speech.
Politics and prostitution have to be the only jobs where inexperience is considered a virtue. In what other profession would you brag about not knowing stuff? “I’m not one of those fancy Harvard heart surgeons. I’m just an unlicensed plumber with a dream and I’d like to cut your chest open.” The crowd cheers.
Two jokes I remember writing for the debate sketch are this one about global warming: Gwen Ifill
Senator Palin, address your position on global warming and whether you think it’s man-made or not.
Gov. Sarah Palin
Gwen, we don’t know if this climate change hoozie-what’s-it is man-made or if it’s just a natural part of the “End of Days.”
And this one:
Gwen Ifill
Governor Palin, would you extend same-sex rights to the entire country?
Gov. Sarah Palin
You know, I would be afraid of where that would lead. I believe marriage is meant to be a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers.
This joke about the “sacred institution of marriage” was probably the roughest joke we did.
“Rough” in sketch comedy language means harsh or dark. As I’m sure you remember, Mrs. Palin’s daughter Bristol was pregnant at the time and engaged to her high school boyfriend Levi Johnston. This joke was right on the edge of being too directly about the Palin family. I felt, however, that because Bristol’s pregnancy and subsequent engagement had been embraced by so many people as a shining example of the pro-life movement, it was officially part of the campaign. Also, the joke wasn’t that rough. An example of a truly rough joke would be this:
A pedophile walks through the woods with a child. The child says, “These woods are scary.” The pedophile says, “Tell me about it. I have to walk back through here alone.”
That is a rough joke.
Or:
Sarah Palin: To think that just two years ago, I was a small-town mayor of Alaska’s crystal meth capital. And now I am just one weird mole away from being president of the United States.
A John McCain skin cancer joke? Too rough. That was a joke I tried in dress rehearsal in the Sarah-Hillary sketch. My friend Jen Rogers, who is a cancer survivor, thought it was funny. The studio audience did not.
I remember very distinctly walking off stage after Latifah yelled “Live from New York,” thinking that this was the most fun, exciting thing I would ever do. I remember thinking this was a “permanent win.” No one would ever be able to take it away from me. The proof existed permanently on tape that on this one occasion, I was funny.
Here at the midway point of my six-week career, the sketches were really becoming “a thing.”
They were being watched around the world on the Internet. A French newspaper accidentally ran a picture of Amy and me from the Katie Cour
ic sketch thinking it was a picture of Couric and Palin.
Although I think that had less to do with the “power of satire” and more to do with the fact that to the French, we are all indistinguishable fat dough balls.
And Oh, the Cable News Reportage! The great thing about cable news is that they have to have something to talk about twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes it’s Anderson Cooper giggling with one of the Real Housewives of Atlanta. Sometimes it’s Rick Sanchez screaming about corn syrup. They have endless time to fill, but viewers get kind of “bummed out” if they supply actual information about wars and stuff, so “Media Portrayal of Sarah Palin” and SNL and I became the carrageenan in America’s news nuggets for several weeks. I was a cable news star, like a shark or a missing white child!
The downside of being a cable news star is that any asshair with a clip-on tie can come on as an
“expert” to talk about you. One day, by accident, I caught this tool Tom something on MSNBC saying that he thought I had not “conducted myself well” during all this. In his opinion, Mrs. Palin had conducted herself with dignity and I had not. (I’m pretty sure Tom’s only claim to expertise is that he oversees a website where people guess incorrectly who might win show biz awards.) There was a patronizing attitude behind Tom’s comments that I certainly don’t think he would have applied to a male comedian. Chris Rock was touring at the time and he was literally calling George W. Bush
“retarded” in his act. I don’t think Tom something would have expressed disappointment that Chris was not conducting himself sweetly. I learned how incredibly frustrating it is to watch someone talk smack about you and not be able to respond.
This kind of anger, I suspect, is the main thing Mrs. Palin and I have in common. When someone says something bad about us, we want to respond.
However, I, as an experienced member of the East Coast Media Elite, know that you can’t even try. You can rage to your spouse all you want, but the moment you post Internet comments under an assumed name, or call in spontaneously to a radio show to assert that you are not “a butterface,” or write that letter to Lisa de Moraes of the Washington Post instructing her to “go suck a bag of dicks,”
you have crossed the border into Crazytown, never to return.
Around This Time…
Around this time my old friend Damian Holbrook, a writer for TV Guide, had arranged to interview me for the new fall season. (Damian and I did Summer Showtime together.* I named the character Damian in Mean Girls after him.)
He spent the day on the 30 Rock set and came over to my apartment for dinner afterward.
Damian has a great sense of humor and we laughed a lot. After dinner—long after what I considered the
“interview portion” of our day to be over—Damian asked me what I would do if McCain-Palin won the election. Would I continue to moonlight at SNL? I said in a jokey, actress-y voice, “If they win, I will leave Earth.” It was clearly a joke about people who say stupid things like that. No matter what your political beliefs, everyone knows some loudmouth: “If Bush wins, I’m moving to Canada.” “If Bush wins again, I am seriously moving to Canada.” “If Obama wins, I’m going to shoot that *#%*@.” Etc.
But Damian put “I’m leaving Earth” in his article, and in print it looked sincerely idiotic. His editor leaked it in advance of the issue to generate attention for the magazine. Cable news took the bait and ran with it. I looked like a grade A dummy. I was annoyed at Damian, but mostly I just found it disconcerting. That I could get in “trouble” for a half-baked joke I made in my own home was a level of scrutiny I did not enjoy.
My brother called me, genuinely concerned. I should watch what I was saying because there are
“a lot of nuts out there.” I hung up the phone and burst into tears in the 30 Rock writers’ room. Poor Matt Hubbard watched my meltdown with a look of concern and disgust usually reserved for watching your mom vomit.
Week 4: Weekend Update Prime-Time Special with Will Ferrell
SNL was doing half-hour specials on Thursday nights at 8:30. I was able to be in one, in what can only be described as “My Trip to Sketch Comedy Fantasy Camp.” I got to stand next to Will Ferrell as George W. Bush and Darrell Hammond as John McCain. These two dudes are the masters. Darrell is a precise technician who can do anyone from Jesse Jackson to Donald Trump to Al Gore. Will, on the other hand, is an impressionist in the style of the Impressionists. His technique is loose, bordering on random, but when you step back he has rendered George W. Bush.
If Darrell is da Vinci, Will is Monet, and I am me, in a wig.
This sketch had a different tone than the other sketches because it was written by the world’s number one comic genius, Adam McKay ( Anchorman, Talladega Nights). It was about George W. Bush trying to endorse the McCain-Palin ticket and John McCain trying to avoid the endorsement.
It’s worth pointing out that this sketch was the tipping point for my Republican parents. They had been as excited and entertained as anyone for the first few weeks. Maybe the tone of this sketch was more aggressive, or maybe the cable news cycle had worn them down into thinking we were being mean, but the end result was a scolding from my mom: “It’s getting to be too much now.”
Week 5: The “Sneaker Upper”
“Sneaker Upper” is a term that veteran SNL writer Jim Downey coined to describe that queer moment when a famous person “sneaks up” behind the actor who plays them and pretends to be mad about it. I would expand Jim’s definition to include any time someone being parodied volunteers to come on the show and prove they’re “in on the joke.” Comedy writers hate Sneaker Uppers. On a pure writing level, it’s just lame. But like other lame things—sorbet, line dancing, New Year’s Eve—people seem to love it. I’m not saying I’m above a Sneaker Upper. During my time at SNL I was involved in at least five of these things. They varied in success and included people ranging from Debbie Matenopoulos to Monica Lewinsky.
If you were having a Sneaker Upper week, your coworkers would ask sympathetically, “How’s that going?” What could you do? Some weeks you got to produce a pure little comedy piece that was dear to your heart and had a great host like Alec Baldwin or Julia Louis-Dreyfus in it. Some weeks you had to sit and take notes from the smallest Hanson brother about what jokes he didn’t care for. The Sneaker Upper is just an occupational hazard, and as occupational hazards go, it’s much better than getting your arm caught in the thresher.
What I’m getting to is, during week five, Sarah Palin’s campaign people called Lorne to say she’d like to be on the show. I was against it.
One, it was a classic Sneaker Upper, and we had been so successful on a writing level up to that point.
Two, things were getting tense. McCain-Palin supporters were yelling racist invective at rallies, and the campaign wasn’t exactly shutting that behavior down. I didn’t want to joke around and hug her on camera and be perceived as endorsing their campaign.
Three, I had seen footage of Governor Palin and her sweet littlest daughter, Piper, getting booed at a Flyers game. (Classy, hometown, real classy.) I was sure that the liberal NYC studio audience for SNL
would boo the shit out of her. I didn’t want that to happen and I definitely didn’t want to stand next to her while that happened and have it seem like we had laid a trap for her. I didn’t want to be complicit in an ugly live-TV moment during what was becoming an increasingly ugly campaign.
Lorne didn’t think it would be a problem. However, Lorne was also riding three weeks of 7+
ratings, and the real Mrs. Palin would surely exceed that. She was ratings gold—pure nuggets of “ratings gold” just waiting to be extracted from the teeth of a corpse. (In this metaphor I’m not sure if the corpse represents my career, the McCain campaign, or broadcast television.) I told Lorne that if the real governor did the show, I would sit this one out. Lorne suggested I not decide so quickly. He and I both knew that things had gotten so weird in the cable news cycle that if I didn’t show up, it would
be just as much of a fake news story. The CNN crawl would have read, “MEAN
GIRL: Fey refuses to appear with Palin. Palin supporters call the move ‘un-American’ and ‘vaguely Jewish.’ Tonight at 9 EST Rick Sanchez uncovers the Corn Syrup Myth…”
It really was a catch-22 for me, unless Lorne would just decline to have her on. And that wasn’t going to happen. See above re: ratings gold.
I was hurt that Lorne would put me in this position. At the same time, it is never lost on me that he also “put me in the position” of being on TV in the first place, which no one else in the world would have done. Trust me, I used to audition for things.