Carlock isn't sure about his first memory of Fey (overalls may have been involved), but he's clear about one thing. "In my five years writing for SNL, a very competitive place, I never saw anyone figure out a way to have their voice be part of what the show wanted so quickly," he says. "I certainly never totally figured it out."

When I ask Fey to describe her relationship with Carlock, she replies, "Two obedient people working themselves to death." Her punishing work ethic comes, she says, from her parents: the Greek women on her mother's side and the German and Scottish on her father's. I ask Carlock if Fey is as bossy as she claims. He laughs. "She tends to get what she wants, and unfortunately—or fortunately—she's usually right." But it's more than just being right; she's a savvy strategist. "Tina picks her spots," he says. "Writers love to talk and throw out all their opinions. She's very good at having already thought about objections beforehand. She's disarming and very open-minded, but she does not come unprepared. She brings a gun to a knife fight every time."

"I think my husband would tell you that I'm constantly angry. Not at him, just angry," says Fey, who has two daughters with director and composer Jeff Richmond: Alice Zenobia, 10, and Penelope Athena, 4, who may be a chip off the old block. "Alice has a first-child thing, where I don't think she lets herself get mad," Fey says. "But oh my god, I can't stop the little one from being angry. It's funny: She was a very screamy, grouchy toddler, and now she's bigger and has more language, and sometimes she'll say, 'I feel mad now.' In the middle of nothing. One of her babysitters says to her, 'You can be mad, but you can't be mean.' Which has been helpful to her. I didn't learn that until much later in life."

http://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a5146/tina-fey-interview/