The one thing Tina Fey will never do for a movie
When it comes to the titans of American entertainment, they don’t often get more significant than the legendary Tina Fey. After coming through in the improv group The Second City, Fey joined Saturday Night Live and became one of the show’s most important assets, moving from writer to head writer and performer.
Fey famously portrayed a satirical version of the Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and made further enormous contributions to the world of American comedy, writing and co-starring in 2004’s Mean Girls, as well as creating 30 Rock and starring in the movies Date Night, Sisters and Wine Country.
When appearing on Conan O’Brien’s podcast, Fey once explained that she feels that she has a certain limit when it comes to acting as opposed to her talents as a writer. “Acting is embarrassing, it’s just so embarrassing,” she said. “I’m very limited as an actor.” Perhaps Fey is making the distinction between acting in serious roles and comic ones.
After all, there is a certain sense of freedom when it comes to improvising, as she had done on Saturday Night Live between 1997 and 2006, which might be contrasted somewhat with her film performances, in which lines have to be rigorously learned with a more strict atmosphere on set.
Still, Fey said that she would at least try to get into the spirit of acting in a non-comedy way, noting, “Some comedy people do”. However, Fey does have a line when it comes to acting, and there is one particular type of performance that she will never agree to take part in, and it’s one of the profession’s more saucy moments.
She told O’Brien: “For me, the boundary… the one thing I can’t do… I would never be able to — believe me, no one’s asking – but… I won’t do like a sex scene… that’s the one thing.” So even despite writing all manner of characters, most of which are likely awkward, Tina Fey will always refuse to do a sex scene, knowing that her embarrassment would just be too great.
“The comedy person part of me can remember… in improv… an older generation of improv where people would sometimes try to pimp you into something like that on stage just to be a jerk,” Fey noted. “I have the like, ‘nope, you’re not going to trick me.’ That’s the boundary… I’m not going to simulate intercourse in a movie.”
