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By Abby Tegnelia
Contributing Entertainment Writer
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Superstar comedian Tina Fey has rarely acknowledged her harrowing facial scar in the decades since she was a rising talent on Saturday Night Live — but she is now opening up about how the incision affected her.
On the debut episode of longtime friend Amy Poehler's Good Hang podcast, Fey revealed how the scar — which she got at 5 years old after a stranger slashed her face with a knife while she was playing in her own front yard — affected her early career and self-esteem as a young comedian.
In true Fey fashion, she made sure she had the last laugh.
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"I had a bite-and-smile type...McDonald's audition," the 30 Rock alum, 54, told Poehler, 53, on Tuesday, March 18. "[Back then] everything was always, like, 'OK, take two trains and a thing...to wherever this audition is. And then you get there, and it was for some kind of Happy or drive-thru meal...I realized, 'Oh, this commercial is for a person pulling into a drive-thru and I have this scar on the left side of my face.'"
After the 45-minute commute to the audition, Fey was at first crushed. "I was like, 'Guess who's not going to book this,'" she said.
Then she prepared a one-line quip.
Fey went through the audition's motions, "scooting like I'm in the drive through, being like, 'I'll have the fish filet meal.'"
Then she added, "And my scar will have an orange soda."
And she walked out. She did not book the job.
Over the years, Fey has avoided talking about the scar — including how she got it. "It's impossible to talk about it without somehow seemingly exploiting it and glorifying it," Fey told Vanity Fair in January 2009.
In the same article, Fey's husband, Jeff Richmond, told Vanity Fair the disturbing story of how she got it.
"I proceeded unaware of it," said Fey, who at the time often shot from the right side. "I was a very confident little kid...I'm kind of able to forget about it, until I [am] on-camera."
"Everybody's got a better side," she quipped.
Fey admitted to Poehler on Tuesday's podcast that the scar is "way faded now, but it was much more prominent then."
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