Tina Fey has insisted Saturday Night Live does not “try to control the narrative and politics.”
The 55-year-old comic worked on the show from 1997–2006, including a stint as the programme's first female head writer from 1999, and she believes it was important for SNL to shine a light on current events in a truthful way.
Tina found it “fascinating to know that what you say will be sort of taken seriously,” recalling a particularly "interesting” six-week period when she, Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler were tasked with creating a number of sketches about former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin.
Speaking at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for History Talks’ event over the weekend, she said: “We always worked really hard to make sure that we felt like they were what we would call ‘a fair hit.
“And I think part of that is, one, we knew we would get in trouble if it was wrong or random, but also because it sort of only felt like it would work if it was kind of based in something that was true.
"Sometimes, people will ask me or ask others, ‘Does SNL try to control the narrative and politics?’ And they really do not. And also you really can’t. If it’s not true, it will not be funny.”
The Mean Girls writer admitted that, during her stint on SNL, there were certain jokes of which she was “on the wrong side" and she found it both "thrilling" and "scary" to know US leaders always kept an eye on what the sketch show was saying.
She said: “I started there in 1997, and I was there when we had to come back for the first show after September 11 and try to figure out what that show could be.
“I think I was around but upstairs the day that President Bush came by to meet Will Ferrell. I was there when there was anthrax in the building.
"The longer I was there, I realised that the show’s relationship to current events, it became a thinner and thinner veil.
“They say something, we say something back, they come over, they go, ‘Oh, we want to be on it too.’ It’s a thrilling and almost scary thing to have this idea that something you say will be heard by person in charge.
"I mean, I’ve made jokes, but also, I was pretty dumb and not much better now, but there’s jokes that I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, I was on the wrong side of that.'”
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