Step away, Regina George—there's another mean girl in town.
Mean Girls creator Tina Fey is sharing a grand revelation. During her high school years, she was the mean girl of the halls.
"I admit it openly," she told NET-A-PORTER.com's The EDIT. "That was a disease that had to be conquered...It's a bad coping mechanism—but when you feel less than (in high school, everyone feels less than everyone else for different reasons) in your mind it's a way of leveling the playing field. Though of course it's not.
Now the mother of two young daughters, Fey cautions those who may mimic her behavior today.
"Saying something terrible about someone else does not actually level the playing field," she declared. "If I meet a girl of 14 or 15 today who is that kind of girl, I am secretly, in my body, afraid. Even though I'm 45."
The upcoming SNL host also shared the initial reason she became a comedian—to cope with the fact that she was a "normal-looking person."
"For me it was about hitting age 13 and realizing, ‘OK, I'm not going to glide by on looks. I'm a normal-looking person, but that's not going to be where my bread is buttered,'" she added. "The desire to be funny...is a coping mechanism, another way of ingratiating yourself."
However, her new approach had its downsides, particularly when it came to attracting the teenage boys.
"When you're 13 and trying to be funny around boys, you end up mocking them and it backfires. You terrify them," Fey admitted.
Still, one fellow comedian was far from scaring the boys off—her name was Amy Poehler.
"I met [her] in Chicago in 1993, when we were both studying improvisation," Fey recollected. "She was the cool girl. I remember counseling so many guys who were just immediately in love with her. It was a phase that every Chicago improviser had to go through— ‘I'm secretly in love with Amy.' ‘Of course you are, I know.'"
It's no mystery to Fey why her celebrity BFF was so well-liked. In fact, it's the same qualities that attracted the boys to Poehler that make it so easy now for Fey to successfully collaborate with her time and time again.
"Amy is very warm, a great person to have on your team in any capacity. We work together best...by doing our own thing next to each other."
However, don't mistake this powerful pair as anything but equal.
"I do wonder, if we tried to do five years on a series together, if it would be like, ‘Wait a minute, which one of us is the boss?'" Fey posed. "Truthfully, I think we are two Alphas.
To see The EDIT's full interview with Tina Fey, go here or download the free EDIT app at the App Store and Google Play.