Tina Fey, Amy Poehler teaming up for MassMutual Center show

Duo to celebrate 30 years of friendship with stories, jokes, conversation

By K eith O ’C onnor Special to The Republican

They both served as co-anchors of the popular news parody segment called Weekend Update on the NBC sketch comedy series “Saturday Night Live.”

Now Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who have long gone on to bigger and better things since leaving the show, are coming to Springfield as part of “Tina Fey & Amy Poehler — Restless Leg Tour” today at the MassMutual Center.

Presented by MGM Springfield, the show begins at 8 p.m.

The extremely limited tour, first announced in February, kicked off in April in Washington, D.C., with only three additional tour dates planned in Chicago, Boston and Atlantic City. Additional dates through June were added after tickets quickly sold out, including their performance in Springfield.

The Restless Leg Tour is the duo’s first joint live endeavor as they celebrate 30 years of friendship with an evening of jokes, iconic stories and conversational entertainment.

During an appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” another “Saturday Night Live” alum, Fey said their tour was inspired in part by the similar friendship between Steve Martin and Martin Short, who have also toured with their own comedy show.

As for the title “Restless Leg” tour, Fey said on the late night show that they were bouncing around names and Poehler mentioned “restless leg” and it stuck.

“The title didn’t make literal sense, but emotional sense,” she told Meyers. Fey, best known for creating and starring as Liz Lemon in NBC’s “30 Rock,” also completed nine seasons on “Saturday Night Live” as head writer and cast member. She also wrote the screenplay for the comedy hit movie “Mean Girls,” which was subsequently adapted for Broadway, receiving 12 Tony Award nominations, and is currently in production as a new musical feature film for Paramount.

Her other projects include starring in “Date Night” with Steve Carell; lead voice in Pixar’s Oscar winning film,

“Soul”; co-creator of Emmy nominated Netflix original “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”; the Peacock series “Mr. Mayor” starring Ted Danson and “Girls5Eva”, which will launch its third season on Netflix. Fey’s memoir, “Bossypants,” landed on the New York Times bestseller list, where it remained for 39 consecutive weeks.

Poehler is best known for her starring role in Emmy-nominated NBC comedy “Parks and Recreation” and is currently the executive producer and co-host of Peacock’s “Baking It” with Maya Rudolph. Other projects include co-creator, executive producer, and lead voice of Fox’s animated series, “Duncanville”; executive producer of Netflix’s Emmy-nominated series “Russian Doll”; Amazon’s “Harlem” and Adult Swim’s “Three Busy Debras.”

Last year, Poehler also made her documentary directorial debut with the Amazon Emmy-winning documentary “Lucy & Desi,”

Music