Tina Fey Talks About Her Regrets Over Charlottesville 'SNL' Sketch

Tina Fey has some regrets about her Charlottesville sketch on Saturday Night Live. She has opened up about it during an appearance on the Netflix show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.

Fey did not want to delve into political matters during her sit-down interview with host David Letterman. However, he briefly mentioned her Charlottesville sketch in passing and complimented its execution and writing.

Charlottesville Sketch

Letterman said he thought the sketch was perfect but apparently, it was not for some people. It turns out that there were those who mistook the message behind the writing and criticized Fey.

The host brought up several articles that had blasted Fey, including an essay in the Washington Post that accused the actress of encouraging Americans to stay in their homes rather than fight back against the white supremacists.

The Mean Girls writer addressed the controversy for the first time and admitted that she messed up parts of the sketch. Fey likened herself to a gymnast who did a very solid routine only to break her ankle on the landing. She admitted that it was within the last two or three sentences that she "chunked it."

"I screwed up, and the implication was that I was telling people to give up and not be active and to not fight. That was not my intention, obviously," Fey explained.

Letterman played a clip of the Charlottesville sketch and in the final line, Fey urged all prospective protestors not to show up and eat sheet cake instead. She said to let the "morons scream into the empty air."

Fight Back

Fey then explained the meaning behind her sketch. The cake, she said, did not symbolize defeat, but a refusal to engage with the white supremacists in their own terms.

The actress did not apologize for the sketch, instead, she expressed her regret that she did not amend the line days after the SNL sketch aired.

"If I had a time machine, I could go back... If I could put one sentence back digitally, I'd say to people: Fight them in every way, except the way that they want," Fey said.

"But I didn't write that in time! I wrote that two days later as I was pacing in my house. It's painful. I wanted to help, but I chumped it. But the culture of apology is not for me."