Women in Comedy: Tina Fey

I'm dedicating this post to Raffi, of citiZENmindful, because I know out of all my readers, Raffi would appreciate this post the most. So this my gift to you, Raffi, for being such an awesome persistent commenter!

So let's start out this month, right! Shall we? With Mrs. Tina Fey. (Yeah, that's right boys. She's spoken for.)

Elizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey is not known for her stand-up comedy. (Although, she did have a very small stint in it.) But rather she is known her for writing and her work on Saturday Night Live. Fey originally got her start at The Second City in Chicago. She packed up her bags and moved all the way from small-town Pennsylvania to head to the big mid-western city. There her story sounds much like any bright-eyed bushy-tailed wannabe-starlet--she worked at the nearby YMCA and took night classes at Second City. (Smart move, Liz! Uh, I mean, Tina.)

So here's her timeline:

1994 - Fey had been invited to join the cast of The Second City.

1997 - With the help of friend and then head writer Adam McKay, she was asked to become a writer on SNL.

1999 - Fey became the first female head writer of SNL. (It's about freaking time! (KUDOS, Liz! Uh, I mean, Tina!)

Fey's popularity took off from the SNL platform. And so has she. Fey left SNL in 2006, but only after she wrote and appeared in Mean Girls (2004), an adaptation of author Rosalind Wiseman's popular book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence (Yeah, that was a mouthful--even for me.)

I've already written once about 30 Rock and the cataclysmic event that was the Fey-Seinfeld alignment. So again, I'll emphasis that you can see Fey Thursday nights (yes, that's tonight, so tune in) on NBC's 30 Rock.

And if you can get your hands on the PBS series on Second City (SCTV) there are some cool interviews with Tina Fey as well as some other notables.

So watch tonight's episode, and leave a comment about Tina Fey's remarkable talent. (And if you miss out, you can always watch the full length TV webisode on the NBC 30 Rock website.)

[ Tina Fey on International Movie Database |Tina Fey on Wikipedia ]


Oh, and Steve, if it wasn't for Nigella, next on the list would be Tina (right after Audrey Tatou, of Amélie.)


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