Tina Fey said Timothée Chalamet was “nothing but lovely” after a viral photo from an April NBA playoff game sparked “manspreading” memes. Fey joked she was “doing the opposite,” and noted the Knicks won, leaving “everybody… happy.”
Madison Square Garden has a way of turning sports into screenshots. For Tina Fey, that happened twice in the same spring week—first with an NBA playoff game on April 28 between the New York Knicks and the Atlanta Hawks, and then with the memes that followed.
Fey said she held no ill will toward Timothée Chalamet after the internet called out the “Marty Supreme” star for spreading his legs in a viral photo taken at the arena. In a May 27 episode of the “New Heights” podcast, the “30 Rock” actress addressed the swarm of viral posts after the fact.
“I should start by saying that Timothée Chalamet was nothing but lovely, super friendly,” Fey told hosts Jason and Travis Kelce. “And it wasn’t until the next day that I saw all these manspreading things.”
She then leaned into the joke—without denying what the photo appeared to show. Fey said Chalamet may have been manspreading, but she was “doing the opposite,” tucking her legs to keep her “big ol’ can” in place behind her.
“As Amy Poehler would say, God is fair,” Fey quipped. “It was all good, and the Knicks won, so everybody was happy.”
The internet’s label—“manspreading”—has a specific meaning. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as “the act or practice by a man of sitting with the legs spread wide apart (as in a public seating area) in a way that intrudes on the space of others.” Oxford University Press added the word to its dictionary in 2015.
Oxford University also traces the phrase’s roots: it was used as early as 2008, and rose in popularity in 2014 after New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority launched a poster campaign targeting manspreading.
Fey’s reaction landed in the space between those cultural definitions and the reality of a celebrity moment at a crowded arena—where a single photo can become a debate, and a night’s outcome can soften the mood. In her telling, nothing about the scene needed to linger once the Knicks won.
Tina Fey Timothée Chalamet manspreading New Heights podcast Jason Kelce Travis Kelce SNL Knicks Hawks Madison Square Garden viral memes NBA playoffs