What IS inside Amy Poehler‘s head?
Parade spent some time interviewing her and photographing her for this week’s cover.
The best answer came from Amy herself in the doodles she provided for the cover image — in a word, JOY.As her many fans already know, it’s smart, funny and sunny in there. So it’s no surprise that her latest movie role, in the Disney/Pixar animated family comedy Inside Out, is a character named Joy, one of the five emotions inside the head of Riley, an 11-year-old girl, guiding her through a particularly turbulent time in her young life. For Poehler, paying an up-beat character — as opposed to her co-emotions Anger, Fear, Disgust and Sadness — came easy.
Here are some excerpts:
On her character, Joy, in Inside Out:
“What I love about Joy is her desire to be silly, to be ridiculous, to have fun, to not be afraid of how she looks. That’s something people lose as they become adults; we get scared and panic and worry about what we’re going to look like and sound like, or if we’re going to fail.”
On what she feels are the two most important messages in Inside Out:
“In Inside Out, you go on this journey where you laugh really hard, and you also feel really big feelings. And those two things are really ultimate for me: big feelings, big laughs. Getting to do those things together, that’s an ultimate goal. It certainly changes how you feel every day, if not your week — if not your world.”
On why she started amysmartgirls.com: her website for young girls:
“I had great teachers who encouraged me. There’s that wonderful age in young boys and girls, the prepubescent age, where they want to be a scientist and a teacher and a motorcycle rider and police officer — you know, the imagination is running wild. Smart Girls is this idea of creating content that I would like to have seen at that age. It’s an attempt to have an antidote to all the negative stuff on the Internet. It’s an attempt to be a joy-spreader, that’s for sure.”
For more from Amy Poehler, including how she feels about colleague Bill Hader — and how he feels about her, go to Parade.com: