Tina Fey's Balancing Act

(Getty Images)

Tina Fey knows what it's like to have a few balls in the air. In a new interview with Parade magazine, the Saturday Night Live alum and 30 Rock creator says, “I think my generation has been slightly tricked in that you’re really encouraged to try to have it all.”

Fey admits she struggles to balance work and spending time with her 2-year-old daughter, Alice. “We wrap shooting on a normal day by 7 p.m. Most times, I then bring three or four writers home with me. I’ll put Alice to bed before they come over, then we continue writing until I can no longer stay awake.”

Her life, she says, is "very full. But I would be lying if I said there were not tears involved at home occasionally — just occasionally. Last spring, my husband was trying to joke around with me. I was saying, ‘Please stop talking. I’m trying to go to sleep,’ and he kept talking. Out of the blue — he still mentions it, that I had the most terrifying look on my face — I just went, ‘Stop it!!!’ and shoved him across the bed. The life of the working parent is constantly saying, ‘This is impossible,’ and then you just keep doing it.”

Fey blossomed as a writer while taking comedy classes at Chicago’s legendary Second City space. “I was never an audience favorite particularly. But I knew that I had helped build a lot of the scenes everyone liked. That was my contribution.”

Now she’s got a hit show with 30 Rock, but says, “I often feel like a complete fool. I’m here laboring over this tiny show so much, and around me people are making money by the fistful. It’s like, ‘Oh, man, how can I turn my personality into a line of crappy products?’ Rachael Ray sells, like, spoons. I could sell pencils.”