Tina Fey Working on ‘Mean Girls’ Musical Thanks to Ellie Kemper’s Pregnancy

tina fey
During an interview this week with TV Guide’s Damian Holbrook at the Tribeca Film Festival, Tina Fey announced that she has begun work on a Broadway musical adaptation of her 2004 hit Mean Girls, Deadline reports. The writer and actress has teamed up with husband and composer Jeff Richmond and lyricist Nell Benjamin to put some serious work into the musical while she has downtime this summer.

The downtime comes courtesy of Ellie Kemper, star of Fey’s hit Netflix show The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, who announced last week that she and husband Michael Koman are expecting their first child. The pregnancy is impeccably timed, as season two of Kimmy Schmidt just came out a few days ago, and filming on the third season has yet to begin. Fey and company are capitalizing on this development to get the long-talked about Mean Girls project rolling.

“We’re working on the musical adaptation, and thanks to Ellie Kemper’s pregnancy, we have this whole summer to work on it,” said Fey to an audience of festival-goers.

The two broached a variety of topics, from Fey’s recent back-to-back movies Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and Sisters, her stints on 30 Rock and SNL, to the process of creating Kimmy Schmidt. On that front, Fey revealed that she originally filmed the show thinking that it would air on NBC.

“We made most of Kimmy Schmidt season one thinking it was going to be on NBC, and it wasn’t until we were shooting the second-to-last episode that we started to realize we were probably not going to be on NBC,” Fey regaled to the crowds amusement. “We’d made the show clean, which I liked, but it was not really a broadcast show, it was darker.”

The move to Netflix was ultimately a good one for Fey and the show, as the ad-free service allows more time to flesh out each individual episode. “NBC is 21 minutes and 15 seconds after you take out the commercials. On Netflix, they really want you to make the episodes as long as possible for the amount of time you have.”

That formula is obviously working for the show, as its received rave reviews across its first two seasons and will likely be around for a few more.

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Bill Tressler

Bill is a writer and comedy enthusiast from New York. An avid gamer and podcast fan, he strives to always toe the line between charming irreverence and grating honesty.
Bill Tressler
Bill Tressler
Bill is a writer and comedy enthusiast from New York. An avid gamer and podcast fan, he strives to always toe the line between charming irreverence and grating honesty.