LOS ANGELES — From the momentTina Fey and Amy Poehler walked into a studio green room here to the moment they entered a mind-melded comedy state, two and a half minutes elapsed. There was barely time for hellos and niceties before they were off, imagining how they would see their new movie “Sisters” in its opening week.
Ms. Fey: “I might stroll into 68th Street” — the theater near her home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side — “and sit in the back once or twice. You should definitely go there, definitely buy tickets, because I might be there.”
Ms. Poehler: “I like to wear a very inconspicuous, like, beer hat.”
Ms. Fey, laughing: “And you always bring a hoverboard.”
Ms. Poehler: “And I’ve got like, a jean jacket with a fan picture of me on the back.” [Loud laugh from Ms. Fey.] “And headshots of myself, just in case.”
Throughout this exchange, Ms. Poehler and Ms. Fey sat staring into each other’s eyes, as if connected by some invisible funny beam. Jazz legends couldn’t have picked up riffs faster.
The duo are masters themselves, of a smart-sweet-spiky comedy boom. Friends since meeting as improvisers in Chicago 22 years ago, they are frequent collaborators — if not frequent enough for their fans.
They reset the bar on “Saturday Night Live,” as star players and “Weekend Update” anchors. In the seven years since their last film together, “Baby Mama,” they each produced long-running, critically beloved sitcoms and became best-selling authors. (Ms. Fey’s memoir “Bossypants” arrived in 2011, Ms. Poehler’s “Yes Please” last year. Do the titles tell you anything about their personalities? Perhaps.) They studded awards shows withfeminist jokes, offered realtalk on parenting and careers, and in the aftermath of their network series “30 Rock” and “Parks and Recreation,” moved on to boundary-pushing fare (Ms. Poehler, 44, as executive producer of “Broad City” on Comedy Central, Ms. Fey, 45, with “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” on Netflix), all the while giving the sense that they were mostly guided by the goal of making each other laugh. They’re like “Lean In,” but funny.
And as they have been the first to point out, their success does not, and should not, come at the expense of others, especially other women in comedy. “There’s a hard thing that happens when you’re funny and you’re sitting beside someone who’s destroying, to not feel in any way that you’re somewhat diminished,” said Lorne Michaels, the “Saturday Night Live” executive producer. “To just be happy for how well they’re doing — that’s the rare part of their relationship and also the rare part in comedy, period.”
