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As if her weekends weren't busy enough, SNL star Amy Poehler pops up in two new projects this Friday and Saturday. Baby Mama, in which she plays the tacky, crass surrogate who carries Tina Fey's child, opens on April 25; the following day, The Mighty B, an animated series she co-created about a hyper girl who's obsessed with collecting merit badges in her Brownies-like troop, debuts at 10:30 a.m. on Nickelodeon. We caught up with Poehler to talk about the keys to playing little overachievers, making a farfetched impersonation work, and peeing in a sink. (Ew.)
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Bessie, the character you voice on The Mighty B, has shades of Caitlin, your ''Rick! Rick! Rick!'' character on SNL. Was that intentional?
AMY POEHLER: I've been doing that kind of kid character for a long time. I did that character at Upright Citizens Brigade before I came to SNL, the Brownie kid named Cassie McMadison. [Bessie] was an amalgamation of a lot of different voices and things that I had done. I really liked the idea of playing that kind of optimistic, super-intense, go-get-'em spirit combined with being a little bit of an outsider. I am really drawn to girls of that age in general, who believe they can be a waitress, scientist, actress, a dentist, a zookeeper...and who really aren't boy-crazy.
As Bessie, you do a very impressive lisp. How do you manage it?
Maybe I have a little motormouth in me that kicks in. For the past year and a half I've gone in and taped stuff every Monday [for The Mighty B]. On Mondays I'm always like, ''Oh, I'm exhausted,'' and I realized it's because you have to stand up and jump around — it's really not the kind of character you can phone in... I'm proud to say [my voice has] never had to be sped up. I think I've had a couple post-party mornings that I maybe had to get pitched down a little bit — Mama's voice was a little too wizened. They're like, ''That's great, Amy, but now bring it down a little bit. She sounds like she's been at a jazz club all night.''
Moving on to Baby Mama, director Michael McCullers says at first you and Tina Fey really wanted to make a Cagney & Lacey movie. Explain.
Well, first of all, it's a good show. Second of all, Harvey is one of the best characters — Harvey, Lacey's husband, he was like an evolved man. But I think both [Fey and I] are now getting to the point where we could probably pull it off. [Cagney and Lacey] both had dark undersides. And we're certainly too old now to play Laverne and Shirley, that's for sure.
NEXT PAGE: Sink-peeing in Baby Mama, which SNL impressions work, and the inspiration behind ''Bronx Beat''
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