Tina Fey is one funny gal, but she's no longer willing to talk about the general idea of women being funny.
The Saturday Night Live alum has become a roaring success in Hollywood for her work on both TV and films, but she doesn't want to be considered the exception to the rule. Instead, Fey wants everyone to realize that women are funny and not make it a big deal. That some still consider it an anomaly baffles both her and her BFF Amy Poehler.
"Amy [Poehler] and I just did two months of press for Sisters and journalists were still bringing up, 'People say women aren't funny,'" she tells Town & Country's April issue. "The next time I'm at a press junket and someone says that, I have to remember to say, 'We need to stop talking about whether women are funny. And we need to acknowledge that black people are funnier than white people. Let's discuss that.'"
And not only does it still irk her that this concept still gets brought up, she's also sick of hearing how "great" a time it is for women in comedy, given the success of other comediennes such as Amy Schumer, Lena Dunham, Mindy Kaling and more.
"Every single interviewer asked, 'Isn't this an amazing time for women in comedy?' People really wanted us to be openly grateful—'Thank you so much!'—and we were like, 'No, it's a terrible time. If you were to really look at it, the boys are still getting more money for a lot of garbage, while the ladies are hustling and doing amazing work for less.'"
Fey would argue that the success of women doesn't need to be addressed, but there still is one concept that plagues women in Hollywood: aging.
"The greatest challenge for me as an actress is just getting older. Trying to play the scene at hand while also trying to hold your face up. Fast-forward to being 68, and it's a glorious act of bravery," she tells the magazine.
"There were people on the Globes in their twenties who were so Botoxed. In their twenties! We've been so conditioned now to never see a real human face, one that moves, with its original teeth," she continues. "Sometimes we forget that there is a choice. I choose not to do this. It's like wearing multiple pairs of Spanx: Good for you, not for me. Not mandatory."
While she won't shove herself into multiple pairs of shapewear, Fey says she will try to stay in shape to the best of her ability.
"I was looking at Jane Fonda last night. And you know why she always looks great? Because there was never a point where you say, 'Hey, remember those two years when Fonda got fat?' It never happened," she explains.
"You just have to keep that baseline. That goddamn baseline."