Jon Hamm Roasted Amy Poehler After Her OBGYN Died
The cast of Saturday Night Live went all out during the week that Jon Hamm hosted for the first time, Seth Meyers revealed this week on Late Night. For one thing, the cast turned out for the Monday pitch session dressed as Mad Men characters. For another, Amy Poehler showed up to write and perform despite being all-the-way pregnant — so pregnant that she was due on the day after the show.
Poehler was prepping a pre-taped bit with Hamm — “Don Draper’s Guide to Picking Up Women” — chatting him up while they sat next to one another in makeup chairs. “She gets a phone call and immediately starts heaving sobbing,” Hamm told Meyers. Poehler excused herself to finish the call. “And she comes back and she has a tear-stained face and goes, ‘I just found out my OBGYN just died. He was very old. We didn’t know. I was hoping…,’ this and that.”
Hamm’s response? “God, Amy, that’s really terrible, but you really need to pull it together because this is my first time hosting and you better bring it.”
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“Which was a big swing,” noted Meyers. It’s the kind of joke you might tell someone you’ve known for 10 years, but after four or five days? Meyers, however, said the swing was definitely appreciated.
“She immediately started laughing. ‘Oh my God!’ Big hug. The whole thing,” remembered Hamm.
In Poehler’s book Yes Please, she confirms that she appreciated Hamm’s dig. “I laughed so hard, I probably peed myself,” she said. “I believe that going through crying to laughing adds like five years to your life.”
She also pulled it together to film the bit, her 1950s secretary completely succumbing to the charms of Don Draper. “Let’s get me out of this skirt,” she purrs upon introduction.
The parody video was Poehler’s only appearance during Hamm’s SNL debut. She went into labor on Saturday hours before show time, delivering her first child with the help of a fill-in OBGYN. “She was not able to come to the show, which I specifically warned her about!” said Hamm, joking that Poehler’s priorities were all out-of-whack.
“It was an example of the beginning of what children do to you,” Poehler said in her memoir. “Which is they fuck up all your plans.”