Tina Fey writes jokes at a speed few in television comedy can match and acts in one key: the dry woman who has noticed and already regrets saying so. The writing is the reason to watch, and lately there is less of it per minute.
Fi1m perspective
Watch Liz Lemon when Jack Donaghy says something monstrous. Fey does not react; she lets half a second pass, then answers in a flat, reasonable voice, as if the remark had been a sensible suggestion. That is most of her acting, and in 30 Rock (2006) it is enough, because Alec Baldwin is standing opposite, so pleased with himself that her exasperation has somewhere to go. She does the same as Ariadne Oliver in A Haunting in Venice (2023), saying what everyone else at the séance is thinking, and as 22 in Soul (2020), refusing to be enthusiastic about anything. She is at her best when someone else is being ridiculous.
The writing is where the career is. Fey came out of Chicago improv, joined Saturday Night Live as a writer in 1997, became its head writer in 1999 and co-anchored Weekend Update until 2006. Then she created 30 Rock, about the making of a television programme, and ran it until 2013 with Robert Carlock, Kay Cannon and Donald Glover among the writers. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015), made with Carlock again, starts from a kidnapping and finds a sitcom in it, and for two seasons that works. In between she wrote Mean Girls (2004), rewrote it for the stage and rewrote it a third time as a film of the musical in 2024.
What makes the good years good is density. Fey and Carlock put a joke in nearly every line and another in the background, and editors including Ken Eluto and Meg Reticker cut Kimmy Schmidt so that a punchline is gone before you have finished with the one before. We rewound episodes for lines we had talked over, which a sitcom almost never makes us do, because a shop sign in the corner of the frame had been written as carefully as the dialogue. The weakness is the same speed. A promising exchange in 30 Rock can be left behind before it has paid out, and the pilot asks Fey to carry more than her restrained delivery can manage.
The recent work is slower, and it is not clear the slowing suits her. The 2024 Mean Girls trims the insults that gave the original its edge, so the Plastics threaten cruelty in song and then apologise. The Four Seasons (2025), which she created, wrote with Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield and directed, is her move into middle-aged ensemble comedy, and it is warm and recognisable and short of jokes; the familiar marital grievance arrives without the line that would make it new. Fey has said of it, "Can we restrain ourselves to just actual human behavior and still make it funny?" The first half of that has been managed. The second half is the work ahead.
Biography
Tina Fey is an American actress, comedian, writer and producer. Born Elizabeth Stamatina Fey on 18 May 1970 in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, she began her career with the Chicago improv troupe The Second City before joining the NBC sketch series Saturday Night Live in 1997 as a writer and performer, later becoming head writer.
She created, wrote and starred in the comedy series 30 Rock (2006–2013). Fey wrote the screenplay for and appeared in Mean Girls (2004) as Ms Norbury. She returned as writer, producer and the same character for the 2024 musical film adaptation. She played Ariadne Oliver in A Haunting in Venice (2023) and created, wrote and starred as Kate in the series The Four Seasons (2025).
