Check out this new Garnier Nutrisse TV Commercial with Tina Fey!
“Admission” DVD & Blu-ray Release Date
The romantic comedy “Admission” starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd appears ready to join the ranks of Blu-ray and DVD on July 9th.
Delay At The Altar on Tina Fey-Steve Carell Comedy ‘Mail Order Groom’
The Warner Bros comedy Mail Order Groom has been pushed to next year. The film, which will re-team Date Night stars Tina Fey and Steve Carell, has been postponed because of scheduling conflicts with other film commitments Fey and Carell have. Fey will next star for Warner Bros in This Is Where I Leave You, the adaptation of the Jonathan Tropper novel that Shawn Levy will direct in May. She has been filming The Muppets…Again! for Disney.
Carell will next star in Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, the adaptation of the Judith Viorst children’s book that Miguel Arteta just committed to direct for Walt Disney. Carell is currently reprising his role as weatherman Brick Tamland in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.
He and Fey will return to Mail Order Groom in 2014.
iVillage Puts Tina Fey to the Test! Is She a Star Student?
In her latest movie, Tina Fey plays a Princeton admissions officer who’s an expert at choosing successful students. To see how much she learned from the role, iVillage decided to put her knowledge to the test. Because she’s incredibly nice, she agreed to play — and because she’s a total smarty-pants, she passed with flying colors!
In this iVillage exclusive video, the star of Admission (in theaters March 22) passes judgment on hypothetical students (Amy Poehler! Honey Boo Boo!) and showcases her skills in spelling, vocabulary and celebrity analogies.
‘Admission’ Star Tina Fey’s Admissions Interview
What makes you special?
It seems like an absurd question to ask, but thousands of high school seniors are forced to answer it during their college admissions interviews come each winter.
Even more absurd than asking a teenager is asking multi-hyphenate Tina Fey what makes her special. She’s a comic genius, actress, writer…she hosted the Golden Globes this year! She’s clearly a gem.
That didn’t stop us from asking her, though.
Check out our video interview with “Admission” star Fey, in which we grill her about life-changing books, her passions and, of course, what makes her so special.
Tina Fey and Paul Rudd Talk “Admission,” Amy Poehler, and Their Unaired Pilot “Soundtracks Live”
When we first heard that Tina Fey and Paul Rudd were starring in a movie together, our mind exploded. Two of the funniest, most damn likable people vibin’ on screen in a romantic comedy? Nothing could be better, except maybe world peace. The best part about all this, though? We weren’t disappointed!
Directed by About A Boy screenwriter Paul Weitz, Admission (out Friday) stars Fey as a Princeton admissions officer who, through the encouragement of a hippie-like alternative high school principal, played by Rudd, discovers that one of her applicants might be the son she gave up for adoption. As expected, Fey and Rudd have palpable chemistry that takes this rom-com a step above the rest of the pile of blah in its genre that’ve been released recently.
We got a chance to sit down with the comedians during the New York press day of the film, where they talked about everything from getting into character to the enviable bromance of the comedy community.
On relating to their characters:
Tina Fey: It was a world of not only college admissions, but of people who lived their whole lives in a college environment and how insular and weird that can become. And I also really like the story and I thought there’s really nice, warm heart to it.
I remember failing my own Princeton interview. My mom wanted me to apply since I was a kid. I remember it was kind of like the scene with Nat in the movie where he goes to the alumni interview and just from the minute you get there you’re like, “Nah, this isn’t gonna…” I had a long plaid skirt on and a suit jacket, and I just wasn’t bringing it. Unlike now, when I am dazzling.
Paul Rudd: A lot of what Tina just said. I liked that the character I was playing was an adult and I was interested mainly in the fact that he traveled the world and did all of these things that from maybe an outside perspective can seem to be humanitarian gestures, magnanimous gestures, endless gestures. You really wouldn’t think there was a selfish side to him. That [relationship] with his son was also interesting to me.
On their own college experiences:
Fey: I went to the University of Virginia and I came from suburban Philadelphia. It was ‘88 to ‘92 that I was there. UVA was a great school and, for me, it was culturally different. I came from a suburb where everyone was half Italian and half Irish, Greek, whatever, and it was really the most white people I have ever seen. It’s the most beautiful blonde girls with long ponytails and hoop earrings and, like, they rode horses and stuff. It was entertaining to me though. I felt as though I have gone to Sweden or something. But I got involved with the drama department there and that’s where I found all the more oddly shaped people and we sort of stuck together.
Rudd: I never applied to any colleges. My parents are European, I don’t think they follow the same process.
On getting starstuck and working with Lily Tomlin:
Rudd: I am still surprised that I get to be in the same room as half the people that I am working with. In particular, in the last year, I was able to work with people who have lived in very rarified air, in my opinion—Albert Brooks, Lily Tomlin, Jack Nicholson. But it is always exciting. It is exciting for me not only as an actor—the process and all that stuff, that just sounds so boring to talk about anyway—but just as a fan of people to see them doing things in front of our faces. It’s amazing.
Fey: With Lily, we [improvised] a tiny bit. And it’s certainly not that you’re always improvising to try to find jokes. In this case, it makes you ready to react if someone does something different. You can definitely tell Lily is not only an expert at it, but kind of thrilled by any change in a take. She definitely notices and responds, like that one scene with our two moms meeting each other. That was probably the most improvisation.
On the tight-knit comedy community in Hollywood:
Fey: So many STDs. I’m kidding! Anytime you can use someone you know for a long time, or comes sort of recommended by someone you know—like I emailed Amy when I found out [Paul and I are] doing the movie together and I was like, “Is Paul going to be nice to me, or is he a cool guy?” And she was like, “You guys are going to be so nice together.”
Rudd: I emailed Amy too saying that. [Laughs.]
Fey: And she really said that I would not be very nice.
Paul: I mean, you have to take that up with Amy. I am not getting in the middle of this.
On their unaired VH1 pilot Soundtracks Live:
Fey: It was a really cool thing where Amy Poehler and Amy Miles ran it. It was this thing where they take a movie like Sixteen Candles and act out the movie on a stage and a band would play the soundtrack live and people would sing the song.
Rudd: It may have been around 9 years ago? It started in UCB, where it was a live show. I had a few different parts. I sang a song in the end with The Vapors called, “Turning Japanese.”
Fey: And I played one of the grandmothers.
Rudd: You and Will Arnett were two of the grandparents. Amy Miles was Molly Ringwald. John Glaser was Anthony Michael Hall.
Fey: It exists in Amy Poehler’s living room, on VHS.
GQ Interview
This month the former Liz Lemon plays a hard-core Princeton admissions officer in the schmaltzy-sweet Admission, her first big role since the dearly departed 30 Rock wrapped this winter. So we decided to have her answer some questions, college-essay-style.
Describe a time when you faced adversity and overcame it.
A. The end of 30 Rock..
“I’ve always said my only hope is that whenever the series ends, we’ll know in advance and be able to write the ending. So we were lucky and had good closure. We got to say goodbye and have a big party. And on the final day of shooting, we had a camera delay, so Tracy Morgan started an impromptu dance-off. I’d give him the Miss Congeniality award. His body doesn’t move much, but there’s a lot of spirit behind it.”
Why would you like to attend this exclusive school?
A. She doesn’t, really.
“The nice thing is, there are hundreds of excellent colleges. People focus too much on getting their kids into one of the same three or four schools. I mean, I don’t have an Ivy League background, and I’m currently unemployed!”
Will you be applying for financial aid?
A. Sounds like it.
“30 Rock has never been the financial juggernaut that almost any other program is, so I think in a hundred years I’m going to get a syndication check for maybe…$70? So I’ll be able to rent a Zipcar and drive it around Manhattan and then park it.”
Admission: Unscripted
The completed interview that Tina Fey and Paul Rudd did for “Unscripted” is now online – watch it below!
Tina Fey Goes ‘Inside The Actors Studio’
After 138 episodes and almost as many Emmy wins, Tina Fey’s 30 Rock signed off this January. “All things must come to an end,” she said at the time, “and I’ll be heartbroken to leave all these people, but it was time and the right thing to do. We’ve told the whole story.”
But the 30 Rock we’ve come to love almost never existed as it was not the original idea Tina Fey went to NBC with, as she reveals in this ETonline exclusive sneak peek at Fey’s Inside The Actors Studio episode.
So what was her initial pitch, and how did Liz Lemon, Jack Donaghy and the rest of TGS’ band of lovable lunatics come to be? Watch and find out!
Inside The Actors Studio March 19 at 8 p.m. on Bravo.
Admission Stars Tina Fey and Paul Rudd
Considering how long Tina Fey and Paul Rudd have been making people laugh, you would think they would have worked together by now, but somehow they’ve been circling around each other for years, working with many of the same people but never actually working together.
Fortunately, that situation has now been rectified with Admission, adapted from the book by Jean Hanff Korelitz and directed by Paul Weitz (About a Boy, In Good Company), in which Fey plays Portia Nathan, an admissions officer at Princeton University who finds herself questioning her strict policies when she meets John Pressman (Rudd), the director of an alternative New Hampshire high school who is convinced one of his students (Nat Wolff) may be the son that Portia gave up for adoption 18 years earlier.
The movie is funny and romantic and on par with some of Weitz’s popular earlier films but more than anything, it shows that putting Fey and Run on screen together may have been the filmmaker’s smartest casting move. Of course that’s not to take away from the likes of Lily Tomlin, Wallace Shawn, Michael Sheen or the rest of the cast who all bring something to the movie.
ComingSoon.net spoke with Fey and Rudd a few weeks back at the New York junket, which happened to take place shortly after the series finale of Fey’s long-running show “30 Rock.”
In the video interview below, Fey told us why she decided to fit this movie into her busy schedule while Rudd talked about working with Fey compared to some of his other comedy leading ladies he’s worked with over the years. Fey talked about whether she needed to do research into Princeton admissions and Rudd talked about some of his own challenges in creating the role. Fey talked about having so many writers on set and how she differentiated Portia from her “30 Rock” character Liz Lemon and Rudd told us why he’s never appeared on the show.