Amy Poehler and Tina Fey have returned to Studio 8H.
Poehler, 54, and Fey, 55, reunited on the Saturday Night Live stage on Saturday, October 11, making two joint appearances — one for the show’s cold open and another during the standing Weekend Update segment.
Fey, who starred on SNL from 1997 to 2006, cameo’d alongside her former cast member Poehler, who hosted Saturday’s show. During the cold open, the duo each played members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet — Poehler portrayed Attorney General Pam Bondi, while Fey transformed into gun-toting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Fey joined SNL as a writer in 1997 and as an on-screen cast member in 2000 as the host of Weekend Update. She and Poehler overlapped on the show from 2000 until 2006, when Fey left to start her hit NBC show, 30 Rock.
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Saturday night’s reunion was not the first time Fey and Poehler have joined forces since their SNL days. The pair, who famously cohosted Weekend Update from 2004 to 2006 after Jimmy Fallon’s departure, reunited at the Emmys in January 2024 during a surprise appearance at the awards ceremony.
“We’ve reached the stage in life when we’ll only present awards sitting down,” Fey joked. “Here are tonight’s nominees for Outstanding Live Variety Special.”
Instead of reading off a list of names, the duo took turns making jokes about the nominees.
“The only show that’s longer than Titanic with commercials on TBS [is] the Oscars,” Poehler quipped, alongside a picture of Jimmy Kimmel.
The pair also took a moment to talk about Rihanna’s 2024 performance at the Super Bowl.
“The concert [was] so good, it got us all pregnant: The Apple Music Super Bowl 57 Halftime Show starring Rihanna” Fey said of the moment the musician, 37, confirmed her second pregnancy. (Rihanna now shares three children with her partner, ASAP Rocky.)
Though both Fey and Poehler are no longer cast members of the show, they have each maintained a fondness for their former television home.
“If it’s a Saturday, we go to our room, and we watch SNL from the hotel room. It’s a dream,” Fey explained on a January 2024 episode of Sunday Today. “We love watching it together. If we’re not together, we’ll live-text during it. It’s like someone who played sports, like, ‘Oh, I see. You know what? I bet this moved up from dress [rehearsal].’”
She continued: “We root for everybody. And the head writer in me is always like, ‘Huh. Interesting. Maybe the game could’ve been clearer.’”
The pair also previously reunited at the 2021 Golden Globes as the award ceremony’s cohosts in February. Fey and Poehler took the opportunity to poke a little fun at the Netflix series Emily in Paris, as well as at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
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“Emily in Paris is nominated for best TV series, musical or comedy, and I for one cannot wait to find out which it is,” Fey said as she rattled off the category’s nominees. “’French exit’ is what I did after watching the first episode of Emily in Paris.”
Of the Foreign Press, which had recently been accused of a lack of membership diversity, Fey added, “The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is made up of around 90 international no Black journalists that attend movie junkets each year, in search for a better life. We say around 90 because a few might be ghosts and the German is just a sausage that someone drew a little face on.”
