Twenty years after her time on Saturday Night Live came to an end, Tina Fey recently looked back on some of the heavier current events they covered.
The 2x Golden Globe winner recently admitted there were certain jokes of which she was “on the wrong side,” but insisted the NBC sketch comedy show does not “try to control the narrative and politics.”
“I started there in 1997, and I was there when we had to come back for the first show after September 11 and try to figure out what that show could be,” she recalled on Saturday at History Talks. “I think I was around but upstairs the day that President Bush came by to meet Will Ferrell. I was there when there was anthrax in the building. The longer I was there, I realized that the show’s relationship to current events, it became a thinner and thinner veil.”
Fey continued, “They say something, we say something back, they come over, they go, ‘Oh, we want to be on it too.’ It’s a thrilling and almost scary thing to have this idea that something you say will be heard by person in charge. I mean, I’ve made jokes, but also, I was pretty dumb and not much better now, but there’s jokes that I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, I was on the wrong side of that.’”
The comedian found it “fascinating to know that what you say will be sort of taken seriously,” recalling a “really interesting” six-week span when she, Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler were taked with churning out Sarah Palin sketches.
Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton on ‘Saturday Night Live’ (Dana Edelson/NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection)
“We always worked really hard to make sure that we felt like they were what we would call ‘a fair hit,” explained Fey. “And I think part of that is, one, we knew we would get in trouble if it was wrong or random, but also because it sort of only felt like it would work if it was kind of based in something that was true. Sometimes, people will ask me or ask others, ‘Does SNL try to control the narrative and politics?’ And they really do not. And also you really can’t. If it’s not true, it will not be funny.”
Fey spoke at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for History Talks’ event honoring the nation’s 250th anniversary, where she was joined by Nicole Kidman, Ted Danson, Kate McKinnon, Colin Jost and more.