Tina Fey Says “Monolithic Heteronormative” ‘SNL’ Would Have Never Greenlit Bowen Yang’s Iceberg Sketch in Her Day

In a new interview with Variety, Tina Fey discusses the importance of inclusion in comedy writers rooms, and says that diverse voices lead to an openness to new ideas and an acceptance of things that never might have seen the light of day in the past. And as she admitted, a lot of material from the current era wouldn’t have flown back when she was head writer of SNL.

Saturday Night Live has always had a reputation for being a “boys club,” and Fey started at SNL in 1997 when Adam McKay was head writer. She was appointed the show’s first female head writer in 1999, and while she made a huge impression, she admits that it was still hard to break out of old conventions and norms while writing jokes. In the interview, Fey elaborates even more on how the show and its comedy aesthetic have shifted for the better since her time there.

Fey points to a Bowen Yang appearance on Weekend Update from this past April, which was written by SNL co-head writer Anna Drezen, as an example.

“Here’s an example of a piece I thought was hilarious, and I cannot imagine it having survived at SNL when I first worked there,” Fey says. “Bowen Yang playing the iceberg from Titanic on Weekend Update. If they tried to get that piece on in 1997, it wouldn’t have. And nobody would have thought they were boxing them out, but the monolithic heteronormative room — to use some terms — wouldn’t have gotten it, wouldn’t have liked it, and I feel really confident that it wouldn’t have gotten on.”

This is why it’s great to be alive in 2021, so we can have things like Bowen Yang’s perfect line delivery of “What did the autopsy say, ‘They icebergeded?’ No! They drowned, bitch, that’s not me, that’s water.”

And while Fey acknowledges the changes that are taking place in comedy, she has faced her share of backlash, owing to jokes that have been seen as problematic in hindsight, from Blackface on 30 Rock to reinforcing Asian stereotypes on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but she adds that she does try her best to not adhere to that “monolithic,” stereotypical mindset that was once the default setting in her current work.

“When we look at our jokes now, we’re looking for ‘Is this joke going to be perceived as homophobic? Or disrespectful to homeless people?’ Every joke does go through a vetting process, at least on our shows, now,” Fey said.

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