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Tina Fey On “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” And Netflix

Tina Fey wants everyone to know that her new show, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, was not pre-canceled before it could even air on NBC. She just decided to move it to Netflix, instead. No big deal. Now th...
Tina Fey On “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” And Netflix
Written by Lacy Langley
  • Tina Fey wants everyone to know that her new show, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, was not pre-canceled before it could even air on NBC.

    She just decided to move it to Netflix, instead. No big deal.

    Now that that’s out of the way, Tina Fey’s show will be on Netflix starting Friday.

    The first season, all 13 episodes, of Tina Fey’s new show will be available, and the deal with Netflix guarantees her a second season. That is a guarantee that she wouldn’t have had with NBC.

    Tina Fey and co-creator Robert Carlock sat down for an interview about the new Netflix deal and the show itself.

    The two of them are a little too excited to not have to deal with ratings, and deal more with a growing class of binge-watchers.

    “The whole world [could be watching the show] as far as we know,” said Carlock.

    “We’d know if it was the whole world,” said Tina Fey.

    But, binge-watchers are a familiar brand of people, as Tina Fey feels like the popularity of her hit show, 30 Rock, was mostly due to them.

    She added, “But it will be nice not to have to what we call ‘repilot’ every week. . . . With Netflix, if someone’s watching episode five, you can be pretty confident that it’s because they’ve watched episodes one through four.”

    The beginning relationship with NBC is responsible for the show itself.

    Tina Fey disclosed how the whole process for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt began with its star, Ellie Kemper from The Office.

    “They knew that she was special, and she was the first actor that we said, ‘Yeah, maybe we would like to. Give us a couple of weeks to think about it,'” Tina Fey said.

    She continued, “And we thought about Ellie . . . She has this kind of inherent sunniness and optimism, but also strength. She’s physically fit and strong and we’ve seen her do, like, physical-comedy bits where she’s really agile. And so this mix led us on this path of like, ‘OK, what kind of woman could she be?’ We pitched: Is she a woman who has been in a coma for 15 years? We kept wanting versions of, like, a clean slate.”

    Tina Fey insisted that “these things, you know, keep happening. They happen all over the world, this thing of women being tricked, or lured, or sister-wived.”

    So, they came up with the show as it is today. Kimmy Schmidt has been in an underground bunker with a cult for 15 years. When she gets out, she wants to start her life over in New York using the small bit of knowledge that she can squeeze from her very limited life experience.

    Tina Fey’s new show looks so funny! I see a Netflix binge in my future.

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