Amy Poehler Takes Home the Pudding (Pot) as Hasty Woman of the Year
Amy Poehler won the pudding on Thursday — the Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ pudding pot, that is.
The Burlington native who ironically devoted a chunk of her memoir Yes Please to the feeling of yearning for what she describes as “the pudding’’ (awards that she has been nominated for) before awards shows, was recognized as the theater organization’s Woman of the Year with a parade, roast, and press conference in her honor.
The festivities began with a short parade on Massachusetts Avenue, running from Bow Street to Holyoke Street, where the Parks and Recreation star sat in a convertible flanked by Pudding actors dressed in drag.
Amy Poehler rode in a parade through the streets of Cambridge with Jason Hellerstein, left, and Sam Clark during the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year ceremony.
When the parade culminated at Farkas Hall, Poehler was swept inside before Pudding presidents Jason Hellerstein and Sam Clark, both of Harvard’s class of 2015, did their best to roast the comedienne in front of a packed theater.
Hellerstein and Clark’s rehearsed bits included jabs at Parks and Rec, noting that the current season is set two years in the future and the “last good episodes’’ were two seasons in the past.
When talking about Yes Please, which was released last fall, the pair joked Poehler’s critics said “No, thank you’’ after its release.
Not one to take a joke lying down, Poehler graciously stepped onstage after Hellerstein and Clark mentioned some of her film roles, and opened by thanking them.
“Thank you gentleman. Great job,’’ Poehler said. “It is truly an honor to be roasted by you. It’s times like this in your career when you know you really made it.’’
Laughter shook the auditorium and radiated into the press conference room upstairs, before she added one more thank you to her acceptance speech.
“I’d like to thank Hasty Pudding for reminding us how hard it is to write funny jokes,’’ Poehler quipped.
The former Saturday Night Live comedy queen proved why she had been chosen as this year’s Woman of the Year throughout the remainder of the roast, not only with roar-worthy rehearsed jokes (which she later noted she had written just an hour before the ceremony), but also with her seasoned improv chops.
Amy Poehler was challenged to freestyle by Pudding cast members during the ceremony.
Halfway through the roast a pair of Pudding actors stepped onstage, identifying themselves as campers from Poehler’s 2001 film Wet Hot American Summer — which one of them noted “failed to make $1 million at the box office’’ — and challenged Poehler to a freestyle rap battle.
She accepted without hesitation.
Before the ceremony’s producer could drop a beat, the actors offered Poehler a Harvard baseball cap to match the ones they were donning for the bit.
Thinking on her toes, she refused and instead asked for the one her dad had worn to the ceremony: a Boston College cap.
Repping her alma mater, Poehler spit several bars, laying down lines like “Pudding is great, pudding is tasty, when I win, I’m not hasty.’’
Other elements from the roast included an improvised slow dance with Poehler and the Pudding’s own Kim Jong Un (a reference to her most recent Golden Globes hosting gig) and a dance-off with the Pudding’s Plastics a la Mean Girls.
“To become fetch, you’re going to have to prove you’ve still got the moves,’’ a sexy Santa suit-clad actor, channeling his inner Gretchen Weiners, said.
“No f****** problem, bitches,’’ Poehler replied, before putting on a Santa coat and hat for the number.
Amy Poehler performed in a Mean Girls-inspired skit.
Poehler took a more serious approach after wrapping things up in the theater, giving advice to Harvard students who had gathered for a press conference alongside media.
When asked by one student what she would tell up-and-coming comics, Poehler offered a couple of tips.
“My advice is two-fold,’’ Poehler said. “One is that nobody can be you, and nobody can do what you can do. So, your best and your most powerful and your secret weapon is to try to find who you are, find your own voice.’’
The next tip, she noted, might sound like opposite advice: “Copy the thing that people that you respect and admire — copy what they did.
“That’s what I did,’’ Poehler continued. “I went to Chicago because I wanted to study at places that Bill Murray and Gilda Radner had studied at, and I did improv because Chris Farley was there. I just kind of followed the paths of people that were ahead of me and walked in their footprints for a long time. So if you’re looking for a path, or a way to go, do that.’’
Poehler, who’s carved out some footprints of her own, won’t be on the East Coast for long. She noted that she’ll be back in Los Angeles for the Super Bowl on Sunday — and she skirted around the question of who she’d be rooting for.
“Well I’m from Boston, so you know,’’ she said when asked.
Her take on #DeflateGate was just as flat — “I don’t have any jokes for that. I’m excited for the game.’’ — but she did note that the Hasty Pudding Man of the Year, Chris Pratt, is a “big Seahawks fan.’’
“If only we could be here together,’’ Poehler said of her Parks and Rec co-star, who will be honored on February 6. “We could arm wrestle, and solve it once and for all.’’
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