Tina Fey is ready to rock

The sexy satirist returns to TV, silver screen and magazine stands – declare April her month states Rob Salem...

Tina Fey. "TinaFey" ... you somehow can't keep yourself from stringing the name together, like Tracy Morgan always used to on Saturday Night Live – before he started calling her "LizLemon" on 30 Rock. TinaFey, now less a name than an established brand, with the comedy quality seal of approval. TinaFey, creator, producer, head writer, screenwriter, sitcom and now movie star ... one-stop shopping for all your humour needs.

Snarky, sassy, cynical, smart and, yes, sexy – just check out that recent cover of Vanity Fair – even behind those clunky nerd glasses and that intriguing little hint of a scar on her chin (a childhood accident she declines to discuss because it "bums out" her parents).

Fey, television's uncontested "it" girl at the age of 37, who will essentially own the month of April with tonight's return of her sitcom hit, 30 Rock (8:30 on NBC and A-Channel) and the April 25 opening of her new film, Baby Mama, which she wrote as a vehicle for herself and her Weekend Update co-anchor, Amy Poehler.

From Fey's perspective, she's just glad to be back at work. As one of the few legitimate hyphenates in the business, the recent writers' strike split her loyalties: to her show, her staff and, as a relatively new mom, to her 3-year-old daughter, Alice Zenobia Richmond (with husband Jeff Richmond, an SNL composer she met in 1994 at Chicago's Second City).

"I did my union duty on the picket line," she says, addressing the press in a telephone conference call. "But mostly I stayed at home with my daughter, which was sort of the only blessing of the strike. For me, it was a little bit like a maternity leave that I did not previously have. It's tough now, because my daughter is old enough to say, `No, you not go to work. You not go outside.' That's hard for any working parent."

Occasionally, she says, she'll bring Alice with her to work. "I do try to bring her sometimes and she likes to come. She likes to hang out in the makeup room. But at the same time, it is a busy workplace and I always feel mindful that not everyone gets to bring their kids. "Actually, at 30 Rock, we do try to do special days where we have parties where everyone can bring their kids. We had a really fun Halloween party and a sort of a spring/Easter party (last month)."

But then, 30 Rock has always been something of a family affair, from favoured SNL host Alec Baldwin – and there is no one better at hilariously underplaying Fey's consistently clever dialogue – to her old comedy comrades from New York and Chicago. "A lot of these parts who are regulars, I wrote with people in mind," she says. "For example, Jack McBrayer, who plays Kenneth, is an old friend of mine from Chicago. I really wanted him for that part and was very happy when no one objected. Scott Adsit is an old friend of mine. I wrote that part (writer Pete Hornberger) with him in mind. And we wrote Jack (Donaghy) with Alec in mind, too ... and were very pleasantly surprised when he agreed to do it. We've used a lot of people from Chicago. We've used Brian Stack some and he's going to come back – he was a Second City guy. And Miriam Tolan, Brian McCann ... it's like, every time we have a small role, I'm going through my mental Rolodex of the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York or the Second City and ImprovOlympic in Chicago, just to see who we haven't used yet."

Born Elizabeth Stamatina Fey in the Philadelphia suburb of Upper Darby, she developed an early interest in TV comedy, inspired, in large part, by Catherine O'Hara's work on SCTV. "I also grew up on a lot of classic TV," she says. "Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, Carol Burnett ... all that kind of stuff." Earning a BA in drama at the University of Virginia, Fey immediately relocated to Chicago to study improv at Second City, joining the mainstage cast there in 1994.

In 1997, she landed a job as a writer for SNL. Just two years later, she was made head writer, the first woman ever to do so – and, at 5-foot-4, also the shortest. During her nine-year SNL tenure, she only rarely appeared in sketches, aside from co-anchoring the weekly news parody. As recently as her guest-host monologue last month, she admitted to still thinking of herself more as a writer than a performer.

Which, in the early days of 30 Rock, was made fairly evident by her apparent unease and a certain awkward stiffness in the delivery of her own dialogue.

Now, I suggest as diplomatically as possible, she seems much more comfortable in front of the camera. "I think you might be right," she allows. "I am having a very good time shooting these episodes now. It feels like the pressure is off. I feel so grateful to have been recognized for the stuff that I did on the show last year, that maybe that has helped me relax a little bit. I've really fully stopped apologizing for being in the show."

And now that she's back on the job – or rather, jobs?