At the St. Regis, Fey and Poehler ordered eggs and gawked at the prices (Fey confessed she'd meant to suggest a different hotel for the interview). The following conversation happened free of interruption from electronics.
Hollywood comedies are normally marketed to 14-year-old boys, but your movie is more adult and well-mannered than that. It's also about a sensitive issue -- women becoming single moms by choice. Do you think it's a harder sell for Universal because there's no movie star or large-breasted woman on the poster?
Poehler (laughs): Everything is a harder sell until it's a success and then it's not.
Fey: There was no movie star on the "Superbad" poster until they were movie stars.
Poehler: What I'm proud of about this film is that there was an actual beginning and middle and end, and characters change and all that kind of stuff. Which is kind of like an actual movie? It's nice to be a part of that. Especially coming from the world with a lot of sketch, where everything is transient and temporary. It's nice to explore an actual arc in an actual film. I like movies that 14-year-old boys like, I like a lot of those. I would hope that they would like the same things I like too.
I think it makes the movie fresh, that you two are the stars. But I'm just thinking from the marketing point of view. You don't make for a great poster.
Fey: I don't know who really opens a movie anymore. It seems like [people] go, "That seems fun." Or, "That doesn't." There's some general consensus.
Poehler: Also, when you're talking about comedies too, if it seems like the people that made it are really having fun, [audiences] want to be part of that somehow. We've both been in projects where they've just been kind of, like, cast and not really made any sense. So I think any time that there's casting that makes sense, people relate to that.
So how did this project get off the ground?
Fey: Michael McCullers, the writer-director, wanted to do something for the two of us and came to Lorne [Michaels]. And we were, like, "Great." Nobody ever wants to give you something.
Poehler: We met where we always meet.
Fey: We met at the salad bar of the Sports Club/L.A. Where none of us is a member.
Poehler: And none of us has ever worked out at.
Wait a minute, you met at a salad bar at a gym?
Fey: It's a really nice gym.
That's disgusting.
Fey: No, it's nice. It looks out over the ice rink. We had trays.
