Amy Poehler and Tina Fey discuss their best friendship, fill us with joy
All I want for Christmas is to be the third wheel to Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. Since for right now, that is only going to happen in my dreams (I’m optimistic about the future), I’ll have to settle for checking out their brand new movie, Sisters, in theaters. The two funny ladies play — what else? — sisters, fulfilling some long-standing prophecy. Though Tina and Amy are not blood related in real life, they practically are sisters, and in a new interview with the New York Times they talk about best friends, feminism, and how fame hasn’t changed them.
These two have known each other for over 20 years — they met Chicago, where they both did improv. Then, they were magically brought back together at SNL, where they would hold down the fort as Weekend Update co-anchors. But you already know all of this, because you know the great story of Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, as everyone does. What you probably don’t know is that they have their own set of standards for when they choose a movie.
“When we choose projects, we do have our own internal Bechdel test,” Fey explains, “[in Sisters] these are women who are in conflict, but they’re not in competition. And it is about shaking off roles that they were given early in life that they now grew out of. Whether overtly in the story or not, we definitely are always looking at things that feel true to us.”
Tina and Amy are also incredibly supportive of one another, which is amazing to see. Both have been very outspoken about not trying to compete with one another — or anyone for that matter — and those efforts show. Poehler attributes this attitude to the fact that both of them were, “late bloomers, and thank goodness. It was fortunate… to be able to navigate [life] with a good group of women and keep my head on somewhat straight.”
Those women included Fey, but also former SNL cast member Maya Rudolph, who explains that the group has “this really safe bond that I don’t think anyone else, even our spouses, can really compete with.” Not that they would ever want to compete with it, because that’d get in the way of making us laugh.
They also truly act like sisters, or incredibly close BFFs, with their own shorthand form of communication, which as Poheler describes, is like “quickly mumbling to each other something, usually about someone else in the room.”
The New York Times tries to describes this phenomenon, citing that it’s like “a mind-melded comedy state…connected by some invisible funny beam.” Where can we get one of those for the holidays?
And though they’ve vowed never to host the Oscars together (pause for a solid half hour to weep into a pillow), there are no plans for either one of them to abandon Hollywood or comedy any time soon. Fey’s got more seasons of Kimmy Schmidt to write and produce, and Poehler’s Broad City returns in February. They also plan to check out Sisters when it opens.
“I might stroll into 68th Street [theater] and sit in the back once or twice,” Fey states. “You should definitely go there, definitely buy tickets, because I might be there.”
Poehler, on the other hand, is going for big and splashy for any and all screenings. “I like to wear a very inconspicuous, like, beer hat…And I’ve got like, a jean jacket with a fan picture of me on the back. And headshots of myself, just in case.”
She’s joking, of course. And it’s hilarious. You can read their full interview here, and according to Poehler, Sisters opens, “The same weekend as a little indie movie you probably haven’t heard of called Star Wars.” That’s December 18th.
(Image via Universal.)