The Safe Space of “Good Hang with Amy Poehler”

Amy Poehler may be the most-liked woman in Hollywood. Her latest project, the mega-popular podcast “Good Hang with Amy Poehler,” certainly encourages that impression. It’s perhaps her biggest platform since the hit series “Parks and Recreation,” in which she played the idealistic bureaucrat Leslie Knope, went off the air a decade ago. And while many of her former co-stars have branched out into new territory—Aziz Ansari by reinventing himself as a melancholy romantic in “Master of None,” Adam Scott by proving his dramatic chops as a man at war with himself in “Severance”—Poehler has leaned into Leslie’s vibes: sunniness, earnestness, a focus on female friendship and uncomplicated feminist values. Those qualities are amply evident in “Good Hang,” which launched in March and shot to the top of the charts even in a thoroughly saturated market. At one point, it dethroned “The Joe Rogan Experience” as the No. 1 show on Spotify.

“Good Hang,” like “Rogan,” is a video podcast; each week, Poehler sits across a blond-wood table from a celebrity or two. The casual intimacy of her interactions with famous friends is an undeniable part of the show’s appeal. She uses nicknames for her longtime pals: Tina Fey is “Betty,” Kathryn Hahn is “Hahnsy,” Rashida Jones is “Bones.” Occasionally, she holds a guest’s hand. There’s no doubt that “Good Hang” is curated, but the shared history between Poehler and many of her subjects helps the conversations feel real—and can yield genuinely poignant exchanges. After Aubrey Plaza’s husband died by suicide, she spoke publicly about the loss for the first time via the podcast. Plaza, who has known Poehler for practically her entire professional life, dropped her usual witchy persona and talked candidly about the “giant ocean of awfulness” of widowhood. Andy Samberg, too, was unguarded about his grief following the death of his “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” co-star Andre Braugher. Poehler is so disarming, in fact, that multiple interviewees—Seth Meyers, the “Broad City” creators Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson—have teared up while expressing what her support has meant to them.

Such emotional moments aside, Poehler keeps the mood light by design, and the look of the show reflects her desire to set her guests at ease. The studio is decorated with cozy, millennial-coded touches: fake plants, neon signs, pastel accents. It resembles the kind of startup space where employees are invited to bring their dogs—even if Poehler, who believes that “rules are what make things fun,” is adamantly against pets in the workplace. (Dakota Johnson and Plaza brought theirs anyway.)

Poehler seems to have been inspired by audiences rediscovering “Parks and Rec” as a comfort watch during the pandemic—a development she mentions more than once—and it’s easy to see the connective tissue between the series and the podcast. “Parks” was an office comedy defined by its optimism about people’s capacity for growth, and on “Good Hang,” stars tend to reminisce about their early—and thus most relatable—experiences. There are constant, if generic, paeans to female solidarity, in the spirit of Galentine’s Day, the holiday that Leslie invented to celebrate the women in her life, and each episode opens with Poehler calling up a guest’s loved ones to “talk well” behind their back. Ostensibly, the exercise is about helping her to generate questions; mostly, it’s an opportunity to rhapsodize about the woman or man of the hour. (Jeremy O. Harris on Natasha Lyonne: “This, like, wild intelligence and wild generosity combined into this atomic bomb of the ideal friend.”) All this flattery appears to be sincere—a version of the hyper-specific, borderline-surreal praise that Leslie piled on her bestie, Ann. But the unrelentingly positive energy, like the inflated compliment culture of Hollywood as a whole, begins to grate.

“Good Hang” is aware of its own insubstantiality. In the introductory episode, Poehler mounts a feminist case for her lightheartedness: women, she says, are expected to be selfless and wise and speak out about issues like menopause, while men—presumably the hosts of other celebrity-on-celebrity interview podcasts, such as “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend,” Dax Shepherd’s “Armchair Expert,” and Will Arnett, Sean Hayes, and Jason Bateman’s “Smartless”—are extolled for just shooting the shit. Poehler isn’t a journalist, and that fact is both the show’s strength and its weakness. Her industry connections and insights can play to her advantage; the most compelling episodes feature kindred spirits like Quinta Brunson, with whom Poehler discusses, for example, the unfair pressure on female writers and actors to represent their communities in ways that are somehow both grounded and aspirational. She also lands long chats with generally press-shy stars, including Fey and Kristen Wiig. But, unlike a reporter, she’ll avoid touchy subjects with someone who’d rather not go there. (Lyonne came on the show a few weeks after a story about her generative-A.I. studio sparked significant backlash; Poehler, who routinely chats with guests about new projects, doesn’t mention the venture.)

Much has been made of the way traditional late-night TV may soon be supplanted by podcasts and gimmick-based series such as “Hot Ones” and “Chicken Shop Date,” which have been lauded for getting “authentic” responses from media-trained celebrities. On Poehler’s show, however, there’s a clear divide between the stars she already knows and those she doesn’t. Her “yes, and . . .” gameness, honed through decades as a sketch comedian, makes her a flexible conversationalist, but it isn’t always enough to draw out actors who are merely going through the motions of promotional duty. The enforced levity means some of these discussions never progress beyond pleasant small talk. I could go the rest of my life without hearing Poehler ask another guest about their sleeping habits, let alone posing such queries to Michelle Obama.

Still, the hour-long format of “Good Hang”—a stark contrast to the seven or eight minutes allotted to celebrities on a late-night couch between commercial breaks—offers a reminder that even A-listers need time to open up. There’s something comforting about the spectacle of their comfort. And if a risk-free, stars-only safe space is the sole way to glimpse them in a more naturalistic mode, that seems to be a trade-off that millions are willing to make. ♦