DIGGING DEEPER

‘SNL’ Star’s Dark Side Comes to Light in First TV Role Since ‘Parks and Rec’

The creators of Amy Poehler’s new show break down her big departure from Leslie Knope on “Obsessed: The Podcast.”

Amy Poehler is returning to TV for the first time in over a decade. And the character she’s playing couldn’t be more different from Leslie Knope, her longtime collaborator Mike Schur revealed on Obsessed: The Podcast.

In the new Peacock series Dig (streaming Nov. 23), Poehler stars as the hard-edged archeologist Elise, a stark departure from her bright-eyed bureaucrat in Parks and Recreation, for which the Saturday Night Live icon earned six consecutive Outstanding Lead Actress Emmy nominations.

“If you thought that Amy Poehler was Leslie Knope, you were wrong,” Dig co-creator Mike Schur, who also co-created Parks and Rec, explained. “Amy was summoning that part of her that related to Leslie in order to play that part. And the same is true with this character, too.”

Dig follows Poehler’s Elise, a hyper-independent archeologist whose excavation in Greece spirals into chaos and conspiracy after her team discovers a long-buried secret artifact. Schur and his wife, J.J. Philbin, serve as co-showrunners.

Schur and J.J. Philbin, who married seven years after meeting in the Saturday Night Live writers’ room in 1998, have cemented their legacies as entertainment powerhouses. Schur has created a slate of iconic sitcoms, including Parks and Rec, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and The Good Place. Philbin wrote on The O.C., served as a consulting producer and writer on New Girl, and is the co-executive producer of Only Murders in the Building.

Dig is the first time the couple has worked together since SNL.

Schur and Poehler became friends when Poehler joined the cast of SNL in 2001. When Poehler left in 2008, Schur and Parks and Rec co-creator Greg Daniels wrote Leslie Knope for her. The hit series ran from 2009 to 2015, and though Poehler and Leslie are different, Schur said they have a few key similarities.

“I think that there were parts of Leslie Knope that were Amy Poehler,” Schur said. “Amy is relentlessly like, ‘Go get them!’ And sunny and optimistic about the world, and really has a deep belief in, like, ‘You can do what you set out to do.’”

“And there’s a part that’s also overlapping with Amy, which is that Amy is a toughie,” he continued. “She doesn’t suffer fools, and she’s not a wallflower at all. She has a very strong backbone about what she thinks the world should be and what it shouldn’t be.”

Poehler and Knope may share their backbones with Elise, but “Elise is a lot grouchier than Leslie,” Philbin added. “Unlike Leslie, Elise struggles at first to be able to work with other people on her team.”

Philbin also added that Elise’s specific brand of frustration is new to Poehler’s repertoire. She said it made the role feel fresh and “completely its own thing, and it doesn’t remind us at all of Leslie Knope.”

Still, Schur reiterated that both Leslie and Elise contain elements of Poehler herself.

“I think of Leslie and Elise as just two different slices of the real Amy Poehler that she’s choosing to focus on, on camera,” said Schur. “And that’s the dream, right? The dream is that you’re not playing someone you have no ability to identify with. The dream is you recognize certain aspects of them, and you also have the distance to say, ‘This isn’t exactly me.’”

“I think Elise and Leslie are both contained within the person of Amy Poehler,” he added.

Mostly, Schur and Philbin are just glad Poehler is shooting a TV series again. She’s been busy hosting the hit podcast Good Hang, using her vocal talents in movies like Inside Out, and producing a slew of comedy projects. Now, she’ll return to the place audiences first encountered her years ago: the small screen.

“The world needs Amy Poehler on TV,” Schur said. “I’m happy that she’s back.”

All 10 episodes of Dig will be streaming on Peacock starting Nov. 23.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch new episodes of ‘Obsessed: The Podcast’ every Wednesday and Friday. And follow our feed to listen to the show the next morning on your favorite podcast platform.

Obsessed: The PodcastPodcast

Dana Herrnstadt Editorial Intern, Obsessed

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.