Saturday Night Live (SNL) star Tina Fey has offered some advice to the writers of the UK version of the show.
The US actress and comedian, 55, broke into comedy as part of the Chicago-based improvisational comedy group The Second City before going on to star in the NBC sketch comedy show.
On the last day of the Edinburgh TV Festival, TV presenter Graham Norton interviewed the comedian and said he cannot believe British writers will stay up all night on a Tuesday, like they do in the US, so they can finish scripts before read-throughs the next day.
Fey said: “Here’s a dirty secret, you don’t have to do it that way, you could start in the morning.”
It was announced in April that SNL creator Lorne Michaels would bring a British version of the long-running sketch comedy show to Sky.
The show is to be released in 2026, but further details, including the cast, writers, hosts, musical guests and broadcast date have yet to be announced.
On her first months on SNL, Fey said: “It was super intimidating. It was also still pretty male. It was intimidating, yes, it was already something I’d grown up watching.”
30 Rock creator Fey also said former prime minister David Cameron had wanted to speak to her about British shows while he was in power.
“After 30 Rock ended, like a year or two later, I was way out in Brooklyn working on this show called Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, very proud of that show, and I was very happy to take a break from being on camera, jeans and dirty hair every day and happy about it.
“And I got this call from someone at NBC that said if you could come into Rockefeller Centre David Cameron is here and has requested to meet you.
“He was the current prime minister. Turned out all it was, was he wanted to meet me and say hi.
“He did invite me to come over, but I didn’t come.
“He was like ‘Would you ever be willing to come and meet with some of our incredibly talented British show writers, I think that our television that we make is one of our greatest exports, it’s something we do beautifully and could you convince them to make hundreds of episodes?’
“And I was like I cannot, because we all want to do it the way they do it, be Ricky Gervais and be like ‘Remember that time I made 12 half-hours’. That’s the lifestyle.”
