Tina Fey has passed on some advice to the Sky team behind Saturday Night Live UK.
The 30 Rock star said the “dirty secret” of the NBC version of the show is that its infamous all-night writing marathons are not always necessary.
SNL writers traditionally pen sketches late into the night on a Tuesday before table reads on a Wednesday with the cast and guest presenter.
“Here’s a dirty secret: you don’t have to do it that way,” Fey told the Edinburgh TV Festival, marking her first-ever visit to Scotland. “You could start in the morning.”
During a conversation with Graham Norton reflecting on her career, Fey said it was “intimidating” joining SNL as a writer in 1997 and that the show “was still pretty male” at the time. She grew up watching the comedy and entered a “well-oiled machine.”
Her comments come as Sky ramps up preparations for Saturday Night Live UK ahead of its launch next year in partnership with Lorne Michaels’ Broadway Video.
Talent scouts have been in Edinburgh watching comedy shows, while The Late Late Show With James Corden producer James Longman has been confirmed as showrunner (as first tipped by Deadline).
Earlier in the week, Phil Edgar-Jones, Sky’s executive director of unscripted originals, said he wanted the remake of NBC’s iconic sketch show to bring “chaos” and “noise” to the screen.
“It’s exciting, a little bit scary as well,” he said. Edgar-Jones said the show will be true to the American original but “has to be a very British thing” if it is going to resonate with audiences in the UK.
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