Tina Fey used to be a mean girl. The irony of winding up one of the Mean Girls screenwriters isn’t lost on the SNL alum and Sisters star either.

Tina Fey Says She Was a Regina George in High School: "I Was the Mean Girl, I Admit It": https://t.co/POQujZUdZP pic.twitter.com/Jxih6JLmQe

— Harper's Bazaar (@harpersbazaarus) December 20, 2015

It was during a recent interview with Net-A-Porter that Tina Fey spoke candidly about her time as a mean girl.

“I was [the mean girl], I admit it openly,” she says.

Now 45 years old, Tina Fey explains why she was that kind of girl.

“That was a disease that had to be conquered,” she says adding, “It’s another coping mechanism–it’s a bad coping mechanism–but when you feel less than (in high school, everyone feels less than everyone else for different reasons), in your mind it’s a way of leveling the playing field. Though of course it’s not.”

Tina Fey has another coping mechanism, too–being funny.

“For me it was about hitting age 13 and realizing, ‘OK, I’m not going to glide by on looks. I’m a normal-looking person, but that’s not going to be where my bread is buttered,’” she explains.

No longer a mean girl, Tina Fey fully realizes that “saying something terrible about someone else does not actually level the playing field.”

In fact, she fears mean girls (not Mean Girls–she makes money off them) these days.

“If I meet a girl of 14 or 15 today who is that kind of girl, I am secretly, in my body, afraid. Even though I’m 45,” she says.

Tina Fey has a 'mean girl' past that might explain how she perfected that Liz Lemon eyeroll: https://t.co/nrAZEgKPzO pic.twitter.com/ePstbLVYgh

— cambio (@cambio) December 20, 2015

Tina Fey in a sense relives high school in her new film Sisters. She and Amy Poehler star as sisters who throw a wild party in their childhood home.

Does it surprise you to learn Tina Fey was a mean girl? Do you remember what it felt like to be belittled by mean girls when you were in high school? Or were you–like the Sisters star–a mean girl, too?