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Tina Fey, 56, Says Aging Feels Like ‘Reverse Puberty’
The ‘Four Seasons’ cocreator talks changing bodies, aging parents and writing from midlife
Tina Fey, seen here in 2021, recently compared aging to “reverse puberty.”
Nathan Congleton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Key takeaways
- Tina Fey said aging has changed how she writes and what shows she wants to watch.
- She described caring for an aging parent while raising children as wonderful but draining.
- The AARP 2025 caregiving report found 63 million U.S. adults are family caregivers.
Tina Fey has a blunt name for aging: “reverse puberty.”
The Saturday Night Live alum, 56, told Today.com that getting older can feel like a second round of bodily surprises.
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“I feel like it’s a reverse puberty, in a way. It’s like your body starts to change and be disgusting in new ways,” Fey said. “When you’re 12 or 13, you’re like, Why am I so oily? And now you’re like, Why am I so papery?”
The comments came as Fey discussed the second season of The Four Seasons, the Netflix show she cocreated with Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield. Fey, a 10-time Emmy winner, said the series reflects “not only sort of where I’m at but also, like, of the kind of show I want to watch now.”
Tina Fey and Steve Carell in a scene from the first season of “The Four Seasons.”
Jon Pack/Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection
Fey told the Hollywood Reporter in April 2025 that The Four Seasons came at a moment when she was living the very midlife pressures the series explores: caring for an aging parent, raising children, grieving a loss and watching one child leave home. “This sandwich generation stuff, having your kids and an aging parent in the same house, it’s wonderful … but it also really takes a lot out of you,” she said.
Her mother spent her final years living with Fey and Fey’s husband, Jeff Richmond, in their New York City apartment. Then, everything happened in quick succession: Fey said her mother died in the summer of 2024, her older daughter, Alice, 20, left for college in August and work on The Four Seasons started in the fall. “That kept me in the world,” she said. “It saved me from just shrinking up like a little granny apple head.”
Millions of Americans are living a version of that squeeze. AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving’s 2025 report found that 63 million U.S. adults provide ongoing care to adults or children with a medical condition or disability, up 45 percent since 2015.
Caregiving help for families
Tina Fey’s comments on aging and sandwich generation caregiving point to pressures many families face in midlife. AARP’s caregiving resources offer guidance on care at home, medical tasks, finances, legal planning and life balance.
About 16 million of them are sandwich generation caregivers, supporting an adult and a child at the same time. Nearly one-third of family caregivers have a child or grandchild under 18 at home while caring for an adult. Among caregivers under 50, 47 percent are in that position. For those 50 and older, it is 14 percent.
Fey’s work now sits in that middle space: one daughter out of the house and a younger daughter, Penelope, 14, still at home. Fey told Today.com she hopes projects keep coming and would like to write a play or prose in another form. “But I also just like sitting still in a chair and drinking coffee outside,” she said.
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