Sunday, April 27, 2008
A+E, Movies

Making ‘Baby’

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler discuss the conception of their new comedy

Courtesy of Universal Pictures
Tina Fey (left) and Amy Poehler in “Baby Mama”

“BABY MAMA”
Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Greg Kinnear
Directed by Michael McCullers
Rated PG-13
Wide release
By Bert Osborne

Former “Saturday Night Live” Weekend Update co-anchors Tina Fey and Amy Poehler reunite in the new movie “Baby Mama,” the latest in a string of pregnancy comedies that also includes the hits “Knocked Up” and “Juno.” Fey, 37, who left “SNL” in 2006 and now stars in the popular sitcom “30 Rock,” plays a smart, successful (and single) Philadelphia businesswoman whose last resort in the urge to have a child leads her to hire a surrogate mother for artificial insemination. Poehler, 36, currently in her seventh season on “SNL,” is the dimwitted and slovenly candidate.
 
The friends and co-stars discussed the film during a recent interview in New York.
 
Q When did the two of you first meet? Did you hit it off immediately? How has your working relationship evolved over the years?
 
POEHLER: I finally found the woman I wanted to marry [laughs].
 
FEY: And then I had to break it to her that it’s not legal [laughs].
 
POEHLER: We met in Chicago back around ’93, but we’d already heard about each other. We were all coming out of college and kind of new to improvising. We ended up working together as the only two women on an improv team that was named after a bad gay porn movie, “Inside Vladimir.”
 
FEY: Yeah, it was a nice group of people. Amy and I really hit it off. We’ve always had a mutual respect for each other, and we both took improv super-seriously at the time.
 
POEHLER: There was a lot of really fertile talent coming out of Chicago at that time. When we were just starting out as students, you had people like Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell and Amy Sedaris performing on the main stage [of the legendary Chicago improv troupe Second City], so it was a very interesting time to be there.

What were the origins of “Baby Mama”? Was it always intended as a project for both of you?
 
FEY: Michael [McCullers, the film’s writer and director] took it to [“SNL” head honcho and “Baby Mama” producer] Lorne Michaels and pitched the idea as a two-hander that we could do together.
 
Do either of you have a theory about why we’re seeing so many pregnancy comedies now?
 
FEY: I think having a baby is kind of a universal experience, and so there’s a generation of comedy writers who are hitting that age where they’re having their own kids. Guys who would’ve been writing dating-fantasy comedies 15 years ago, now they’re writing about this. It just gets back to what they say about writers writing about what they know and experience in their own life.
 
POEHLER: A movie like “Juno” is very different from a movie like “Knocked Up.” And “Baby Mama” is very different from both of them, too. This is more of a straight-up comedy, so in that sense it’s probably more in the vein of “Knocked Up” than “Juno.” They might all deal with the same general topic, but in some ways that’s where the comparisons end.
 
Sigourney Weaver has a funny role as the head of the agency that brings your characters together. What was she like?
 
FEY: Incredibly delightful. We were so shocked and pleased that she agreed to be in the movie. She’s really funny and very warm. You know, she’s played a lot of strong, kind of cold characters, but she got to do a lot of improvising in this and I think she really enjoyed that.
 
POEHLER: We’re both big fans. Actually, “Working Girl” was a movie we talked about a lot, because it was another example of this idea about what it means to be a strong professional woman, and about the class divisions between the characters Sigourney and Melanie [Griffith] played in that, and our roles in this. It was really great to have her there, after studying her work in that film.
 
Amy, do you and your husband [actor Will Arnett] have any interest in becoming parents?
 
POEHLER: To Sigourney Weaver? Sure! [She laughs.] I’d love to cradle her and tuck her in every night.
 
The movie deals with the whole urban parenting culture. Tina, is that something you could relate to, as the mother of a young child yourself?
 
FEY: Definitely. My daughter starts preschool next year, and we just finished the process of taking her on all her preschool interviews. She wore a little power suit and we made up a tiny résumé made out of candy [laughs].
 
This character is slightly similar to your role on “30 Rock.” How did you make her distinctive?
 
FEY: Well, Kate [in “Baby Mama”] is higher functioning than Liz [on “30 Rock”]. I mean, she’s a successful businessperson, but she’s probably more confident and pulled together. I think she’s a lot WASPier than I am in real life. I don’t know. It would’ve been a disservice to the movie to go too far in making those distinctions because, let’s face it, they’re both East Coast white women in their late 30s, you know?
 
Could both of you name some of your favorite TV shows?
 
POEHLER: I’m a drama fan, really. When you get home from another day at the office being funny, all you want to do is cry [laughs]. I was a huge fan of “The Wire.” I think it’s the best show I’d seen in 10 years and I’m really sad that it’s over. I like “Frontline” a lot, and “Intervention,” too. Those are things that really bring me down [laughs].
 
FEY: I really like “Arrested Developed,” and both the British and American versions of “The Office.” I think [the American version] has done a great job of finding a different voice of its own. I’m also my own worst enemy, because I watch a lot of Food Network. And, hey, what can I say, I’m a 37-year-old white lady, so I love “Project Runway” [laughs].
 
What did you think about Christopher Hitchens’ recent Vanity Fair article suggesting that women aren’t funny?
 
FEY: Funnily enough, I haven’t read it. First of all, I mean, I don’t have that kind of time. Fifteen pages? [She laughs.] I’m sure I’d disagree with him, so I’ve sort of done a President Bush and just didn’t bother reading it.
 
POEHLER: It’s just kind of boring, isn’t it? Like, “Ooh, white men can play basketball, too!” I think it’s an old story. It’s the same as when people refer to “SNL” as a boys’ club, because it’s not.
 
FEY: I usually find that when someone is drifting toward writing about that, what it says to me is, well, somebody didn’t have any better ideas for a story this week, so here we go again. SP