TODAY’s Matt Lauer sat down with some of this year’s Time 100 honorees, including actress Amy Poehler, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, and singer Frank Ocean, to talk about the moments that changed their lives and more.

Amy Poehler

I met pediatrician Dr. Jane Aronson at the 2009 Glamour Women of the Year event, and we became friends. Now I’m a part of her Worldwide Orphans Foundation (WWO)—meaning I get to help with her mission to improve the conditions for orphans around the globe. (We just returned from Haiti, where we visited orphanages with local youth groups.) Her new book, Carried in Our Hearts, is a small piece of that. It’s coming out in the spring—Mother’s Day gift alert!—and it’s an unbelievable expression of love that will expand your idea of what a family is. Go buy it! But first, listen as I talk to Jane about her amazing work.

Amy Poehler: I love the title of your book. How’d you come up with it?

Dr. Jane Aronson: “Carried in our hearts” is an expression in the adoption community. A mother in the book recounts her daughter telling a friend, “I wasn’t carried in Mommy’s tummy, I was carried in her heart.”

AP: Can you explain what WWO is and what you do?

Dr. Aronson: WWO is for the vast majority of orphans—153 million around the world—who are not going to get adopted. We need to be global parents and provide for the kids who don’t get adopted, so they can be successful in their communities and the world.

AP: I hope my generation can redefine family, whether with adoption, surrogacy, IVF, or gay marriage. I hope that’s our legacy—not just using up the environment and building robots that will eventually kill us.

Dr. Aronson: I do too. And I want every orphan to be seen as an equal member of society. That means that every child should have shoes that fit their feet, pants that fit their hips and legs, backpacks with their names on them. We owe it to them. You’re coming with me on another trip, right?

AP: You know I’ll go wherever you want, Jane. You’re my kind of bossy. Listen, this is Glamour. So who are you wearing?

Dr. Aronson: Diesel, actually, and Doc Martens. What are you wearing?

AP: A North Face vest, Alexander McQueen hot pants, and nothing else.

To support the Worldwide Orphans Foundation, visit wwo.org.

glamour.com

The Golden Globes will be handed out this week and hosts Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are getting prepared to make the audiences laugh (with the aid of alcohol).

The “Parks and Recreation” and “30 Rock” stars respectively offered some totally fake scoop during a conference call with reporters about what famous faces viewers can expect to see on stage, what they hope to achieve as hosts, who they’re rooting for and booze … lots of booze.

Is there anything planned with any of your co-stars and friends coming up on stage?
Tina: We have the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
Amy: That’s right and we’re just gonna ask the cast of “Cheers” to come up there strangely. So far those are our two ideas.
Tina: We should really start working.

Will there be any insult comedy?
Tina: Because it’s such a fun, kind of sloppy night, it’s not really about the hosts. Our job is to keep things moving and to get the movie stars more liquored so hopefully someone’s boob will fall out of their dress. That’s our main role. I don’t think of it as a place to change the face of comedy; [it's] more like hosting a party. The luckiest we could be would be to have something spontaneous happen on stage.
Amy: So we’re trying to plan that.
Tina: We have a lot of spontaneous things planned.

Are you going to address the fact that you’re the first women to host the Golden Globes?
Tina: Yes, thank god the reign of tyranny of two years of a male host has come to an end. We have waited too long to see this change … I think Ricky’s the only other host ever, right?
Amy: There’s no one more bored by that premise or story or headline than us, so certainly we won’t be talking about it.

Will your improv background come into play while hosting?
Tina: It does in the way that if a drunk person wanders on stage, we’ll know how to handle it.
Amy: It’s nice to know that I’m doing this show with Tina because if all else fails, we’ll just make something up on the spot.

Are the Golden Globes really that big of a big drunk fest?
Tina: Some how, no matter what time you get there, you always just missed the food. I think it’s a scam. I don’t think they make any food. You get there and there’s just booze on the table and a box of candy … All the women haven’t eaten for days so they have half a glass of wine and they’re gone.

What do you have planned to do to get people to the Globes?
Amy: One of the people watching at home is going to win a million dollars if they laugh at just the right thing. Someone’s going to knock on their door and hand them a check for one million dollars.
Tina: You have to be home and you have to have more than one television tuned into the Golden Globes.
Amy: We can give that away.

How did you both decide to host the Globes this year?
Tina: We just said, “This will be fun, right?”
Amy: We made sure we both wanted to do it and then we just took a really long nap ’til this interview.

Will you have costume changes?
Tina: I’m going to wear one costume from each of the nominated films, beginning with Django and ending with another character from Django.
Amy: All of my clothes are tear-away, no matter what I’m wearing.

Did you exchange any acceptance speech notes?
Tina: I know that I don’t need one so …
Amy: We exchanged blank pieces of paper and they both said, “Nice try, sucker.” We’ve been too busy prepping so we haven’t even thought about that. If either one of us does win, we’ll already have been talking for a while at that point anyway and people will be sick of our faces so I’m sure we’ll keep it short and sweet. Or, screw it — if we’re hosting, we can just go as long as we want and cut into people’s time.
Tina: If you win, Amy, you can just talk forever.

What shows and movies are you guys personally rooting for?
Tina: I really really enjoyed “Silver Linings Playbook.” I thought the acting was great and it shot in the neighborwood where I’m from and I used to go to that diner all the time so it was really special to me.
Amy: I would also say “Silver Linings Playbook.” Bradley Cooper is in old friend and he pointed it out to me the other day that 12 years ago ,we shared a bunk at Sundance for a movie called “Wet Hot American Summer.” And share a bunk … that is a euphemism. His performance was so good in that movie. I thought he was excellent and so is Jennifer Lawrence. Also, I loved “The Impossible.” I thought that was a beautiful movie and the young kid in that, Tom Holland, he was not nominated, but I just may say his name. Who cares? Again, what are they gonna do?

Where will your families be during the Globes?
Amy: My parents are going to be in Sweden. My brother lives there and he’s having a baby so they’re going to be watching in Sweden. I think they’ll have to watch the next day .. But like Tina’s parents, they’re always so supportive and have watched everything I’ve ever done. They’ve basically watched almost every “SNL” I ever did live. So they’re going to be excited to see [the Golden Globes] five days later in Swedish.
Tina: Me too. My family will be home and watching, I’m sure.

How will you be prepping on Sunday before the ceremony? Will you be drinking?
Tina: I’m sure we’ll not drink any alcohol until the show is over and then I will drink half a glass of alcohol.
Amy: I’m gonna pub crawl it all the way to the venue and I’m going to try to take a two-hour blackout nap before we start. As soon as the show’s over, I’m going to go on a 10-day juice cleanse.
Tina: I’m going to start a really aggressive workout routine in the middle of the show.

The Golden Globes air Sunday, January 13 at 8 p.m. EST/5 p.m. PST on NBC.

huffingtonpost.com

SNL/30 Rock’s Tina Fey and SNL/Parks and Recreation’s Amy Poehler talk up their latest hosting gig, the 70th Golden Globe Awards, which take place at the Beverly Hilton on January 13, 2013.

When I interviewed Adam Scott for a feature for New York Magazine in August, I asked him about working with Amy Poehler not just on Parks and Recreation as Leslie Knope’s boyfriend Ben, but on the movie A.C.O.D. (out next year; she plays his stepmother and nemesis). He said, quite sincerely, “I just love, love working with her so much that if I could, I would love to work with her on every single thing.” When I called Poehler to talk about Scott, however, I got a far more complicated response. Here are Poehler’s six weirdest (and not particularly true) observations of her co-star. And one bonus one from Jon Hamm.

• I told Poehler that Scott had asked me to come see his storage unit (under the auspices of looking for a note Martin Scorsese had given him ten years prior). “He’s been known to do that,” said Poehler, “He says, ‘Hey, I’ve got a really cool storage unit. I gotta really big storage unit that I want you to see,’ and I go, ‘Okay,’ and then he just drags me around the corner and pulls his pants down. It’s his weird way of introducing himself to people.”

• Often he just forgoes the storage-unit ruse. “There’s a lot of things people don’t know about Adam. He loves taking off his pants,” says Poehler. “Just takes them down all the time. Literally, he cannot keep his pants on. Like, we’ll be doing a scene and we’ll look down and Adam won’t have any pants on, and we’ll be like, ‘Adam! We’re in Senator Boxer’s office! Put your pants back on!’ And he’s like, ‘Oh.’”

• He is a dangerous drunk. “He maintains. He doesn’t get sloppy. So just know that if he does kill you and put you in that storage unit, no one will ever find you. He’s really, really precise and he knows how to cover tracks.”

• He fancies himself a true thespian. “He loves to talk about acting,” she says. “And he’ll just, in the middle of the scene, stop and say, ‘Wait a minute, I need to get back to the craft.’ And I’ll say, ‘Okay man, whatever you need.’ And he’ll just, like, pace around a room or he’ll go punch a wall. You know, a lot of people don’t know that he used to be an acting teacher. He taught in his basement for, like, fifteen years before he made it in Hollywood — or ‘Holly Weird’, as he likes to call it. And man, he just loves to talk about craft, process. Every morning, you’ll be, like, ‘Hey, Adam!’ And he’ll be like, ‘No, no, no.’ I’ll be, like, ‘Oh, sorry. Hey, Ben.’”

• He is a complicated acting partner. “Adam has this technique which is really cool,” she says, “which is when the camera’s on me and I’m talking to him, he turns around and makes me deliver the lines to the back of his head. And also when I do it, he shakes his head no. It’s a challenge because it makes me be like, ‘Right, right, I guess I’m not really delivering.’ It’s those little things that for some people make him seem like a total just terrible person to work with. But for me it’s a challenge.”

• And now, a quick interjected revelation from Jon Hamm, who also had something to say about his friend Scott. “He’s bipenal, six toes on his right foot. That’s kind of creepy, but it makes him an excellent swimmer. He tends to swim in circles to the left. He has an overpowering kick with his right foot. But the weird thing is that his two penises act like a rudder and he can steer with those.”

• But really, folks, Amy Poehler loves Adam Scott. “I feel confident that Adam can handle my jokes. But I’ll give you a genuine quote. Adam is such a rare combination of a tremendously real actor and a very facile, comedic performer,” she says. “So he can go really fun and funny and big, and likes to be really stupid, but in the real moments in between those moments, which I feel proud of that we have on our show, he’s just really such a good actor … He is really generous and kind and like a real pro.” She pauses. “And by ‘pro’ I mean prostitute. But he’s such a wonderful, kind, and funny male prostitute. It’s rare. It’s rare … I mean, I don’t know where it started, and I really hope it ends kind of soon, because it’s really getting in the way of our call times and everything. But whatever, man. He’s from Santa Cruz. They’re freethinkers over there.”

vulture.com

What would Hillary Rodham Clinton do in Leslie Knope’s situation?

When Parks and Recreation returns, the newly elected city councillor of the great city of Pawnee, Ind., may have to turn to her political idol for inspiration in order to deal with navigating the idiosyncrasies of small-town government, the increased responsibilities — seriously, rivers can’t clean themselves, people! — and the unexpected stresses that come with her new position. But will Leslie Knope cope or crack?

“She realizes really soon that it’s a lot harder and more confusing than she thought,” Amy Poehler tells TVGuide.com. “She’s lost her bearings and she doesn’t really trust her instincts anymore. She’s in a club that she doesn’t know the rules of yet and her boyfriend is many, many miles away in Washington, D.C.”

Since the beginning of the NBC comedy, Leslie Knope has been foolishly optimistic about how to get things done in small-town government. (The original proposed park is still an empty lot! Well, at least it’s no longer a pit.) Fresh off her successes with the Harvest Festival and the election, the wide-eyed city councillor will struggle with the bureaucracy of bigger government.

“Leslie learns that even the smallest, most innocuous bills take a really long time and have a lot of people who fight against them for really ridiculous reasons,” Poehler says. It won’t help either that Season 5 will also introduce a new nemesis for Leslie, Councilman Jamm (comedian Jon Glaser). “She starts running up against the inner politics of City Council, the different councilmen and the different weird little laws and things that keep her from getting to do what she wants.”

As if that weren’t hard enough for the usually chipper public servant, Leslie’s trip to visit Ben (Adam Scott) in Washington, D.C., will depress her further. “Leslie has to come off of winning this big election and then going to Washington, D.C., and realizing how small her town is and how small she feels when she plays with the big dogs,” Poehler says, noting that in comparison, Ben and his new intern April (Aubrey Plaza) are “big shots” now in D.C. And when they take her to a party attended by real-life U.S. Senators John McCain, Barbara Boxer and Olympia Snowe, Leslie “gets tongue-tied around all of them,” Poehler reports. Definitely not something that normally happens to the great Leslie Knope.

But she’ll return to Pawnee a changed woman, trying to figure out how to balance her old job at the Parks Department with the difficulties of being in office. “She’s going to have to start to figure out now that she has a tiny amount of power — what does she want to do with it?” Poehler says.

But Knope will persevere throughout, thanks to the help of boyfriend Ben and Skype. “They don’t like the distance,” she says says. “It’s not easy for either one of them.” Prepare to avert your eyes because Leslie will take advantage of the video chatting to soothe her spirits — if you know what we mean.

And really, even though Leslie’s dealing with the burdens of her job and heartache, at least she’ll always have waffles. Knope, not all is lost.

Parks and Recreation returns Thursday at 9:30/8:30c on NBC.

tvguide.com

The cast of NBC’s comedy mockumentary “Parks and Recreation” visits Google LA to discuss and answer questions about their 2012 new season. Amy Poehler moderates a discussion with her fellow cast members: Aubrey Plaza, Chris Pratt and Adam Scott. This talk took place at Google LA on September 6, 2012.

Who knew Senator John McCain had such a knack for comedy?

Amy Poehler is finally opening up about McCain’s upcoming guest-starring spot on Parks and Recreation.

So what was it like working with the Republican politico?

“It was great,” Poehler told us at last night’s Television Academy Performers Peer Group reception in L.A. “I got to work with him a couple years ago on SNL. He was so game and funny. He has a great sense of humor about himself. He was great.”

“He’s funny,” she added. “He’s kind of a blast.”

McCain will appear in one episode during Parks and Recreation’s fifth season in which Poehler’s character Leslie Knope travels to Washington, D.C., for some political business.

“I don’t want to give it away, but he just kind of has a small moment and [Leslie] doesn’t know he’s there,” Poehler says of her scene with McCain. “So it’s kind of funny because she’s having a moment and he kind of walks through, and she doesn’t really know who she’s talking to.”

So is Poehler looking for Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney for the show’s next Republican politico guest star?

“No, I don’t think we’re going to do any more D.C. cameos as of yet,” she smiled. “We got Senator Barbara Boxer and Senator Olympia Snowe, and there’s a few other juicies on the way.”

eonline.com

Amy Poehler may have confirmed that Zach Galifianakis is a married man.

The Parks and Recreation funnylady, who costars with Galifianakis in the upcoming flick You Are Here, just chatted with us about the Hangover actor’s rumored recent wedding to Quinn Lundberg.

“[I'm] so happy for him, and Quinn, his wife, is so amazing,” Poehler told us tonight at the Television Academy’s Performers Peer Group reception when we asked about Galifianakis’ wedding. “They’re awesome. He’s awesome.”

Poehler says she has yet to get the happy couple a wedding gift. “I haven’t sent him anything yet,” she said. “I’m hoping they will send me something. Zach should send me some of his money.”

Initial reports claimed the actor wed Lundberg during a private ceremony somewhere in the Furry Creek-Squamish area in the Canadian province of British Columbia a little over a week ago, but Galifianakis’ camp never confirmed the event.

As for their upcoming flick You Are Here, Poehler dished, “I play Zach’s sister.”

Poehler and Galifianakis as brother and sister? “Actually we do look alike,” she smiled. “Zach actually looks like my brother. We could be brother and sister. We have similar eyes and features.”

eonline.com

Matt: What’s the first dance movie you remember seeing as a child?
Amy: I imagine it was Singing in the Rain or West Side Story.

What’s your favorite dance movie and why?
Although I love the welding masks in Flashdance, the leotards in Chorus Line and the rollerskating in Xanadu, my heart belongs to Footloose. I saw it in the movie theater about ten times when I was young.

Was there a character in a musical you pictured yourself playing?
Eponine from Les Miz. Or the plant from Little Shop of Horrors.

If you were a street dancer what would be your street dancer name and why? What would be the name of your break dance crew?
Thank you for asking this. My street dancer name would be Justice. Or Lil J. My breakdancing crew would be called The Miami Pound Machine.

What’s your signature dance move called and how is it done?
Its called the “Slip Slide” and it involves water and a crowd.

Freak Dance is another term for “grinding”, a dance which is essentially dry humping one’s partner to the musical beat. Every generation has had its forbidden boogaloo. Does this dance go too far for you?
I believe that when dancing children should always leave room for the Holy Spirit.

How old do you have to be to grind on your own without your parents permission?
18. Unless you live in Arizona.

Can grinding aka freak dancing get you pregnant?
Yes. Everything can. Don’t do anything!

How do you stop an unwanted grinder from getting up on you?
Barbed wire and bodyguards.

In the news recently, at a high school prom, two mother chaperones were using Lysol spray to break up teenage dancers caught doing the dirty dance. Were these mothers out of line? How would you break up two under age freak dancers?
It’s always great when you can combine disciplining your children with a little light housekeeping. When I break up my freak dancers I like to use a vacuum or a swiffer.

Have you ever done a musical before? How is filming a musical different from making a real movie?
Filming Freak Dance was really fun. It’s cool to learn choreography and get out of your head and go for it. It is like filming a real movie except stretching is involved.

Freak Dance available now on cable system’s Video On Demand. Available on DVD and digital download on July 10. “Freak Dance” soundtrack featuring songs sung by Amy Poehler available on iTunes and Amazon now.

hellogiggles.com