For a long time Tina Fey could do no wrong.
She was the undisputed Queen of Comedy who knew how to punch up and get the laughs.
Then in 2017, during an appearance on Saturday Night Live, Fey slipped up.
She made a misstep which led fans, for the very first time, to question her ability to read the vibe and to really understand the root of an issue.
Fey wrote and starred in the now infamous “sheetcaking” sketch about the Charlottesville white nationalist rally. The basic message of the sketch was that instead of demonstrating against the rally, people should just eat cake.
Fey recently told David Letterman on his Netflix special, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, she now regrets the sketch.
“You try your best, you try to have your eyes open, you try to be mindful, but it’s also a fast-moving train,” Fey told Letterman.
“I felt like a gymnast who did a very solid routine and broke her ankle on the landing. Because I think it’s in the last two, three sentences of the piece, I think, that I chumped it. And I screwed up, and the implication was that I was telling people to give up and not be active and not fight. That was not my intention, obviously.”
Filled with emotion, Fey then explained to Letterman how she would have liked to have ended the sketch in hindsight.
“If I had a time machine, I would end the piece by saying… ‘Fight them in every way except the way that they want’,” she said.
During the interview the comedians also discussed the lack of women in comedy, and Fey confronted Letterman about not hiring female writers.
“I didn’t know why there weren’t women writers. There was no policy against women writers,” Letterman said.
“I always thought, well, geez, if I were a woman I don’t know if I would want to write on my nickel-and-dime, dog-and-pony show anyway because we’re on at 12:30.”
“Yeah, we did want to write on it, though,” Fey responded.
“But that is my ignorance, and I feel bad for that, and it’s changing, has changed,” Letterman responded.
You can watch David Letterman chat to Tina Fey, Jay-Z, Barack Obama and more on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction on Netflix.