Amy Poehler On Her New Sitcom

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With that, Scranton was out, Indiana was in, and Poehler was set to play a striving deputy director of Pawnee's Parks and Recreation Department. ''She's like [Election's] Tracy Flick meets your soccer coach meets a baby calf,'' Poehler says of her character. ''She's not savvy at all, but she's smart, she's capable, she works hard. I want her so badly to succeed. I just wanna pick her up like a little baby and tell her how to flirt with guys and take her away from the Dress Barn.'' The initial six-episode run will follow Leslie's determined quest to transform a garbage-strewn pit into a park, aided by her pervy assistant Tom (Ansari) and a local nurse who lives near the pit, Ann (Jones). All involved with Parks and Recreation know that this show will draw comparisons to a certain Steve Carell hit sitcom — not surprisingly, since Parks is also shot mockumentary-style, and the writers adore their awkward moments — but they stress that this is not a Dunder Mifflin carbon copy. ''That was a worry I had. Then I read the script and thought, 'Oh, it's different,''' says Jones. ''There is a female buddy-comedy element to it, which The Office doesn't have. Our world is a little bigger.... So much of this has to do with this thing that exists outside — a big hole. Get ready to look at a big hole, America!''

Apparently America wasn't too thrilled about its first glance at that pit. According to an early test screening of the pilot — results of which leaked online last month — many viewers felt Parks was ''too close and similar to The Office.'' But the Parks department claims the data was based on an extremely early version of the pilot — one that bears little resemblance to what viewers will see on April 9. ''By the time we had even gotten the results of the testing back, we had done, like, five more edits of the pilot,'' says Schur. ''The only thing that matters at all is the final product, and it's going to be very, very different from the version that was thrown in front of a group of people.'' Says NBC Entertainment co-chair Ben Silverman, ''All of the research we do around initial rough cuts is negative. If you had seen the initial research on all of our and our competitors' successful shows, it tends to be like that.''

While her show may be held up against The Office, Poehler is prepared for other inevitable comparisons between her and another NBC Thursday-night player: Tina Fey. ''Tina's amazing,'' says Poehler of the 30 Rock star. ''We've been friends for so long. [But] it's kinda funny — they don't ask Steve [Carell], 'What do you think of Alec [Baldwin]?' Or 'How are you and Alec the same?''' And if anyone still thinks that Poehler's years of zipping between four different wigs and the ''Weekend Update'' desk mean she's not up to developing a full-fledged sitcom character, Arnett has something to say about that: ''Even though Amy's been doing a lot of sketch comedy for the last 100 years, she's really a better actress than maybe people know.'' Poehler hopes to get several seasons to prove her husband right, but she does have a realistic plan B just in case things don't work out. ''I'm going to take all my money out and invest it in gold. Then melt that gold down and then build a gold hotel. Then have people stay in the hotel, paying only in gold. And then light the whole thing on fire, melt it again, and start from scratch,'' she explains. ''That's my five-year plan.''