After nine years on iconic US sketch comedy TV show Saturday Night Live (SNL) and another seven as the creator, writer and star of sitcom 30 Rock, Tina Fey has pretty much done it all.
On SNL she lampooned right wing US vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin with a spot on impersonation, she spoofed country music darling Reba McEntire with a character named Reba McIntired and there was also the big boobed, moustache-wearing surrealist painter-country gal Salvador Dali Parton.
So, when Fey was playing Nadya the boss of a Siberian gulag alongside Kermit the Frog in the new musical-family comedy Muppets Most Wanted, it was a breeze.
"I did sleep in an army cot every night for six months leading up to the shoot and for two months after the shoot, for no reason," Fey, describing the method acting preparation she used to play the tough, no-nonsense gulag commandant, told AAP in a video interview.
Fey, as she is known to do, is joking.
But, the dead of winter British location of the prison set made it easy for the 43-year-old comedienne and the non-Muppet co-stars at the gulag - Ray Liotta, Danny Trejo and Flight of the Conchords Kiwi Jermaine Clement - to believe they were in a Russian wasteland.
"I felt like I was in Siberia in a real gulag because we shot outside in Oxfordshire in the UK and it was freezing," Fey said.
"We shot it in an old US military base, so it was flat, frozen ground and lots of snow."
Muppets Most Wanted begins where the last film, 2011's The Muppets, ended - on Hollywood Boulevard.
Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozie and the gang are persuaded to hire a tour manager named Dominic Badguy, played by Ricky Gervais, who tricks them into undertaking a European tour.
Constantine, an evil frog lookalike to Kermit, breaks out of Nadya's gulag to team up with Badguy to rob museums and art galleries across Europe.
Just like the 2011 film, Muppets Most Wanted's music was supervised by the other member of the Flight of the Conchords, Bret McKenzie.
The Kiwi was the surprise winner of the best original song Oscar for Man or Muppet.
Fey, who belts out the tune The Big House in a Russian accent, also has her eye on Hollywood award season.
She compares her performance as Nadya to the Oscar and Golden Globe-winning singing-acting role of Anne Hathaway as a dying prostitute in Les Miserables.
"I'm doing everything Anne Hathaway did, possibly more," Fey said.
"So it seems only right."
* Muppets Most Wanted opens in Australia on Thursday.
Share
