Amy Poehler has become a comedy legend throughout the years. Starting her own comedy theater with the Upright Citizens Brigade and then joining the cast of Saturday Night Live, many look up to her as comedy royalty. In 2008, Poehler left Saturday Night Live to go on and star in her own NBC series, Parks and Recreation. But during a recent interview, Poehler shared more insight into why she left the sketch comedy show.
While partaking in WSJ‘s video series “The Job Interview,” Poehler opened up about her time on Saturday Night Live and what ultimately led to the decision to leave.
I was pregnant, and I had to have that baby. But then I came back after I had the baby. And then they were like, ‘You got to get out of here. You got to go take care of your baby.’ And I was like, ‘But I want to stay with you guys.’ And they were like, ‘Nope, you have to leave.’ It’s very hard to figure out when it’s time to go ‘cause it’s such a dream job. But I was ready to go, to have a regular night’s sleep.
While Poehler joked that they said it was time to go, she did clarify that she was ready to leave and get a good night’s rest with her new baby. Her leaving Saturday Night Live would lead to Poehler’s seven season comedy Parks and Recreation becoming the smash hit that it was. Still, if someone did tell Poehler to leave once she had her kid….that sucks.
You can see the full video here:
A Woman Shouldn’t Have to Give Anything Up!
This situation is complicated because Poehler loves to make jokes. So she might have been poking fun at the idea that she left shortly after giving birth and if so, then that’s fine. But even if she left SNL after having a baby for any reason that was not her own decision, that’s not uncommon. Many women are forced to feel guilty about working with kids and SNL, while a dream job, is also an exhausting show to be on. The issue here is that plenty of men do it constantly on the show.
Kenan Thompson and Mikey Day are two of the longest running cast members on the show (Thompson being the longest) and they both have had kids while working on the series. Day’s son was barely a year old when he joined the cast. Both of Thompson’s daughters were born while he was a main cast member on the series. If the idea was that Poehler needed to go to get rest and it wasn’t just a joke, why were those two not told similar things?
Again, this could just be Poehler having fun and I do love when she does that. But she hasn’t really spoken a lot about leaving the show before because so many assumed it was to go star in Parks and Recreation. If the reality is that the show said time to go because she had a kid, there are a lot of double standards at play.
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