The XX Factor

Tina Fey: Women Comedians Less Bonkers Than Their Male Counterparts

There’s an interview with Tina Fey in today’s Washington Post because the 30 Rock star and our collective hero is receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center this evening. Writer Paul Farhi notes that Fey is only the third woman to receive this award in its 12-year history (Whoopi Goldberg and Lily Tomlin were the other lady honorees). Check out what what Fey has to say about the difference between the male and female comedians she knows. The women are generally better behaved:

She was not, she says, “terribly dark,” as male comics and humorists tend to be from adolescence. This is generally true of the other women she’s met and befriended in her career, she says, including SNL chums Amy Poehler and Rachel Dratch. “The men are maybe … they like to challenge authority,” Fey says. “The women are all sort of good daughters and college graduates. I think in the small sampling of women I know, the act of doing comedy itself was the act of rebellion.”

Photograph of Tina Fey by John Shearer for Getty Images.