Amy Poehler on Being an Airport Dad, Her Tina Fey Tour and Voicing Joy (Again)

Amy Poehler has spent much of this past year traveling around the country performing with best friend and comedy partner Tina Fey, and it gave her the chance to dig into one of her life’s passions: an airport routine. “I take my travel very seriously,” she says. “There’s a trend on TikTok where people make fun of the friend who acts like the dad at the airport, and I’m like, ‘How else does one do it?’ ” Just before she closes out the Restless Leg Tour, Poehler will swing through Las Vegas to receive the CinemaCon Vanguard Award, in honor of her starring role in the forthcoming Inside Out 2. She talks to THR about her recent work on and off the plane.

I have to say, I’m curious about your airport-dad mode …

We’re doing a bunch of travel for Inside Out 2, including to Australia, so I’m ready. I absolutely do not eat on the plane. I put on my headphones and do minimal chitchat. When I get there, I can’t think about what time it is in L.A. You have to act like you’ve never lived anywhere else but where you are. I also like to buy small things, like bookmarks or stationery, that remind me of that place.

Has it been hard to get back into the rhythm of promotion after the strike?

I genuinely love to talk about Inside Out 2, so I’ve been excited to hit the road. I have a wonderfully relaxed feeling about it. As I’ve gotten older, what matters to me more is the how something is made and less what happens after. When you release a project to the world, it’s like having a baby and then passing it around — you’re like, “Please be nice to the baby, it took a long time to birth this baby.” But you can’t depend on people liking your material. It’s funny because with Parks & Rec, we had to fight for our lives for that show to be on the air at the time and now it’s taken on this whole other life.

Do you ever wish that people had watched the show with as much fervor back then?

I feel really grateful that so many people went back to that show during the pandemic. I feel grateful that the comedy of it could be a salve.

Was it weird to come back to Joy 10 years after the first Inside Out?

Doing the voice work feels like healing work to me. The content touches me so deeply as a grown woman, and it touches the young child inside of me. This second one digs into the idea that at a certain age, new emotions like anxiety show up and everything becomes complicated and you become status-driven. You start to feel almost nostalgic for the easier, more basic emotions like sadness and fear.

Amy Poehler stars as Joy (second from left) in Inside Out 2, which hits theaters June 14.

Disney/Pixar

Do you remember the first time those emotions surfaced for you?

I used to do this online show [for young people], Smart Girls, and at the end of the episodes, we’d play music and dance around during the credits. I really like dancing in general because I can get social anxiety, and at parties I tend to hit the dance floor because I’d rather do that than talk. But we’d always notice on the show that 12-year-old girls were dancing and 13-year-old girls were too nervous to dance. Something switches.

Maybe this is daft, but you don’t strike me as someone who gets social anxiety at parties.

I’m good at opening and closing conversations. (Laughs.) One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I’m more of an introverted extrovert than I thought. So now I’m trying to figure out how to interact with other people. For most of my 20s and 30s, I was so extroverted. I was doing improv and comedy and was on a weekly sketch variety show. I had to figure out what part of that was filling me up and what part was draining me — separating the authentic from the performative.

CinemaCon is, of course, theater-focused. Have you had any experiences this year that make you optimistic about the future of theater-specific film?

My three favorite films this year, I saw them all in a theater and the experiences were so different. One was The Zone of Interest — Jonathan Glazer is one of my favorite directors and his work is so incredible, and the way the sound of the film, and lack thereof, lured you in was so compelling. And then in a very different way, Anatomy of a Fall, I was so taken into the world and the rhythm of it. It almost felt like you could close your eyes and just listen to the dialogue — if I didn’t have to open my eyes to read the French. (Laughs.) And the last is Past Lives. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Greta [Lee] in a bunch of different ways over the years. I saw it on a rainy New York day, and walking out onto the streets, and feeling all of that nostalgia and joy and sadness, it made me want to go get a meal and talk about it. I also do feel there are so few spaces where we sit shoulder to shoulder with people whom we don’t know and might not have much in common with. The theater, whether it’s movies or live theater, still feels very special and a way to be like, “Oh, this is what it means to be human beings.”

You recently wrapped your record-breaking run at the Beacon Theatre for the Restless Leg Tour. What felt different about that experience in comparison to the many other times you’ve performed in New York?

I started my career on a stage, of course, doing sketch and improv in Chicago, and no matter how established you are or how old you are, when you peek out from behind the curtain it’s like you’re a little kid again. Also, New York audiences are not easy, they’re not as impressed that you made it to your town. They’re like, “My next door neighbor is Patti LuPone so you better bring it.”

Did your experience with the strikes change the way you’ve been relating to the industry or your work?

I’ve had to do a lot of pivoting and had to be creative to figure out how to continue to work. It’s funny, when we did Inside Out, we wrapped and it was like, “OK, see you in 10 years — oh and in the meantime there’s going to be a global pandemic and a double strike and a wild presidential election.” But it’s not all bad news. I’ve been really excited about some of those pivots — the podcasting I’ve been doing, the live touring. I’m grateful for any opportunity to tell a story.

Onstage with Tina Fey

Paul Drinkwater/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

This upcoming season of Loot features a mini Saturday Night Live reunion with star Maya Rudolph and guest star Ana Gasteyer. Will we see you reuniting with them in the future?

I mean, Maya is the best. All of those SNL ladies, we dip in and out of each other’s stuff. I can’t believe I get to be friends with the funniest people around. Those women are giants, and it’s the blessing of my career whenever they want to work with me. You really do remember the people and the way they made you feel, more than the other ins and outs of a project. Knock on wood that it’s a long life and I get to do lots of things.

You mentioned Parks & Rec as a comfort watch for many people. What is your comfort watch?

I still love Judge Judy, if just to get a quick decision. When I was researching my Lucy & Desi documentary, I rewatched a lot of I Love Lucy, and that and Cheers give me a feeling of being back in my house in Boston. I also really love old Law & Orders because I like seeing ’90s New York, which I feel an affinity for. It has to be the OG, though, the first 12 seasons with Jerry Orbach and Benji Bratt. And I don’t watch a lot of reality, but I do enjoy the way they flip the boat for the next guests on Below Deck. I know most people watch for the relationship drama, but I’m more worried about, are they going to be able to stock the provisions in time?

This story first appeared in the March 27 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.