After largely writing and producing for the past few years, Tina Fey is back onscreen, this time headlining new Netflix series The Four Seasons.
The show is an eight-episode remake of the 1981 rom-com of the same name, directed by Alan Alda and starring Alda, Carol Burnett and Rita Moreno. Fey — who also served as the series’ co-creator — has loved the movie since she was 11, and “that was so thrilling to me as a kid, to see these people I love from other things come together. I thought, ‘Oh, could I assemble an ensemble like that?’” she told The Hollywood Reporter at the Los Angeles premiere on Thursday.
“And also not going to lie, there are some of the practicalities of it of like, oh my god, what if it’s just six or seven actors in nice locations, wearing flat shoes and sweaters — could we get away with it?” she continued, confirming she followed “the Sandler model,” with Adam Sandler often filming with his friends in vacation destinations.
Fey has had a longtime relationship with Alda after he appeared on 30 Rock, and she “expressed to him that I loved the movie and wanted to pursue remaking it. I think he was amused and surprised that as a little kid I watched this movie,” she added, with Alda also making a cameo appearance in the series.
Steve Carell, Colman Domingo, Will Forte, Marco Calvani and Kerri Kenney-Silver star alongside Fey in the show, as she joked that when it came to casting, she was looking for “people who are happy to be there and know their lines — there’s nothing better.”
Carell was “the first person that I called because from the moment we talked about doing this,” Fey said, after the two had worked together on 2010 comedy Date Night. His character Nick “makes some obnoxious-seeming choices in this show but you have to have an actor that you love him through it, that you see the human inside these choices that could make you mad. And Steve is that guy,” calling him “the Jimmy Stewart of our generation” because of that ability.
The Four Seasons starts streaming May 1 on Netflix.
