Tina Fey Reflects on SNL Career, Admits Some Jokes Were “On the Wrong Side”

Tina Fey, now 55, talked about turning big news into laughs on Saturday Night Live 20 years ago.

The actress and comic said some of her old jokes did not hold up well. She felt she was “on the wrong side” of them. But she stressed the NBC show does not try to shape politics.

In a talk with History Talks, the two-time Golden Globe winner remembered her SNL time. “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.”

“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,” the Mean Girls actress added.

She went on, “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 the 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.’”

She called it “fascinating” how comedy gets taken so seriously. She recalled a “really interesting” six-week stretch writing Sarah Palin bits with Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler.

Tina Fey regrets her SNL jokes?

“We always worked really hard to make sure that we felt like they were what we would call ‘a fair hit,” Tina stated.

“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.”