Tina Fey Reveals ‘A Dirty Secret’ Of ‘Saturday Night Live’

At the Edinburgh TV Festival, presenter Graham Norton mentioned to the ex-“SNL” writer and star (1997-2006) that he could not believe British writers would stay up all night Tuesday, as American counterparts have, to finish sketches before table reads on Wednesday.

Fellow “SNL” alum Jason Sudeikis essentially agreed with Fey in an interview several years ago.

“I do think it adds to kind of that breakneck pace, the mystique a little bit. But I do think it is a vestige of just tradition. There’s a lot of things there — Lorne [Michaels] has … a strong belief in hiring people for their first television job there, because there are so many things that are done there that are counterintuitive to people that have worked other places.”