Tag: Tina Fey (Page 3 of 3)

Please, won’t you lend a television critic a hand?

June 4, 2009 /

The Television Critics Association has officially begun the gearing-up process for its 25th annual awards, which will honor the finest work of the 2008-09 season as selected by the association’s 200-plus member critics and journalists. One of those members is yours truly, and I figured I’d see what the readers of Premium Hollywood had to say about the nominations and who they’d like to see win the various categories. I’ll have to submit my votes by June 10th, but since the winners won’t be announced until August 1st (the ceremony takes place at The Langham Huntington Hotel and Spa in Pasadena, CA, with Chelsea Handler opening the ceremony), so speak up quickly. There are a couple of things I’m on the fence about, and I’d be interested to hear your thoughts before I make my final selections.

PROGRAM OF THE YEAR

* “Battlestar Galactica” (SciFi Channel)
* “Lost” (ABC)
* “Mad Men” (AMC)
* “Saturday Night Live” (NBC)
* “The Shield” (FX)

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN COMEDY

* “30 Rock” (NBC)
* “The Big Bang Theory” (CBS)
* “The Daily Show” (Comedy Central)
* “How I Met Your Mother” (CBS)
* “The Office” (NBC)

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN DRAMA

* “Breaking Bad” (AMC)
* “Friday Night Lights” (NBC/DirecTV)
* “Lost” (ABC)
* “Mad Men” (AMC)
* “The Shield” (FX)

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT MOVIES, MINI-SERIES AND SPECIALS

* Summer Olympic Coverage (NBC)
* “24: Redemption” (Fox)
* “Generation Kill” (HBO)
* “Grey Gardens” (HBO)
* “Taking Chance” (HBO)

OUTSTANDING NEW PROGRAM OF THE YEAR

“Fringe” (Fox)
“The Mentalist” (CBS)
“No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” (HBO)
“True Blood” (HBO)
“United States of Tara” (Showtime)

INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN COMEDY

* Alec Baldwin (“30 Rock”)
* Steve Carell (“The Office”)
* Tina Fey (“30 Rock”)
* Neil Patrick Harris (“How I Met Your Mother”)
* Jim Parsons (“The Big Bang Theory”)

INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN DRAMA

* Glenn Close (“Damages”)
* Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”)
* Walton Goggins (“The Shield”)
* Jon Hamm (“Mad Men”)
* Hugh Laurie (“House”)

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN CHILDREN’S PROGRAMMING

* “Camp Rock” (The Disney Channel)
* “The Electric Company” (PBS)
* “Nick News” (Nickelodeon)
* “Sid the Science Kid” (PBS)
* “Yo Gabba Gabba” (Nickelodeon)

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN NEWS & INFORMATION

* “60 Minutes” (CBS)
* “The Alzheimer’s Project” (HBO)
* “Frontline” (PBS)
* “The Rachel Maddow Show” (MSNBC)
* “We Shall Remain” (PBS)

HERITAGE AWARD

* “ER” (NBC)
* “M*A*S*H” (CBS)
* “Saturday Night Live” (NBC)
* “The Shield” (FX)
* “Star Trek” (NBC)

24, Battlestar Galactica, External Entertainment, External TV, Friday Night Lights, Lost, News, Saturday Night Live, TCA Press Tour, The Office, The Shield, TV, TV Action, TV Cartoons, TV Comedies, TV Dramas, TV Reality, TV Sci-Fi

Bullz-Eye’s TV Girlfriends, Round One: Hot and Smart

January 30, 2009 /

Bullz-Eye TV Girlfriends: Hot and Smart

Our inspiration was innocuous enough: as fervent “24” watchers – and occasional haters – the entire Bullz-Eye staff fell head over heels for one of the terror thriller’s female leads. Smart but challenging, tough but vulnerable, every minute that she wasn’t on screen – provided Jack wasn’t killing or maiming someone, of course – was just wasted time. Eventually, we declared her to be the official girlfriend of Bullz-Eye, because she was the only girl we could all agree on. We’re talking, of course, about…

Chloe O’Brian.

Chloe O'BrianWhat, you were thinking Michelle Dessler? Nina Myers? Kim Bauer? First Lady Sherry Palmer? Mandy the bisexual assassin? Good guesses all, but none of them hold a candle to Chloe and her delightfully quirky “personality disorder,” as her supervisor Bill Buchanan succinctly put it. Once we had christened her, though, we wanted more girlfriends. Eventually we went all “Big Love” on the boob tube (oh man, do we deserve to be slapped for that one) and started appropriating women from dozens of shows to join our burgeoning harem.

And now, our harem is having its debutante ball, its season premiere, if you will. We have hand-selected 100 women from the last 40 years of television and put them into ten categories, based on personality type, career, intelligence (or lack thereof) and even marital status. We’ll unveil a new list each month, and you, gentle reader, will tell us which ones you would most like to have as your girlfriend. Once we’ve whittled the list down to one girlfriend from each category, we’ll pit them against each other and get the hell out of the way.

With that in mind, it is our great pleasure to introduce the first group: Hot and Smart.

Liz Lemon (Tina Fey, “30 Rock”)
Liz Lemon With her quirky sense of humor, social ineptness and those sexy librarian glasses, Liz Lemon may be the only true-blue nerd on our list. That, of course, is anything but an insult. As the head writer for NBC’s “TGS with Tracy Jordan,” Liz doesn’t have a whole lot of free time to date, and even when she does go out, chances are she’ll figure out a way to sabotage the whole thing. But Liz’s foibles merely make her that much more endearing, even if the incessant “tick-tick-tick” of her internal clock understandably makes us a little nervous. Then again, there are worse things in life than settling down with an attractive, intelligent and successful woman who loves junk food, “Star Wars” and a good joke. Her boss, Jack Donaghy, still suspects that Liz may be a lesbian, but we’re not ashamed to admit that the mere possibility only heightens our interest in her. Plus, she kind of looks like the beautiful (if slightly crazy) Sarah Palin.

Dr. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson, “The X-Files”)
Smart, tough, beautiful – Scully is an insecure man’s worst nightmare. She challenged and contradicted Mulder at every turn, and even though she was usually some version of wrong, it never deterred her. Always the skeptic, she somewhat grounded her partner by demanding some sort of logic and scientific proof. Wrangling Mulder was like herding cats, but Scully might have had a little feline in her as well – she avoided death on several occasions leading to the theory that she was, in fact, immortal. It’s more likely that she was just too stubborn to die. She stared down countless psychopaths, supernatural beings, aliens — you name it — and always came back for more. This quality — her fierce and undying loyalty — was her greatest trait. True, the woman could be a giant pain in the ass, but Fox always knew that she would have his back, and that’s why he eventually fell in love with her. And really, who can blame him?

To see the rest of Bullz-Eye’s Hot & Smart TV Girlfriends and vote for your favorite, click here. We will announce the winner – and the nominees for our next group, Pretty, Vacant – on Friday, February 27.

Actresses, TV, TV Action, TV Comedies, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

I heart Tina Fey.

October 11, 2006 /

Seriously, I really do. She’s totally the kind of woman who I’d make a fool of myself over if I were still single…but I’m not, so I won’t. And I was very proud of myself for keeping my cool when I got to talk to both Fey and her “30 Rock” co-star, Jane Krakowski, about their new show. Clearly, I was more focused on Tina than Jane, but, honestly, that’s more because – as I explain to Jane – I hadn’t yet seen the new version of the pilot when I was talking to the two of them. (Krakowski was added after the fact, as you’ll read below.) In closing, let me just say that it’s a good thing it was a phone call rather than an in-person conversation; it allowed me to get away with victoriously pumping my fist in the air whenever I succeeded in making Tina Fey laugh.

Bullz-Eye: Tina, do you happen to recall the obscenities that you uttered when you first heard about “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip”?

Tina Fey: (Laughs) I swear so much all the time, anyway, that it probably wouldn’t even have interrupted my constant flow of swearing. That was probably happening over just the quality of my lunch.

BE: Did you find yourself a little disconcerted knowing that there was going to be a similar-premised show on the air at the same time?

TF: Well, it’s funny, because I had friends coming up to me, saying, like, “Oh, I’m so sorry that you’re not going to get to do your show!” And I said, “Well, y’know, I haven’t really heard anything…” And, really, within the same day, (NBC President) Kevin Reilly called me at home to assure me that we were still…because we were in pre-production for the pilot, and he assured me that we were still going to shoot the pilot and that he believed in both shows, and so I took him at his word. And so far, so good.

BE: And I’m one of those who has not seen the revised pilot yet, but I’m led to understand that, Jane, you’re taking over the role that more or less belonged to Rachel (Dratch) in the original pilot…?

Jane Krakowski: Um, well, I’m playing the star of “The Girlie Show,” which is the fictional show within the show. The role has been quite rewritten, I would say, and made a little bit different, but I love the show so much, and I was so thrilled to be asked to join into the cast.

TF: And what sort of what happened was, once we realized after doing the pilot that we were never going to see sketches, then we wanted to take Rachel, who’s a sketch player, and use her differently. She’s still in the show and she’s going to play a series of characters; if you do get a chance to see the revised pilot, you’ll see she plays a cat wrangler in that pilot, and then she’ll come back another week as a different character, and a week or two after that, she’ll come back as a different character.

BE: How much of Tracy Morgan’s character is inspired by Dave Chappelle?

TF: Well… (laughs) …I will say that I don’t know Dave – I’ve barely ever met him – but I do know Tracy, and, so, I would say that it’s primarily Tracy if Tracy were nuts, more than anybody else. But I think anything any celebrity does, let alone an African-American celebrity, is gonna be fair game for Tracy to do. Maybe Tracy will leave a bag with a million dollars in jewelry in the airport, I don’t know!

BE: Will “The Girly Show” have guest hosts or celebrity guests?

TF: I don’t think it will. I don’t think it’s that kind of show…unless all of us change our mind and it does. But I don’t think that’s really on the horizon right now. I’ve spent nine years writing for celebrity guest hosts, and I’m very excited to write for just my cast.

BE: Tina, what “Saturday Night Live” joke or sketch are you the most proud of?

TF: Oh, that’s a good question! Most proud of… (Pauses) I wrote a sketch once called “Census.” It was about a census taker, and it was just Christopher Walken and Tim Meadows, just the two of them, and that was maybe my favorite sketch that I ever wrote. Unfortunately, it was on the same show as “we need more cowbell,” so it has long since been forgotten! But that was maybe the best show that we had in the whole nine years that I was here, that show with Christopher Walken.

BE: Was there ever a sketch that didn’t make it on the air that you were really thought should’ve?

TF: Usually, the ones that don’t make it, it’s for very good cause! They’re usually pretty stinky!

BE: And a throwaway closer: has anyone ever approached you that was writing an unofficial biography of Lindsay Lohan, looking for dirt from the set of “Mean Girls”?

TF: (Laughs) No…but I am open to offers if they’re extremely lucrative.

Interviews, TV, TV Comedies

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