•My favorite moments on set: Everybody making fun of Jerry.
•A lot of people don’t know: Jim has a huge tongue.
•I laughed the hardest: When Jerry suffered a “fart attack” in “Halloween Surprise.” Jim played it so real and it was ridiculous.
ADAM SCOTT (BEN WYATT): Adam is my TV husband and I couldn’t ask for a better partner to fake come home to. The characters of Ben and Leslie have gone through so much together and I feel so lucky to have had Adam by my side. The fact that people cared about our TV love story is because Adam is a tremendous actor; he listens intently and always makes me better. Ben-and-Leslie scenes were exciting and nerve-racking to shoot because we all cared so much about making them work. Adam is a kind person who loves his family and cares about the people he works with. He also speaks slowly and tells really long and boring stories and someone needs to tell him to cut the shit. Adam always has fresh breath for kissing scenes and a very dry sense of humor.
•My favorite moments on set: Any time Leslie and Ben kiss.
•A lot of people don’t know: Adam grew up in Santa Cruz and insists it’s totally acceptable to drive barefoot.
•I laughed the hardest: When Ben had a kidney stone and lost his mind on morphine in the “Partridge” episode.
•I cried the hardest: When Ben got down on one knee and proposed to Leslie.
the original brainstorm list
of possible character names for what eventually became leslie knope, thank god
things they don’t tell you about the biz
THERE ARE LOTS OF TELEVISION SHOWS AND MOVIES ABOUT TELEVISION SHOWS AND MOVIES. Most people feel like they know what it is like to work in Hollywood. America has watched enough Billy Bush to know that Will Smith has a big trailer and the cast of The Simpsons are usually not in the same room when they record. Even in suburban Boston, my dad gets Variety delivered to his house every week and likes to call me up when a “Network Prexy Gets Axed.” But take it from me, no one knows the biz like I know the biz. I love the biz. Hollywood is a crazy biz and I know the biz cuz the biz iz in my blood. Some say I am a biz whiz. Either way, show bizness is my business, so you better get busy with the bizness I know. Here are some inside thoughts and feelings from my years on set. I have had the privilege and the pleasure of wearing many hats, and because of that, my head is sweaty with all the knowledge I have about the biz. I may also have a fancy form of Hollywood lice. Anyway, here is what they won’t tell you.
THE ACTOR
Acting is the best. When things go well, you get the most credit. If you are in a great film or play everyone just assumes you did it on your own. Your face becomes a symbol for all things good and cool. Athletes nod at you. People interview you and describe in great detail how you “entered a room.” Acting lets you escape the real world and make out with people you are not married to. It lets you live in the skin of another person and run away from the person you actually are. Sometimes it heals old wounds and helps you discover something new about yourself. At its best, it’s a true form of communication, and your performance changes lives and minds and gender roles and the core temperature of Mother Earth. But here’s what no one in the biz will tell you. When you’re the actor, you have little control. You audition for parts and deal with constant rejection. On set, everyone sits behind a monitor and whispers when you don’t get it right. Your attractive yet interesting face better be shine-free and symmetrical as you try to remember your lines and blocking. Also, acting is embarrassing. I know this because Ted Danson told me. I was shooting a Beastie Boys music video with him and I spent an hour or so talking to Ted and his gently divine wife, Mary Steenburgen. The rest of the day was spent mentally high-fiving my teenage self for getting to talk to Sam Malone and the late, great MCA. Om mani padme hum MCA. (With the power of Buddha’s compassion, may you be reborn swiftly into heaven’s realm.) The scene required us to all pretend we were scared of the Beastie Boys as they crashed through the window, and one by one we mugged into the lens as the camera rolled. Ted leaned over to me and said, “Acting is so embarrassing, isn’t it?” I knew what he meant. It ain’t easy to get up in front of people and really go for it. Good actors make acting look easy, which means most people think they can do it. Most people can’t. I tell this story because I want to be honest about the biz. I also tell this story because I am an actor and actors are allowed to take up everyone’s time and tell long stories while other people stand around quietly fuming. Especially the writer.
THE WRITER
Writing is the best. The writer has the real power. You can create something and the world will be forever indebted to and dependent on you. You feel like the smartest person around, especially next to all those stupid actors. People quote your own lines back to you like a rock star. You invent stories and characters that will live on long after you are dead. When you are a writer you can work from home, live anywhere, and not have to lift things. The writer gets to decide who says what when and which way. But here’s what no one in the biz will tell you. Writing can be thankless. People treat writing like it’s some elegant act but it’s usually lonely and isolating. You will struggle over a piece of writing and then get to set and some dumb actor will say it wrong or immediately want to change it. A writer needs to defend their words every day on set, especially since most of the people on set don’t give a shit who the writer is. Except for one person. The head honcho. The director.
THE DIRECTOR
Directing rules. You answer questions and save the day. Everyone needs a captain, and a good director knows how to steady the ship. You can cast your friends and hold auditions while wearing comfortable shoes. Every department needs you in different ways. You get to wear headphones and drink coffee while you share dirty jokes with Eddie from props. You also get to talk to actors like you’re their parent, coach, and lover. A good director knows how to clean up messes. They decide when the day is done and whether or not we “got it.” Sometimes they get to have sex with an actor or actress, or at least their assistant. Directing is the most powerful job on any set. But here’s what no one in the biz will tell you. Directing is a headache. You have to think of everything all the time. It’s your fault if a stunt goes wrong. Directors are left cleaning up after the party, sitting around and editing the goddamn thing after everyone else has moved on. Actors can blame a director for not pulling a great performance out of them, but a director can only blame themselves if they cast the wrong actor. Most times the director is a gun for hire, uniquely beholden to one woman or man: the producer.
THE PRODUCER
Producing is the goal. Producing is the Shit. Producing is when you get to actually be in charge and apply all the things you know. The producer is above the fray. You get to visit the set, in your own expensive clothes, and then take everyone out to dinner. Then you don’t have to visit again until the one hundredth episode, when you hold that knife and cut that cake. The producer creates, orchestrates, and, most importantly, makes that paper. Being a producer means you have the most connections and you have done your time in the trenches. It is the difference between staff sergeant and lieutenant general. But here is what they don’t tell you. Producing is exhausting. If you are any good you have many projects going on at once and they are each on the verge of falling apart. You are the only one who knows how dangerously close all of them are to immolating, but you have to spend time on the phone making actors and writers and directors feel better. You have to hear every single one of those jerks tell you how they want to “make something really special.” You are the only one who might lose money. You aren’t as young and cute as the actor, and you have only met the writer once, so it’s the director you depend on. And you didn’t even want this stupid director in the first place, but he directed Dog President and it made a hundred mil domestic so the studio made a big push for him. Either way, the biz is amazing and Hollywood will live forever.
time travel
MY THOUGHTS ON TIME TRAVEL ARE SIMPLE: IT EXI
STS AND WE ARE IN CONTROL OF IT. I am no scientist. I barely made it through my relatively easy college class entitled “Physics for the Curious.” Our final was a multiple-choice test and the answers spelled out “Physics for the Curious.” I didn’t notice the pattern and got a C. Turns out I just wasn’t curious enough.
The only thing we can depend on in life is that everything changes. The seasons, our partners, what we want and need. We hold hands with our high school friends and swear to never lose touch, and then we do. We scrape ice off our cars and feel like winter will never end, and it does. We stand in the bathroom and look at our face and say, “Stop getting old, face. I command you!” and it doesn’t listen. Change is the only constant. Your ability to navigate and tolerate change and its painful uncomfortableness directly correlates to your happiness and general well-being. See what I just did there? I saved you thousands of dollars on self-help books. If you can surf your life rather than plant your feet, you will be happier. Maybe I should have called this book Surf Your Life. The cover could feature a picture of me on a giant wave wearing a wizard hat. I wonder if it’s too late. I’ll make a call.
So change happens and time passes. If you hate your stupid boring town and can’t wait to get outta there and show everybody what a kick-ass break-dancer you are, then this is good news. If you get really good at break dancing and then realize nobody gives a shit about break dancing anymore, this news is bad. Time moves too slow or too fast. But I know a secret. You can control time. You can stop it or stretch it or loop it around. You can travel back and forth by living in the moment and paying attention. Time can be your bitch if you just let go of the “next” and the “before.”
I believe you can time-travel three different ways: with people, places, and things.
In the winter of 1997, the Upright Citizens Brigade was asked by High Times magazine to be judges at their world-famous Cannabis Cup. This was a high honor. (Perfect pun. You’re welcome.) Before we took off for the Netherlands, a High Times interviewer sat down with us for a few hours and then realized he had never turned his tape recorder on. Heady days.
So we arrived in cold and wet Amsterdam, ready to sample marijuana from all over the world and finally settle the long-standing debate of whether or not Purple Kush is superior to White Rhino. As soon as we got to the venue people started giving us weed. Bags of it. Pillowcases filled with it. An amount that would have taken any man or woman down. We were much more concerned about rehearsing our sketches. Matt Besser had written out a running order with cues that the lighting technician should follow. We were going over it when we were told that UCB would be opening for Patti Smith. Totally great pairing.
Our show was pretty bad. A supremely stoned audience isn’t the best audience for comedy, and our lighting technician lost our cue sheet before we went on. He literally lost it on the walk to the booth. Right before we were introduced he came up and said, “Bad news, guys. I lost that list you made for me.” Then he handed us a sleeping bag full of pot. Patti Smith was amazing. She talked about politics and sang like a soldier. She was so cool and interesting. She stomped around and spit onstage. Spitting is disgusting, but when Patti spits it looks like ballet.
Fun fact: Seth Meyers was in the audience that night. He was living in Amsterdam and performing with a group called Boom Chicago. It would be four more years before we would officially meet and instantly become friends for life. Do you think it’s a coincidence that Seth was in the audience again during another seminal night for me? I don’t. People help you time-travel. People work around you and next to you and the universe waits for the perfect time to whisper in your ear, “Look this way.” There is someone in your life right now who may end up being your enemy, your wife, or your boss. Lift up your head and you may notice.
As I watched Patti perform I took a mental picture of the moment. I looked around and thought about my life. I felt grateful. I noticed every detail. That is the key to time travel. You can only move if you are actually in the moment. You have to be where you are to get where you need to go.
Cut to 2013. I am at a restaurant in Los Angeles and Patti Smith comes out of the bathroom. I freeze and then I say, “Ms. Smith, my name is Amy Poehler and my group opened for you in Amsterdam in the late nineties.” She was very nice and polite and pretended to remember. Maybe she did. It didn’t matter. She said, “Right, Ann Demeulemeester was there.” I nodded my head as if I understood what she was talking about and then I went home and Wikipedia’d Ann Demeulemeester. She is a beautiful fashion designer who lives in Antwerp and is currently doing design inspired by Jackson Pollock. Of course she and Patti are friends.
Patti Smith knew who I was. I shook her hand. Suddenly I was transported back to Amsterdam. Time stretched and bent and I went for a ride. I dare anyone to prove that I didn’t.
Places also help you time-travel. My grandfather Steve Milmore was a wonderful man. We called him Gunka and he was a Watertown, Massachusetts, firefighter and served as a machine gunner in World War II. He married my grandmother Helen and went overseas for five years until he came back and put his uniform in the attic and never spoke of his service again. He had three wonderful children, including my wonderful mother. He died of a heart attack on my front porch on July 4, 1982, when he was only sixty-five. I was ten. He was the first important person in my life to die, and when he did, it was the first time I realized that life is not fair or safe or even ours to own. I miss him.
Gunka had a Wurlitzer organ, and he loved to play. His grandchildren would sit on his lap and he would play Bing Crosby or Nat King Cole. Lots of Christmas tunes. He wrote songs for us when we had the chicken pox. He went through his songbook and put numbers over the notes and then made a corresponding chart on cardboard that he laid over the keys so we could play songs ourselves. For a while I thought I was a genius and could totally play the organ. The reality was that I was the luckiest girl in the world because I had a grandfather who was a magic maker.
Sitting on the organ bench was important. Now that I think of it, benches are cool. Sacred by design. Benches are often a place where something special happens and important talks take place. Look at Forrest Gump. Or Hoosiers. Or outside a brunch place. Brunch benches are where it all goes down. After my nana passed away in 2003, my family took Gunka’s organ and put it in the basement of the house they shared. And it sat there for ten years, waiting for its chance to travel.
And now it lives in my apartment in New York City. My boys play it all the time. They sit on the same bench I sat on and feel the same good feelings of family and home. One night I was feeling lonely and stressed, and the organ started buzzing. I think Gunka was trying to talk to me. I sat on the bench and felt better. Inside the organ bench is old sheet music with my grandparents’ handwriting. I also found a song that I wrote when I was seven. It is a poem that has numbers written above it, so it can be played the special way on my special organ. I wrote it in the past and put it in the sacred bench so I could pull it out at just the right time. Time is just time. Time travel, y’all.
Finally, things can help us time-travel. A few summers ago I was feeling sad. I was in Atlanta and went shopping in a vintage store. I don’t love shopping for clothes. I just wish I could wear a daily uniform. As previously noted, I had to look up Ann Demeulemeester on Wikipedia. In the shop, I found an old-timey bathing suit.
I brought the bathing suit home and looked at it. I thought about who might have owned it before. The bathing suit didn’t fit into my life at that moment. I was too busy to go swimming. I felt disconnected from my body after having kids. And I was sad. I sat in the moment, looking at that bathing suit. I thought about how long my winter had felt. My brain fooled me into thinking the winter would never end. I closed my eyes and thought of what my life would look like when it did finally end—what six months from now might feel like. I put this bathing suit in a drawer and it waited for me to take it traveling. And then six months later I went to Palm Springs with a bunch of wonderful women. They we
re my beautiful friends who had helped me through a difficult year. We were going swimming and I reached into my bag to find a bathing suit. I had put this old-timey bathing suit in with the rest. I tried it on again and I felt beautiful. I thanked the bathing suit for waiting for me. I got into the pool with Rashida and Kathryn and Aubrey and thanked the women for holding me up when I couldn’t hold myself. I thought about the woman who had worn that bathing suit before and realized she was another woman who had helped me. I thanked her too. I realized I had traveled again, this time into a happier future. I stood in the sun. I thanked the sun.
The more I time-travel the more I learn I am always just where I need to be.
obligatory drug stories,
or lessons i learned on mushrooms
GROWING UP, MY HOMETOWN WAS A DRINKING TOWN. We all sneaked into our parents’ liquor cabinets at an early age and spiked our hot chocolate for our high school football games. Alcohol was accessible and drinking was slightly encouraged. Every family had a funny Polaroid of their five-year-old kid holding a beer. My parents weren’t heavy drinkers, but they imbibed. I have fond memories of being ten and handing my dad Budweisers as he played slow-pitch softball. Summer sunsets were spent on a dusty field, as these men swung hard and spit in the dust and put us on their shoulders. It was a parade of mustaches and farmer tans. It was later that I realized those men were only in their early thirties and already married with children—a collection of young dads in their prime. My mother had her wine, which she didn’t drink much of when we were young but now that she is sixty-seven and retired she allows herself a glass or three. I loved playing bartender behind the big bar we had in our finished basement. It was next to our giant record-player console and our faux-leather couch and shiny floral wallpaper. The wall-to-wall carpeting went all the way up the two concrete poles that supported the house. I spent hours down there pretending I was Michael Jackson or dancing as the Weather Girls told me it was “raining men.” That basement was like my personal Copacabana, and when it was filled with my parents’ friends I would sit on the stairs and listen to the clink of their glasses and their bursts of laughter. I would make an excuse to pad down in my Kristy McNichol nightgown and pretend I’d had a bad dream, all in an attempt to peep at the women with their shiny brown lipstick and the men packing their cigarettes against their hips.