The ‘SNL’ Cast Member Who Called Tina Fey the C-Word
Back in 2008, Tina Fey went on an epic Weekend Update rant about people who call Hillary Clinton a bitch. “Let me say something about that: She is,” Fey snarled. “And so am I. And so is this one (Amy Poehler). You know what? Bitches get stuff done. That’s why Catholic schools use nuns as teachers and not priests. Those nuns are mean old clams, and they sleep on cots and they’re allowed to hit you. And at the end of the school year, you hated those bitches. But you knew the capital of Vermont.”
With a cry of “Bitch is the new black!” Fey let the world know she wasn’t afraid of what people thought of her. As head writer at Saturday Night Live, her main job was getting stuff done, not winning popularity contests. But that perspective sometimes meant she was on the ugly end of harsh words from her SNL coworkers.
“Did you confront a staffer at Saturday Night Live after they called you a c***?” Howard Stern asked Fey in 2015. “That’s the worst thing you can call a woman, I think.”
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Fey confirmed that the incident did indeed happen, though she was understandably reluctant to name names — at least at first. “You know, we’ve since made up,” she explained.
“Tina,” Howard implored. “Who had the nerve to call you a c***? You were the head writer on Saturday Night Live and someone had the nerve to call you a c***?”
“Yeah, and I love him so much,” Fey sighed.
Hey, you had a fight, Stern reasoned. Stuff happens.
And with that, Fey spilled the beans. “It was Colin Quinn.”
What happened to provoke Quinn’s outburst? The reason isn’t clear to Fey. She was trying to help the comic with a show he was working on. “I think his anxiety about the writing of the show spilled over because it was very random,” she revealed. “I was like, ‘What?’”
Quinn left an angry message for Fey that included the slur. “He left evidence!” exclaimed Stern.
“Usually if someone calls you that, you’re like, ‘I know what I did,’” Fey laughed. But this time, she was baffled at what she’d done to provoke such a harsh voicemail.
By the time Fey made her Stern appearance, she had no hard feelings. When Stern noted Quinn wasn’t in her new movie, Fey reminded him that she’d asked Quinn to be on 30 Rock three times. “He turned us down every time, and then I saw him on Girls and I was like, ‘He’s dead to me!’”
But all’s well that ends well. “We reconnected at the SNL 40 (anniversary party),” Fey assured Stern. “We’re good.”
