The funny actresses are promoting their new film Baby Mama and they talked to People en Español about it
The funny girls that cracked us up for years on Saturday Night Live, are now starring in the comedy Baby Mama. The movie centers on Kate (Tina Fey), a successful executive at a food company in Philadelphia that hasn’t found the love of her life, so she decides to become a single mother. However, after several failed attempts to conceive a baby, she decides to hire Angie (Amy Poehler) to carry Kate’s fertilized embryo to term.
How did you two end up working together again?
Tina Fey: Michael McCullers (screen writer and director) came to us and said that he wanted to do a movie for the two of us.
Were there moments where you crack each other up and ruin a take?
Amy Poehler: That was a fun day when we shot that scene where Angie (Poehler character) gives birth. There’s always a lot of birthing movies that never really talk about how foul people’s mouths get. So that was a fun thing. It was all one long shot, so as Tina was pushing me down the hall, we got to do a lot of stuff and grab a lot of stuff and there were real extras who were genuinely startled by me yelling, so that was a lot of fun?
Tina Fey: I think the take that’s in the movie was the last take of the night. Amy asked Michael, “Is this the last take probably? And he said, “Uh huh,” so she pulled the Christmas tree down, ripped an IV out of a patient. She made sure she was enough of an obedient good girl that she didn’t want to wreck the set until it was the last take and then she tore the place up’.
Can you talk about the first time the two of you met?
Amy Poehler: I was like: “I finally found the woman I want to marry.” (laughter)?
Tina Fey: And then I had to break it to her that that’s not legal?
Amy Poehler: Yeah. We met in 1993 in Chicago. I had heard about Tina on the streets before I met her, but we were both new improvisers who had moved from where we were going to college to study improv, and we performed together as an improv team named after a bad porn movie called ‘Inside Vladimir.
Tina Fey: Gay porn movie
Amy Poehler: Gay porn movie, not necessarily bad.
Tina Fey: No, excellent (laughter).
Amy Poehler: So we were the two women on that improv team, so that’s where we met. We knew each other when we were just big-eyebrowed, poor, badly dressed.
Tina Fey: I had also heard of Amy before… we were in separate classes, but it was like, “Oh, this girl is really good.” And then we ended up on the same team together. We really hit it off.I think we’ve always had a mutual respect for each other because we both took improv super seriously at the time.
Amy Poehler: Yeah, we did.
Tina Fey: At the time… and we still kinda do.
I like the fact that Amy’s character chooses the name Stefani (like Gwen Stefani) for her daughter in the movie. What do you think about the crazy name celebrities choose for their kids?
Amy Poehler: I think the other option for my daughter’s name in the movie was Christina with an X (Xtina).
Tina Fey: I like interesting names, too. My daughter’s middle name is sort of unusual, but they’re all family names. I do think when you have a kid you gotta try and think: Okay, when this kid is an adult, how is this name going to suit this person. I like the name Apple.
Amy Poehler: I’m just gonna name my kids numbers. New Dude, Little Dude, Old Dude, and Eight: George Foreman (laughter).