Ashley Padilla | Good Hang with Amy Poehler

Episode Overview

• Host Amy Poehler (a former Saturday Night Live cast member) interviews current SNL cast member and writer Ashley Padilla—with an introductory Zoom segment featuring fellow SNL cast member and writer Andrew Dismukes—to explore how Padilla transitioned from a rebellious teenager, Sephora employee, and personal assistant to Diane Keaton into a confident sketch comedy performer.
• The narrative traces Padilla's unconventional upbringing as the 2nd of 4 children raised by a single mother, her teenage arrest at age 16, her early career in retail and hospitality, and her transformative years working in The Groundlings main company and assisting Diane Keaton.
• The conversation highlights the mechanics of grounded character comedy, the necessity of writing one's own material in competitive environments like SNL and The Groundlings, and how letting go of career desperation paradoxically led to Padilla's big break.
• Listeners interested in sketch comedy, creative resilience, the behind-the-scenes culture of SNL, and non-traditional paths into entertainment will find practical insights and comedic storytelling throughout the episode.

Key Concepts

• Episode Context, Speakers, and Disclosed Ties: The episode is hosted by Amy Poehler on the Good Hang podcast (a Spotify platform logo appears at 0:00:00). Sponsors disclosed during the episode include presenting sponsor Uber (0:01:08–0:01:39, promoting the "Women Preferences" feature at uber.com/safety), Visible by Verizon (0:10:34–0:11:28, promoting $25/month unlimited 5G wireless plans and $10 off Visible Plus with promo code HANG at visible.com), Pure Leaf Iced Tea (0:11:29–0:12:02, promoting real brewed, naturally caffeinated iced tea at pureleaf.com), and PayPal (0:12:03–0:12:32, promoting the new PayPal app and purchase protection at paypal.com/protectionterms). Padilla also discloses a business tie as the co-creator and designer of a fashion book with Diane Keaton published by Rizzoli. Regarding Padilla's tenure at SNL, Poehler refers to her as being in her "third season at SNL" at 0:00:10, then her "second season" at 0:14:44 and "2 years in" at 0:17:14, while Padilla jokes about "Season 3" at 1:06:16.
• Playing the "Realness" and Truth of a Character: In the intro segment, Andrew Dismukes joins via Zoom from Appleton, Wisconsin (where he performed stand-up the night before; he notes he drinks his coffee "black, straight up," is originally from Texas, has lived in New York City for "uh, 9 years now," and his favorite NYC restaurant is 2 blocks from his house). Dismukes explains that after meeting Padilla during her first episode, they wrote "I think... maybe 1 or 2 things" together in her first season that did not make it to air before landing their first aired collaboration: a Weekend Update feature playing a "couple who just hooked up" discussing the Super Bowl. Dismukes notes that Padilla's comedic strength lies in playing real human emotion rather than over-the-top silliness. For example, in her viral SNL "fart sketch," coworkers surprise her, she farts, gets legitimately upset, moans for what Poehler estimates as "a good like 20, maybe 25 seconds of moaning," and spends 2 minutes asking everyone their salaries. Padilla traces this philosophy back to age 13 (when her Uncle Chris filmed and edited a sketch about her invented character "Esther the Sign Spinner," who spun signs for local restaurants for free), her childhood obsession with Steve Carell and Dwight Schrute on The Office (her mother bought her the new season on DVD every Christmas), and a trip to a museum with her friend Sierra where she pretended to be fascinated by a plain bench as if it were art. She realized that comedy works best when the character is completely serious and never knows they are funny, and when the performer takes the unhurried time required for real human behavior like embarrassment or anxiety to unfold.
• Fearlessness and Work Ethic Modeled by Family: Despite beginning the interview claiming she is "so scary boring" that she had a nightmare Poehler would run out of questions, Padilla shares a vibrant family history. She is the 2nd of 4 children alongside her oldest sister Lindsay (who owns a hair salon), younger sister Sammy (a tattoo artist), and youngest brother Teddy (a nurse and screenwriter). Padilla's mother did not go to college, raised all 4 children as a single mom, and worked her way up at the software company Adobe to become an executive producer of live events (even hiring Padilla and her sister to do hair and makeup for Adobe live events). Watching her mother succeed without a degree gave Padilla a complete lack of fear about being "too small for the world." Even when Padilla got into trouble at age 16—running from a party where a hit-and-run occurred down the street, hiding in a rose bush for what she hedges was "I think, 4 hours" while a boy ran with her fake Chanel purse, cursing at police upon capture, getting charged with obstruction of justice and resisting arrest, and attending court-ordered therapy with her mother (with her little brother Teddy tagging along) to get the charges removed from her record—her mother remained a supportive anchor.
• Maximizing Every Step of an Unconventional Path: Padilla did not go to college, attending community college for just "1 week" (starting on a Monday and quitting on a Friday after crying to a biology teacher), and she was uncertain of the title of her high school play, guessing, "The Emperor's New Clothes? Is that what it's called? I don't know." Instead of academia, she threw herself into retail at Sephora, where employees were required to wear 5 articles of makeup at the time, working her way up to Educational Manager because she wanted to get the most out of every environment without competing against others. After breaking up with her high school boyfriend and becoming depressed despite having money and an apartment, her mother googled "comedy class" and encouraged her to try The Groundlings. When Padilla first moved to Los Angeles around age 20 (hedging, "I think I was 20 because I remember they like let me do it... maybe?"), she worked at an American-style dim sum restaurant called The Church Key, where she had to dress as a Pan Am stewardess in heels and pour liquid nitrogen without gloves to make alcoholic Otter Pops.
• Creative Mentorship and Childlike Wonder with Diane Keaton: Padilla became Diane Keaton's personal assistant through her mother's friend's sister, Stephanie, who was Keaton's main assistant. Before the job, Padilla had only seen Keaton in The Family Stone, prompting Keaton to force her to go home and watch Annie Hall and The Godfather (later in the episode's "Poehler Plunge" segment, Poehler also recommends three Keaton films: Marvin's Room with Meryl Streep and Leonardo DiCaprio, Reds with Warren Beatty, and Crimes of the Heart with Sissy Spacek and Jessica Lange). Padilla's duties expanded from helping with Keaton's kids and errands to reading scripts, running Keaton's Instagram (where Keaton insisted on typing in ALL CAPS), and co-creating a fashion book published by Rizzoli after publishers rejected their initial idea for a collage book. Keaton, who maintained a childlike wonder about shapes, buildings, light, and trees well into her 70s, taught Padilla to notice the world around her and showed her that there are many ways to be creative and make money outside of traditional acting.
• The Paradox of Letting Go and the Power of Writing for Yourself: Burned out and disliking front-facing internet/social media videos, Padilla decided to quit pursuing comedy to simply live her life. Manager Naomi Odenkirk (Bob Odenkirk's wife) convinced her to do one more live show called Party of Three with friends Chris Kleckner and Alex Bonifer. That show led to a spot in the Netflix Is a Joke festival, where SNL scouts saw her and asked her to showcase at UCB Franklin right after her show. For her SNL audition, Padilla performed an impression of Diane Keaton narrating Planet Earth, her "haircut sketch," and a character named "Kathy" (which she later performed with host Jack Black). She joined an exclusive group—Poehler notes that in the entire history of SNL, "there's only been like 180 or 170-something cast members," roughly the size of an airplane. Both Poehler and Padilla note the absurdity that SNL requires sketch actors to do celebrity/political impressions (comparing it to hiring a lawyer and demanding they paint three paintings first), though Padilla has played political figures Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and Karoline Leavitt on the show, and she and Poehler play a "10-second" (changed to "5-second") rapid-fire impression game covering Austin Butler, Joan Cusack, Shakira, Tommy Lee Jones, Ivanka Trump, and Laura Linney. Crucially, Padilla emphasizes that at both The Groundlings and SNL—where during the first episode of the most recent season she sat in her dressing room the entire show and only appeared in the very last sketch of the night—you cannot wait around for others to write for you, especially given how disappointing the scripts written for women (even for icons like Keaton) can be. She also maintains her personal authenticity on the show, such as cutting her hair very short in the middle of the SNL season after texting SNL hair department head Jodi Mancuso that her "soul" said she had to do it, and bonding with SNL head writer Alison Gates over survivalist reality shows—seriously discussing applying for Survivor together (which would take 4 months of their lives) and watching the 2 seasons of the Fox/Hulu survival show Extracted (initially misremembered as Extraction and hedged as "I think I watched it on Hulu"), which features contestants in their 30s and 40s (specifically "35" and "40s") in the wilderness while their families control their supplies from a headquarters.

Quotes

• At 0:04:10 - "Pretty quickly it was clear that like, oh, this is somebody who has got chops like crazy, and I think specifically both like performer and writer chops." - Andrew Dismukes explaining his immediate first impression of Ashley Padilla during her debut episode at SNL.
• At 0:05:31 - "Her ideas are all like about playing the realness of the scene, and so that's just fun to create in that space where it's like we're playing real emotion to comedic effect rather than like being kind of over-the-top silly." - Andrew Dismukes describing what makes Padilla's comedic writing and performance style distinct.
• At 0:19:43 - "He was doing it out of his own truth as a character, so he wasn't trying to go for the joke. What was funny was that he was—he thought this was serious." - Ashley Padilla analyzing what she learned about character comedy from watching Steve Carell and Dwight Schrute on The Office.
• At 0:21:46 - "I don't know it's a joke. You don't know you're funny. The character doesn't know they're funny. Never." - Ashley Padilla stating her core rule for performing grounded character comedy.
• At 0:24:21 - "I just never had any fear. I never wondered if I was too small for the world, or like—that never crossed my mind because she was such a great example of that." - Ashley Padilla reflecting on how her single mother working her way up at Adobe without a college degree shaped her self-confidence.
• At 0:27:51 - "They arrested me because I hid in a rose bush for, I think, four hours, and when they pulled me out, I said—I said, and they wrote this down, they wrote this down, it was in the police report—I said, 'It's about time you motherfuckers caught me.'" - Ashley Padilla recounting her arrest at age 16 for obstruction of justice and resisting arrest.
• At 0:32:10 - "I like to get the most out of everything. And I think sometimes, especially in worlds like that where there's like, you know, steps, I just like being the best at everything I'm doing. And not against anyone else—I'm not trying to be better than anyone—I'm just like, how much more can I do?" - Ashley Padilla explaining her mindset while working her way up to Educational Manager at Sephora.
• At 0:40:10 - "She taught me to see the world around me, the shapes, as silly as that sounds. She'd go, 'Look at the building.' She'd stop, she'd pull over, 'Do you see this? Oh my god, the tree! The way the light comes—' She got me to like notice everything, as if I was with a child." - Ashley Padilla sharing how working as Diane Keaton's personal assistant transformed her daily perspective.
• At 0:45:28 - "I decided I was more willing to decide to live my life. I was like, I'm done. I'm done with the 'Will I get the, will I—' I just made a book. I was like, there's other ways to make money and be creative, that's what she taught me, and I was like, I'm done." - Ashley Padilla describing the moment she let go of career desperation right before getting scouted for SNL.
• At 0:51:15 - "It forces you to write for yourself. If there is anything I could ever tell like young comedians, but also just like young women, because especially for myself, like, I mean gosh, even Diane—I mean like the scripts she was getting versus what I knew she was capable of... the writing for women sometimes bothers me in a way that I cannot—" - Ashley Padilla explaining why young performers and women must generate their own material rather than relying on industry scripts.
• At 0:52:13 - "That's what Groundlings did for me was, you do not get on that stage unless you are writing something for yourself. I mean, you might be in some people's stuff maybe, but like it's the same at SNL. It's like you can wait around all day for someone to write something for you, or you can just write it yourself." - Ashley Padilla connecting the self-starter culture of The Groundlings directly to surviving and thriving at SNL.
• At 0:54:22 - "I like watching people behave, and to behave, it's not rushed. To feel nervous or anxious or embarrassed—being embarrassed takes a little time." - Ashley Padilla explaining why she paces her sketches to allow genuine human emotions to breathe on stage.

Takeaways

• Write your own material instead of waiting to be chosen: Whether in a training ground like The Groundlings or a high-pressure workplace like SNL, do not wait around for others to hand you complex roles—write for yourself to define your voice and build momentum that makes others want to collaborate with you.
• Play the truth of the situation rather than chasing the joke: When performing or writing comedy, ground the scene in real human emotion and ensure the character takes their predicament completely seriously, never acting like they know they are in a joke.
• Give human behavior time to unfold on stage: Resist the urge to rush comedic pacing; allow emotions like embarrassment, nervousness, and anxiety the extra seconds they naturally require to register with an audience.
• Maximize your current environment without competing against others: Approach every job—even stepping-stone roles in retail or hospitality—by asking "how much more can I do?" to master the steps in front of you rather than trying to beat coworkers.
• Practice noticing the physical world with childlike wonder: Take a cue from Diane Keaton by intentionally pausing to observe shapes, architecture, trees, and light in your daily routine to keep your creative perspective fresh.
• Refuse to let a single career path define your creative worth: Remember that there are many ways to make money and be creative (such as making books or producing live events); letting go of desperate attachment to a specific audition or industry trend can free you to do your best work.
• Perform live with friends rather than forcing unnatural social media content: If front-facing internet videos drain your energy and make you want to quit, pivot back to live collaborative shows with peers where your natural strengths can be seen.