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Tina Fey told the Kelce brothers’ New Heights podcast that she has no beef with Timothée Chalamet over the viral Knicks manspreading photos from last month.
Tina Fey addressed the viral memes pairing her and Timothée Chalamet at an April Knicks game on Wednesday’s episode of the Kelce brothers’ New Heights podcast, telling Travis and Jason Kelce that the Dune actor was nothing but lovely and that they had no beef.
The photos in question came out of the Knicks-Hawks game on April 28. Fey, attending as a guest of Tracy Morgan, ended up courtside next to Chalamet and his girlfriend Kylie Jenner. Several photographers captured Chalamet’s seated posture, and the internet did the rest.
Fey’s response was measured. “I should start by saying that Timothée Chalamet was nothing but lovely. Super friendly. And it wasn’t ’til the next day that I saw all these manspreading things.”
The defense she landed on was geometric. Page Six’s writeup of the podcast quotes and Fey’s Amy Poehler reference captures her central point. “For every amount that he’s sitting like this, and manspreading, I’m doing the opposite. I’ve got a big ol’ can. So, as Amy Poehler would say, ‘God is fair.'”
The math, she clarified, balanced out. “Timothée’s legs took the front, my big ol’ can was takin’ the back. It was all good and the Knicks won, so everybody was happy.”
The viral images had cycled through TikTok and X for weeks. Yahoo’s InStyle-syndicated coverage of the original viral moment and Fey’s response notes that the photos were widely circulated as memes, with social media users comparing the seating arrangement to airplane middle seats and rush-hour subway cars.
Chalamet, 30, and Jenner, 28, have been regular courtside presences during the Knicks’ playoff run. The actor reportedly skipped a Met Gala date night with Jenner to attend an earlier playoff game.
The double-date angle has its own subplot. EW’s coverage of Fey’s podcast appearance and the Knicks’ broader celebrity courtside scene notes that Chalamet and Jenner have been double-dating Knicks star Karl-Anthony Towns and his girlfriend Jordyn Woods, who is Jenner’s former best friend after a famous 2019 falling-out over Tristan Thompson.
The Knicks themselves have been the actual story. Monday’s 130-93 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers completed a four-game Eastern Conference Finals sweep and sent New York to its first NBA Finals appearance since 1999.
Fey is 56. Her run of public-relations moments this year has been minimal, with most of her press cycle tied to her Apple TV adaptation of The Four Seasons.
The Kelce podcast appearance, with no specific film to promote, read as one of the looser interviews Fey has done in months. The brothers leaned into the joke; Fey leaned into hers.
For both Fey and Chalamet, the Knicks remain the through-line. They’ll likely be in adjacent seats again this June.
