Tina Fey is ready to Rock

Crave Online: Was that a real Hilary endorsement on SNL?

Tina Fey: I think, with 30 Rock especially, we like to sort of just put things out there that hopefully spark discussion. I think Liz Lemon also said last year, when she was confessing her secrets to Floyd, she said I might tell everyone I’m voting for Obama and secretly vote for McCain. So I think there’s a certain small sector of people that do think that and so we just kind of like to put that stuff out there. I think our role is more to spark discussion and to try to clarify and point out what we’re observing more than to really endorse or campaign for anybody.

Crave Online: Will you maybe do an episode about Tracy Jordan endorsing a political candidate?

Tina Fey: No. Actually, we do have a storyline now that you mention that. We do have a storyline coming up where Jack tries to enlist Tracy to be the new black face of the Republican party. So actually, we do have a story about that kind of.

Crave Online: How does it feel to be coming back from the writer's strike?

Tina Fey: Hopefully the public just wants to see the shows they like back on the air. And with each passing week, I think more and more shows are back on. I think everyone is just happy to be back to work.

Crave Online: Did you have to scrap any story ideas or lose any guest stars because of the strike?

Tina Fey: We were very lucky in that some of the guest stars that we had booked before the strike were still available after. So we got lucky that way, but we could’ve not been that lucky.

Crave Online: What did you do while you were on strike?

Tina Fey: Well, I stayed home with my daughter which was sort of the only blessing of the strike. For me, it was a little bit like a maternity leave that I did not previously have. And then, as you know, occasionally doing my union duty on the picket line.

Crave Online: What do you think is special about the whole NBC Thursday night comedy line-up?

Tina Fey: Well, stylistically they’re all single camera shows now when back in the Seinfeld/Friends/Frasier days, they were what’s called the multi-camera and they had live audiences for part of it. The current crop of Thursday night shows are similar in tone that way that they’re all shot without an audience and shot like little movies. I mean, I think it’s a great night of TV and that from Earl through to Scrubs, it’s the best night of comedy on TV and it’s all very fast-moving and funny. And it’s intelligent. Even Earl which is about these kind of trashy, dumb dirt bags, the jokes on that show are really smart and funny. So we’re very proud to be on with all those shows.

Crave Online: How will you utilize guest stars in the upcoming episodes?

Tina Fey: Well, with the exception of Jerry Seinfeld who volunteered to be on the show and we leapt at it, every other time we’ve used someone we have written the part first. Even if we wrote with someone in mind, we sort of wrote the part first and then went to the person, which I think is good because then it’s coming organically from the stories and from the world that you’re in. Maybe that’s me, after working the other way at SNL for years, where you have the host. You’re working backwards from okay, we have this person. What can we do with them? We are kind of doing it in reverse of that now and I think that’s worked well for us. I’m trying to think if we have anyone else. We have a lot of our favorite guest actors coming back in these five episodes. Will Arnett is back as Jack Donaghy’s nemesis, Devon Banks. Dean Winters will be back as Dennis Duffy, the Beeper King. I hope Edie Falco will be back, I think. And there might be one or two more.

Crave Online: Will you get any of your old Chicago comedy buddies back?

Tina Fey: Well, we’ve used a lot of people from Chicago. We’ve used Brian Stack some and he’s going to come back in an upcoming episode. He was a Second City guy. Miriam Tolan who was a Second City ETC, is in another episode.  McBrayer and Adsit, they are Chicago. I feel like often, every time we have a small role, I’m going through my mental rolodex of the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York or the Second City and Improv Olympic in Chicago, just to see who we haven’t used yet. We’ve used Brian McCann. He’s an Improv Olympic guy. He's at Conan now. We use them a lot, all those guys.

Crave Online: What's going on with Liz Lemon's life in the upcoming epsisodes?

Tina Fey: Both of Liz’s former boyfriends, Dennis the Beeper King will be back and Floyd will be back briefly. I think Liz does have a little bit of a pregnancy scare. Liz, who probably hooks up once every seven years, when it rains, it pours there for a week or two for her. She has some surprise events.

Crave Online: What is this episode MILF Island about?

Tina Fey: It is a Survivor-like show where I think it’s 20 MILF’s and 50 eighth grade boys are put on an island. We actually sat down and tried to figure out the rules of MILF Island and were not entirely successful. It involves something where the boys vote the moms off if they don’t like them anymore, and then it involves physical challenges and that’s about all that we now.But when I sell it to Ben Silverman, we’ll know more.

Crave Online: Will we see more of Toofer and Frank, and Pete in the five episodes that are to come?

Tina Fey: You definitely will see them, for sure. They are great and our ensemble is very large, and it’s hard to get everybody in every week, but you definitely will get to enjoy those guys in those five episodes. Frank has some good stories. He’s teamed up with Tracy a fair amount this year. He becomes Salieri to Tracy’s Mozart in a way. That might be all I can say about it at this time. Toofer, and Keith Powell in a weird comic got to play Sammy Davis, Jr. in a weird fantasy sequence and he did a really good job. So look for that coming up. Lonny is in the MILF Island one.

Crave Online: You joked in your SNL monologue about still being primarily a writer, but are you having fun starring in 30 Rock?

Tina Fey: I think that I’ve really fully stopped apologizing for being in the show. I am having a very good time shooting these episodes now. It feels like the pressure is off that. I feel so grateful to have been recognized for the stuff that I did on the show last year, that maybe that has helped me relax a little bit.

Crave Online: Do you think your glasses are a vital part of your trademark look?

Tina Fey: I don’t mind wearing them. The only time I don’t like to wear them is if I’m in like a party dress. If I have a beautiful Easter bonnet and a party dress, I don’t want to wear them. I don’t wear them all the time on the show, but I wear them most of the time. Yeah, I think people maybe are used to seeing me wear them.

Crave Online: Do you have a beef with Jon Stewart from those comments in Reader's DigTina Fey: Well, you know, that thing was edited kind of weird because I was really talking about audiences and how audiences respond weirdly to things. When I was talking, I said, 'Like on Weekend Update or anything.' And then that kind of went away, so it seemed like I was saying something bad about those guys. I think they know that I think their show is great and would absolutely never be disparaging of their show.

Crave Online: How much do you worry about ratings?

Tina Fey: I don’t worry about them because I know that you can’t control them by worrying about them. I feel like we try to make the show as good as we can make it and then I try to do anything I can that’s helpful to just make people aware of the show. Beyond that, there’s nothing you can really do about them. I think for us we sort of have a feeling of like we’re going to keep making these until they don’t let us make them anymore. I think TV is changing and people are aware of that. I think the way ratings are measured is going to continue to change over the next couple years in terms of measuring DVR sampling and Internet sampling. I think the traditional Nielsen thing might not quite reflect everyone that’s watching our show.

Crave Online: Since you won the Best Comedy Emmy, does that give you any more leverage with the network?

Tina Fey: Well, I think it certainly helps a show like ours which isn’t the highest rated show. I think it helps us stay on the air. It buys us some time. Other than that, we’re not really looking for leverage with the network because they’ve always been very supportive with us. The fact that they let us do the show, and help us pay for fancy guest stars and stuff when we get them, they’re very supportive.

Crave Online: How much impact does any of the fan feedback or viewer feedback have on what you put in the show?

Tina Fey: Well, it doesn't affect that much what we put in the show. I have said before that I’ve been known to check Television Without Pity sometimes after an episode airs because I feel like those people who post on there are generally very thoughtful and it’s not like a site where people are just saying that sucked or don’t watch them. They really kind of review the episodes from an intelligent place. So sometimes it'll just affirm or if I wasn’t sure about an episode, how it went over. But it doesn’t really dictate what we do in the episodes, I wouldn’t say.

Crave Online: How involved are you getting with the online aspect, like Werewolf Bar Mitzvah and the Muffin Top song?

Tina Fey: I think we do a little bit. I feel like we do like to put things in the show that I would for lack of a better term call TiVo jokes that are things that you would either have to kind of rewind to, you know, or rewind and pause, or at the very least, things that kind of pay off on more than one viewing. Because I’ve had a lot people say that things go by so quickly that there are certain jokes that they don’t get until the second time, or don’t even hear, literally don’t hear until the second or third time they watch. We do try to put things like that in there like in Mad Magazine, they would draw in the margins because early on last year we did an episode where there was a prop that was a list. Liz made a list of the pros and cons about her boyfriend. Then I realized that people did freeze frame and wrote on the Internet, "Hey, look what Liz said." So ever since then, I realized well people really look at this stuff. So if we do have a prop newspaper or something like that, we try to make sure that it has some extra jokes in it in case you do zoom in on it.

Crave Online: You've been referred to before as a comic geek goddess. Do you feel yourself as a part of a revolution? Do you keep that in mind when writing the show?

Tina Fey: First, everyday we talk about the revolution. Then we figure out how to keep the revolution going. No, we sort of just think about our characters and what stories we want to tell about them. I try to have my character be written in a way that feels truthful to me and all the women on the show to feel realistic, and intelligent in their own way. Beyond that, no, not running the revolution.

Crave Online: How do you see yourself, on TV and in real life, as a geek ambassador?

Tina Fey: I definitely am a nerd in life. I think Liz Lemon might be a bigger nerd than me. One of the writers put, in an upcoming episode, he had a flashback of her playing Dungeons and Dragons in college. I never played Dungeons and Dragons in college. Liz Lemon is much more of geek than I ever was. But thank god there is a Geek magazine, or what would I be on the cover of?

Crave Online: It's sexy now!

Tina Fey: I think some people will always like nerds. I think that goes back to Buddy Holly.