Tina Fey on Athletes, Almonds, and Why She Can't Get Her Kids to Watch 30 Rock

Travis Kelce chugged a beer courtside at a Cavs playoff game and the internet called him classless. His brother Jason called it elegant. Travis called it keeping composure. The pinky was up. This is the level of discourse New Heights operates on, and honestly, it works, because by the time Tina Fey shows up twenty minutes later to talk about Timothy Chalamet’s manspreading, you’re already in exactly the right headspace.

Before the guests arrive, there’s actual news. Travis announced he’s a minority investor in the Cleveland Guardians, the baseball team he grew up watching, the one he once photographed himself wearing a Yankees hat to. The Yankees hat, he admits, ‘will probably be my last tweet ever.’ The investment is genuinely sweet in the way that only works if you believe the sincerity, and with Travis it’s hard not to. He talks about jumping on the Rapid with his family, buying programs with his dad, dreaming about playing for them one day. Jason, predictably, has a suggestion: a life-size velcro cutout of owner Paul Dolan that loses clothing with each win. Travis declines. The Guardians have the second-best record in the AL. They don’t need the shenanigans.

Tina Fey Is a Philadelphia Sports Fan Who Got Her First Word From a Hockey Game

The Four Seasons interview is loose and warm and moves at the pace of people who are actually happy to be talking to each other. Fey explains that her husband is from Garrettsville, Ohio, which is why the Cleveland references in 30 Rock were so precise. She’s delighted to learn that ‘Flee to the Cleave’ is a bit they’ve been doing on the pod. ‘I’m stealing Flee to Cleave,’ she says, before being corrected: it was Alec Baldwin’s line originally. She takes the correction graciously. She has been doing this a long time.

I got a big I got a big old can. And so in the back like God, listen, as Amy Polar would say, God is fair. Timothy’s legs cooked the front. My big old can was taken the back.

That’s her explanation of the viral Chalamet manspreading photo from the Knicks game, and it is a perfect bit of physical comedy delivered entirely through text. She also clarifies that Chalamet was ‘nothing but lovely, super friendly,’ which is the sort of thing you say when you have been in show business long enough to know that the internet is going to clip whatever you say next. Then she says the God is fair line anyway. Good instincts.

The SNL section is where she’s most interesting and least guarded. She talks about being the first female head writer at the show, about feeling a responsibility to help women get on air without anyone telling her she had to, about writing for Molly Shannon and Cheri Oteri and Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler and calling it ‘the hits kept coming.’ She also describes a Will Ferrell sketch about a man who looked like Gabe Kaplan, the Welcome Back Cotter guy, that destroyed at the table read and died completely on air. ‘Even Will face planted,’ she says, ‘was almost reassuring.’ Reassuring that bombing is survivable. That the floor doesn’t open up. That you try again next week.

I always say like in their defense there had only been like three head writers before that because there people had stayed a long time so it wasn’t like there were 50 and then but um it was very dude centric when I first got there.

She also tells Travis he was a genuinely good SNL host, which he already knew but clearly still needed to hear. Her reasoning is sharp: athletes make great hosts because they’re coachable, they perform under pressure, and they don’t have anything at stake in the way a movie star does. ‘Nothing’s really at stake because you’re like, I’m an athlete,’ she says. Travis responds by describing his table reads as feeling like middle school reading aloud. Both things are true.

Nate Bargatze Adopted a Dog Named Philly and Is Building a Theme Park

Bargatze is the nicest man in stand-up, which is a real designation that Jason literally uses in the intro, and he earns it. He’s warm and genuinely funny and has the specific talent of saying something absurd in a completely flat voice and waiting for the room to catch up. He talks about his new movie The Bread Winner, about shooting in Philadelphia, about adopting a rescue dog from a Philly arena event and naming her Philly. The dog now sleeps in his daughter’s bed. He tried to make her a road dog. His daughter had other plans.

I’ve already got you know I got a suite in it already. Like I’m already locked.

That’s him on Nashville’s new dome, where the Super Bowl is coming in 2030. He is prepared. He also casually mentions he is opening a theme park called Nate Land. He says it will be a real theme park, with real roller coasters, partly because Nashville had one called Opryland that shut down when he was in high school and partly because, at this point in his career, nobody is telling him no. He also helped recruit a quarterback to Vanderbilt by promising to put him in a movie. The kid is in the movie. NIL is something.

His welcome to Hollywood moment is watching Dave Chappelle walk into a tiny New York comedy club still in costume from taping Chappelle’s Show and just sit there and work material for eight people. Bargatze is brand new at the time, watching the most famous comedian in the world grind a room the size of a walk-in closet, and thinking: that’s the path. Not the fame. The grinding. He went on after Chappelle sometimes. He describes the experience with the economy of someone who has had time to process it: ‘Once he’s done it’s like whoever goes up after him you’re going to bomb pretty hard. Night’s over.’