Entertainment

Tina Fey plans a 'big pants blowout' this Christmas

Tina Fey teams up with her best pals for new comedy, Sisters. Susan Griffin chats with the award-winning comedian and actress about taking Star Wars on, stepping down from the Golden Globes and finally getting to play the wild child

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler commit to having 'just the one' tequila shot in Sisters
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler commit to having 'just the one' tequila shot in Sisters Tina Fey and Amy Poehler commit to having 'just the one' tequila shot in Sisters

THE nominations for 2016's Golden Globes were recently announced but Tina Fey, who has emceed the glamorous event with her long-time friend, Amy Poehler, for the past three years, has no regrets about handing over hosting duties to Ricky Gervais.

"I'm actually pretty excited to watch from home for once, and not be on any kind of diet over Christmas," says 45-year-old Fey.

"We always got our dresses in the middle of December and you'd need them to still fit in the first week of January. So I was always like, 'Argh, that's not the time of year for that!'

So there's a big blowout planned this year?

"Oh yeah, big pants blowout," she laughs.

Gervais returns despite swearing he'd never host the ceremony again, following his third outing in 2012, and Fey simply has these words of advice: "Just lay off the white bread, cheese and alcohol over the holidays and your dress will fit great."

The actress, who has received six Golden Globe nominations (winning two times) for hit comedy 30 Rock, might not be pairing up with Poehler for the ceremony, but they can be seen on the big screen together, in new comedy Sisters.

The release date sees them going to toe-to-toe with what will almost certainly be the biggest movie of the year, Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

"A year ago they [the studio bosses] were like, 'We've got a great idea!' But I do sort of get it," remarks Fey who, along with the rest of the cast, have starred in a spoof promo trailer titled Sisters: The Farce Awakens.

"It's what they call counter-programming and hopefully it's the holiday season when you go to the movies more than once and you have such a great time at Sisters that you think, 'Maybe I'll go and see Star Wars now'."

Sisters is written by Paula Pell, who, like Fey, is a veteran of the long-running American sketch show Saturday Night Live and has also worked alongside Judd Apatow on This Is 40.

Pell was looking for inspiration for her own feature script when she revisited her teenage diaries and was amused at how wildly different they were from her more outgoing sister's journals.

"They're full of pathos – no sex whatsoever – and I have a lot of hope for the future," Pell has remarked.

The pair first met in 1997, when Fey started working as a writer for SNL, following a stint at improvisational comedy club, The Second City.

"I had the pleasure of seeing her diaries as a wonderful found object that she brought around the office.

"They are stunning. Paula's very artistic. There are great drawings in them, and also, just where she was in eighth, ninth and tenth grade, is so heart-warmingly nerdy and so sweet... as is her obsession with Sylvester Stallone and Rocky."

The duo worked on the concept of using the journals as the basis for a movie pitch. Then, during the development period, another real-life event influenced the story. The parents of Pell's partner sold her childhood home.

"There's nothing as comforting as your parents' house," states Fey, who was raised in Pennsylvania. "If you had a pleasant childhood, as I was blessed enough to have, and as Amy and Paula had, you feel safe and comfortable in your family home, and you want that place to exist forever.

"Even now, as soon as I get to my parents' house, I leave my shoes everywhere. I eat everything, non-stop, and take a nap on the living room floor."

Already on board as producer and collaborator, she decided to step in front of the camera too.

"I think we realised pretty early on that I wanted to be in it and I sort of poached a part," says Fey, who has two daughters, Alice (10) and Penelope (four), with her composer husband Jeff Richmond, who she met after moving to Chicago in the early 90s.

It wasn't the ever-responsible, overly apologetic sister Maura she was keen to play but Kate, "a wild child who's trying to get on the straight and narrow".

"It's like playing someone who was the world's greatest ice skater but is now in a wheelchair."

Pell already had the actress in mind for the role. It was Pitch Perfect director Jason Moore "who we had to convince, because it's easier to see me in the other role as the more conservative sister," adds Fey, who recalls how liberating it was "to throw tantrums and kick and scream and curse. You just had to channel your inner child".

Poehler, the star of TV's Parks And Recreation, stepped into the role of the dutiful Maura, although she also gets to cut loose when, in response to the melancholy induced by their parents selling their childhood home, the pair decide host a party like the old days.

"At the beginning of this movie, they're both coming back to Orlando where they're from, as their parents have said, 'Come and get your stuff out of your room, we're selling the house'," explains Fey, who also starred in The Invention Of Lying, Date Night and Muppets Most Wanted.

The sisters return to find the house has already been stripped bare bar their old bedroom, which houses all their junk from the 70s, 80s and 90s "and they decide, for a lot of incorrect reasons, they should have one more high style party before they move on".

"People in their 40s, they need that party," Fey reasons. "They need it a lot more than people who are 19. They're actually letting off steam about something."

It's no surprise that the great and good wanted to join the production, including Dianne Wiest and James Brolin as the sisters' parents, and fellow SNL alumni Maya Rudolph as Brinda, a former classmate who's still fuming over ancient snubs, and Bobby Moynihan as Alex, the 'wacky' guy.

"We'd shoot these long 'overnights', all these jokes and then in between takes, people would do more bits, more comedy," says Fey.

It sounds like they had a blast.

"But we did complete the movie, we finished it!" she laughs. "So we did get the work done."

:: Sisters is out in cinemas now.