Tina Fey Covers Entertainment Weekly

I've been receiving Entertainment Weekly for something like most of this year. I got it for free somehow. I remember buying it when it first came out and subscribing for years. EW was the shit! Now, not so much. I usually do a standard thumb through and toss. Don't ask me why I look at that stupid weekly target piece they do in the back of every issue. This week, however, there's a pretty extensive and enjoyable article on Tina Fey, as she closes out a shortened final season of one of the best shows on television, 30 Rock. She channels her inner Audrey Hepburn a la Breakfast at Tiffany's for the cover (photos by Ruven Afanador). While it's mostly a puff piece, interviewer Kristen Baldwin manages to extract some involved material and Fey's natural humor, covering various points of her career and time on the series. She's in the middle of filming the third episode of the season, which happens to involve a monkey. She mentions not having read the rules regarding dealing with the animal and her response: "It's the same rider that J. LO has." She pauses and corrects herself (unfortunately), asking Baldwin to keep her from getting into trouble. She's predictably humble (success will never spoil her, thankfully) and alludes to how she felt it was part of her job on SNL to write women into the skits (I wish there were more like her!). She points out the sexism in the MPAA, as well as pondering how easy it is to fall into the pitfalls of being sexually objectified. She also touches on her predisposition to go to the 'humiliation place,' and the effect it had on her Liz Lemon becoming too infantile for some fans. Incidentally, Lemon will be slightly more sexual in these final episodes. She talks about the Tracy Morgan/gay joke debacle from last year. Fey agrees with everyone that the bit was horrific and distasteful, but points out how harder it is for standup comics to fail today, because of technology and the internet in a sea of political correctness.  While I thought the Morgan stint was a huge unfunny misfire, I never thought that he was evil to the core for going to the place he did, as she reiterates. The gay outrage aimed at Morgan was completely warranted, I just wish it could have led to a more constructive outcome.  As it was, gays got mad, Morgan apologized a couple times, and that was the end of it.  I'd be curious to know how Fey would feel about Louis C.K.'s take on the matter (he wisely proposed that perhaps GLAAD and the like missed an opportunity to delve towards the source of Morgan's misstep and turn it into a teachable moment). She acknowledges that the attention she received from her Sarah Palin impersonation didn't hurt her chances of landing a starring role in Date Night. All in all, it was a good read, and makes me hope that we don't have to wait too long before Fey reinvents herself and gives us something equally brilliant to her current body of work.