Amy Poehler says ‘we all played people we should not have’ as she reflects on controversial SNL sketches

Comedic actress and “Saturday Night Live” alum Amy Poehler spoke candidly on Tuesday’s episode of her “Good Hang” podcast about some of her past gags in comedy, saying some of them would be offensive by today’s standards.

During Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary, the show had an “In Memoriam” segment cutting ties with jokes and characters that have aged poorly as societal norms have changed.

The segment featured numerous characters playing “ethnic stereotypes,” engaging in “sexual harassment,” “body-shaming,” “gay panic,” and other controversial moments from the show’s 50 years of being on the air.

Outspoken liberal actor Tom Hanks, who gave the intro to the segment, noted that, “Even though these characters, accents, and let’s just call them ethnic wigs were unquestionably in poor taste, you all laughed at them. So if anyone should be canceled, shouldn’t it be you, the audience?” 

Poehler noted on Tuesday’s interview with fellow SNL alumni Will Forte that part of “getting older and being in comedy is you have to like figure out, like, ‘Oh, it’s like everything has an expiration date.’”

She cringed at a past incident where she claimed that during a sexual harassment seminar, she had been drawing pictures of penises and passing them back and forth with Forte, and accidentally passed the illustrations to the seminar host because she mistook it for the sign-in sheet. 

“He was like ‘What’s this?’ and I said ‘Oh, that’s the wrong – Sir, that’s the wrong paper.’”

She then brought up her takeaway from the “In Memoriam” segment.

“I mean there’s, like, even on the 50th when they had that segment which was like, ‘Here’s all the ways we got things wrong’ and they showed way inappropriate casting for people you know, we all played people that we should not have played, I misappropriated, I appropriated, I didn’t know, I did know,” she said.

Poehler could be recognizably seen in one portion of the In Memoriam segment where a character played by Ben Affleck appears to be berating a mentally-disabled character.

Many other actors in other snippets were blurred out for being in makeup, playing characters of other races.

According to Entertainment Weekly, “Some of Poehler’s more questionable impressions from her time on SNL include Michael Jackson, Yoko Ono, and Kim Jong-il.”

Poehler also played Kim Jong-il in a 2006 segment, with actors Bill Hader and Fred Armisen portraying North Korean guards during the North Korean leader’s speech. 

“It’s very real and the best thing you can do is, like, make repair, learn from your mistakes, do better, like it’s all you can do,” Poehler said.