Tina Fey said she’s hard at work on a musical adaptation of her hit 2004 teen comedy Mean Girls, on Tuesday night at the Tribeca film festival.

The 30 Rock creator had previously previewed the show in March on Bravo’s late night program Watch What Happens Live. But during a talk as part of the festival’s storytellers lineup, moderated by TV Guide writer Damian Holbrook, Fey revealed that the summer gap, in between shooting seasons of her Netflix show Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, has given her time to complete the musical with her husband, composer Jeff Richmond, and lyricist Nell Benjamin.

As for the original film, which made stars of Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried (Lindsay Lohan was already popular at the time), Fey said her role as a high school teacher was originally supposed to be much bigger. Initially the comedy was supposed to center on Fey’s character, who was originally envisioned as a counselor who traveled the country holding “relational aggression” workshops for high schoolers. “The more I started working on the script, the smaller and smaller my part got because the girls were more interesting,” Fey said.

The discussion was broad. Fey was asked to comment on a wide variety of topics including who makes her laugh (“Maya Rudolph, Martin Short, Andrea Martin, my children and my husband”), her thoughts on social media (“not into it”), and whether she’ll ever one day direct (“never say never”).

Speaking about Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, a show made for NBC before Netflix swooped in to acquire it, Fey said she felt freed shooting the second season knowing that it was a Netflix property.

A half-hour show on “NBC is 21 minutes and 15 seconds after you take out the commercials”, she explained. “On Netflix, they really want you to make the episodes as long as possible for the amount of time you have.” She also expressed delight at having the opportunity to go “darker” and “edgier” in the new season, which recently debuted on the streaming platform.

Tina Fey: ‘not into’ social media. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

Fey, famous for parodying Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live, also weighed in on this year’s election, admitting to “yelling at my TV every morning” over all the developments. “I feel like, looking back at 2008, it’s like an episode of The Andy Griffith Show. Now, it’s like ‘Ryan Murphy brings you Horror Election!,’” Fey said. “It feels darker.”

Speaking of Murphy, Fey praised the show-runner’s new series, American Crime Story: The People v OJ Simpson. Fey loved the show so much that she admitted to calling the Television Academy, responsible for the Emmys, for the first time in 10 years, to revise her membership so she can vote in the acting categories of the awards show. “I did it just so I could vote for Sterling K Brown and Sarah Paulson.”

Fey meanwhile shot down hopes that she’ll one day pair with frequent collaborator and friend Amy Poehler on a series. “We’re actually both alphas,” she reasoned. “So it works in short spurts, but I don’t know if we would make a real dynasty.” The two most recently starred as siblings in the comedy Sisters.

The oddest reveal of the evening came when Fey admitted to auditioning for the role of the baker’s wife in the recent film musical, Into the Woods. The role initially went to Emily Blunt.

“I tried to beg my way into that movie,” she said. “That was in my weird year off between TV shows. I realized that when people say they’re gonna ‘stretch themselves’, it just means they’re gonna annoy people.”

Asked if there’s footage of her audition to be found, Fey said: “I’m sure it’s gone by now.”