D'Arcy Carden (Live) | Good Hang with Amy Poehler

Episode Overview

• Recorded live at The Town Hall at 6:00 PM on National Kinetic Sand Day and Viola Davis's birthday, host and executive producer Amy Poehler interviews actress and comedian D’Arcy Carden (The Good Place, Broad City, A League of Their Own, The Handmaid's Tale, The Five-Star Weekend, and Broadway’s The Thanksgiving Play), alongside pre-interview guests William Jackson Harper and Abbi Jacobson, and live theme song musicians Amy Miles and Chris Anderson.
• The conversation traces D’Arcy’s evolution from a music-obsessed kid in the Bay Area and a theater major at Southern Oregon University to a core improviser at the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) and an Emmy- and Critics' Choice-nominated television actress.
• Pre-interview segments with Harper and Jacobson establish how D’Arcy’s warmth, silliness, and generosity make her a standout collaborator, setting up a deep dive into how improv training shapes both comedic performance and everyday human connection.
• Listeners interested in comedic acting, the history of the New York UCB scene, behind-the-scenes television production, and how to apply the "improv mindset" to daily life and anxiety management will find this episode valuable.

Key Concepts

• Production, Sponsorships, and Live Format Context: The episode is produced by Paper Kite Productions, The Ringer, and Spotify Studios. Presenting sponsor Chase Ink Business Credit Cards supports the show (where Poehler claims in an ad that every dollar spent running a business should work just as hard right back via Chase Ink cash back), alongside episode sponsor Visible by Verizon (which Poehler claims offers unlimited wireless plans with unlimited 5G data and hotspot powered by Verizon for $25 a month, with $10 off the first month of the Visible Plus Pro plan using code HANG). The speakers also joke about explicit non-sponsors: National Kinetic Sand Day and The White Elephant hotel in Nantucket. Poehler notes the live show is at 6:00, though she wanted to do it at 5:00 (producer Jenna said no to allow people time to come from work), meaning the audience can be in bed by 8:30, or asleep by 7:30 if they catch the subway right after the first segment.
• Live Theme Music and Early Rapport: Musician Amy Miles (whom Poehler claims is an old friend who sings the Good Hang theme song) performs live with Chris Anderson. Miles instructs the audience to clap 16 times really fast for the theme song, though she hedges afterward on whether they actually clapped 16 times ("I don't know how many that was, but that sounded right"). When D'Arcy joins the stage (having previously appeared on the 2nd episode of Good Hang to ask a question for Rashida Jones), she gifts Poehler a plastic ear of "Opera Corn" that sings opera when a button is pressed. D'Arcy claims that for the first 3 times she listened to the Good Hang podcast, she would have bet $1 million that Poehler was singing the theme song. Poehler compares this to Nicole Kidman singing the theme song for her own TV show with Hugh Grant, though Poehler initially cannot remember the name of the show until the audience reminds her it is The Undoing.
• Co-Star Perspectives on Collaboration and Routine: Pre-interview guest William Jackson Harper (a Tony nominee who stars in American Hostage with Jon Hamm coming out in September) shares that his "dream nothingness" day involves going to the gym early, having brunch with a cocktail around 12:15, taking a nap, and doing red light therapy at night, and that his workout routine is strength training 3 days a week and HIIT training/cardio another 3 days. Harper explains that The Good Place was his and D'Arcy's first big "every day" job, and they bonded over how "not normal" it was to be fed on set and paid enough to pay rent. Pre-interview guest Abbi Jacobson (author, producer, actor in Broad City and A League of Their Own, whom Poehler claims is an Enneagram 8) recalls meeting D'Arcy in a UCB commercial acting class around 2007 and immediately thinking D'Arcy was maybe the funniest, kindest, warmest person she had come across. Jacobson and Poehler note that on Broad City (where D'Arcy's character Gemma has a dedicated Reddit thread of fan theories), they made D'Arcy be the only naked person on set all day. Jacobson adds that she wrote the character Greta in A League of Their Own to showcase the sexy, flirtatious, and vulnerable side of D'Arcy that friends see in real life.
• Bay Area Musical Upbringing and Early Humor: D'Arcy grew up in the Bay Area where her parents, Dennis and Lori, started a music magazine called BAM (Bay Area Music). D'Arcy claims her father is half Turkish and half Greek (50/50), was born in Turkey, moved to America when he was 3 or 4 years old (hedging, "I want to say like... three or four," and admitting she knows no Turkish or Greek), looks like Harold Ramis, and had a mustache for 1 church play (Our Town). Immersed in music early, D'Arcy claims Huey Lewis and the News was her 1st concert, and at her 2nd or 3rd concert—Eddie Money, whose real last name she hedges on ("I believe his last name is Mahone—his real last name is Mahoney")—when she was around 5 years old, Eddie Money held the mic to her in the front row. Music remained central to her relationship with her mother: D'Arcy claims her mother texted her 3 days ago to apologize for telling D'Arcy in junior high that she didn't like Eddie Vedder's voice (meanwhile, Poehler claims Pink Floyd songs are too long and songs should be "3 minutes or die"). As a teenager, D'Arcy added an apostrophe to her name (from Darcy to D'Arcy) to copy D'arcy Wretzky, the bass player of The Smashing Pumpkins, prompting her mother Lori to sign letters "M'om." Coincidentally, Poehler claims that while waiting tables in Chicago in the 1990s, she worked a catering gig passing hors d'oeuvres at D'arcy Wretzky's wedding in Michigan City, Indiana/Michigan, where Billy Corgan sang in the living room, though Poehler cannot remember who Wretzky was marrying, comparing her memory to "when a child makes a drawing and then it's left out in the rain."
• Early Performance Instincts and Identity: In elementary school, D'Arcy drew her future self as 4 things: a pop star, an actor, a Major League Baseball player, and the President. Her first real play was Annie at the Concord Pavilion when she was 4 or 5 years old, where she was so immersed in the story that she went backstage, saw the actress playing Miss Hannigan bent over, slapped her on the ass, and yelled, "You bad lady!" At home, D'Arcy used to cheer her mom up at dinner by holding a gulp of milk in her mouth for 1 minute and letting it spill out onto her plate. She first realized she was funny in junior high when she improvised a second tap dance to Blind Melon's "No Rain" after the music failed to start. By high school, she was able to bridge social and comedic worlds: she was voted both Class Clown and Homecoming Queen (Poehler and D'Arcy note that Rosie O'Donnell was also both Class Clown and Prom Queen). D'Arcy claims her father spilled the beans to her the night before she won Homecoming Queen, much like Abbi Jacobson spilled the beans that she would be a surprise guest at this live taping.
• Formal Theater Training vs. The UCB Improv Pivot: D'Arcy attended Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon for 4 years to study theater; she jokes she cannot remember the freeway number to get to Ashland, and hedges on whether the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is the largest in the country ("I want to say it's the biggest Shakespeare festival in the country. Is that right?"). Discussing college productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Poehler states she played Peaseblossom (after initially misremembering playing a "New Yorker" before realizing she was confusing it with Brigadoon: "No, wait, that's Brigadoon!"), and D'Arcy played Titania, though D'Arcy stumbles over pronouncing "Titania" and hedges on her memory of Shakespeare plays as time passes. After graduating, D'Arcy moved to New York, temped and auditioned for 2 years, and was about to move home when a friend took her to UCB's ASSSSCAT on a Sunday night. Finding her true comedic home, she signed up for UCB classes the very next day, handed her check to an intern named Donald Glover, and stayed in New York for 11 years.
• Improv as a Philosophy for Connection and Presence: Both speakers emphasize that improv teaches people how to function in the world by focusing on active listening and making one's partner succeed. For Poehler, improv is a lifelong lesson that keeps her grounded in her body rather than racing ahead or looking back. D'Arcy illustrates the high stakes and joy of this community by recounting her first ASSSSCAT show with Poehler: D'Arcy was on a date in Brooklyn Heights with her husband Jason eating a steak when she got a text to fill in within 30 minutes; she bolted so fast she knocked over a table, and during the show, Poehler praised her on the backline. D'Arcy also shares that she met her husband Jason at Disneyland, has been with him for 20 years, and goes to Disneyland every year (including twice without nieces/nephews); when they first met, she was not looking for a boyfriend and "class clowned" him by burping and asking him to feel a popping in her sternum.
• Navigating Television, Film, and Broadway Roles: Discussing on-screen intimacy, D'Arcy claims she can name 10 people she has kissed on camera, but stalls out after listing 6 (Abbi Jacobson, Gemma Chan, Roberta Colindrez, Justin Long, Lenny Kravitz, Kristen Bell), naming Jacobson as the best kiss and noting that while filming the pilot of A League of Their Own, director Jamie Babbit told her and Jacobson they needed to use more tongue. On The Handmaid's Tale, D'Arcy got to kill dudes and realized she wants to do a Bourne-style action role using guns (which prompts Poehler to recommend the movie Mass starring Handmaid's Tale actor Ann Dowd as a "cry-fest" to watch on an airplane). For her Emmy- and Critics' Choice-nominated role as Janet on The Good Place, D'Arcy auditioned using "dummy sides" where she played a hotline operator helping people fix broken dolls, and hedges on whether the creators asked her to adjust her character during auditions ("As far as I remember, not really"). Despite playing an artificial intelligence/informational being on TV, D'Arcy claims she would "fuck no" never have a robot in her house and turns off all recording/camera devices to avoid being tracked, whereas Poehler predicts everyone in the room will own a robot in less than 5 years. Moving between mediums, D'Arcy notes her Broadway show (The Thanksgiving Play) was a 90-minute comedy that allowed her to be at Sardi's while Cats was still at intermission, and points out that on Broadway you wake up at 10:00 AM, whereas Poehler claims that if she is awake at 10:30 PM now, she panics. Finally, they highlight D'Arcy's show The Five-Star Weekend, which was renewed for a 2nd season, shot in Nantucket in September, and featured a heavily female creative team: 5 women in the main cast, 2 female directors, 5 female producers, a female writer, and a female cinematographer.
• The Paradox of Startle Humor: Although both Poehler and D'Arcy state they despise pranks and hate being startled, D'Arcy reveals that the thing making her laugh hardest lately is watching compilation videos on a plane of people scaring their spouses or roommates in their homes—which they both agree is "an act of violence."

Quotes

• At 0:01:40 - "One thing my friend Miss Poehler always taught me is whenever I would say, 'I'm nervous, I'm nervous,' she'd say, 'Don't say I'm nervous. Just say, I'm so excited.'" - Musician Amy Miles sharing Amy Poehler's technique for reframing performance anxiety before singing the live theme song.
• At 0:13:26 - "For D'Arcy and I, I feel like it was—like The Good Place was kind of our first like big, big, like we're here every day kind of job. And we were, I feel like we sort of bonded over how not normal it was." - William Jackson Harper explaining how he and D'Arcy Carden connected over the sudden transition to steady television work.
• At 0:15:36 - "Immediately I was like, that's the funniest person maybe I've come across, and so kind and generous and warm." - Abbi Jacobson recalling her first impression of D'Arcy Carden in a 2007 UCB commercial acting class.
• At 0:16:42 - "Both characters that I've gotten to work opposite D'Arcy, I think, are getting to amplify a part of her that you see when you're friends with her, which is this like really silly, like she's just the most fun." - Abbi Jacobson describing how D'Arcy's real-life personality inspired her characters in Broad City and A League of Their Own.
• At 0:31:08 - "When you were in junior high, I told you that I didn't like the sound of Eddie Vedder's voice and you got really mad at me, and I just want to say I think he has a great voice and I'm really sorry." - D'Arcy Carden quoting a text message her mother sent her 3 days prior to the live taping.
• At 0:37:28 - "Miss Hannigan was backstage, the woman that played Miss Hannigan, and she was sort of like bent over talking to someone, and I slapped her ass." - D'Arcy Carden recounting her reaction to seeing her first play, Annie, at age 4 or 5.
• At 0:40:00 - "I really became obsessed with grunge music and Smashing Pumpkins, and Smashing Pumpkins has D'arcy Wretzky on bass, and she was just like the fucking coolest, sorry." - D'Arcy Carden explaining why she added an apostrophe to her birth name as a teenager.
• At 0:50:42 - "A little bit like the Annie moment where I was like, 'Get me up there. Get me—like I—get me the hell up there, everything in my life just changed. This is all I want to do.'" - D'Arcy Carden describing the epiphany she had watching UCB's ASSSSCAT after 2 years of struggling in New York.
• At 0:50:56 - "And I signed up for class the next day, and it was so long ago that you would like bring your form and your check in to sign up for class, and the person that took my check was an intern named Donald Glover." - D'Arcy Carden detailing the day she enrolled at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater.
• At 0:53:17 - "It also shows you like how to be a person in the world, not just an actor, you know, like listen to the person, set you up for success, like I want you to succeed, I want to help you, I want you to help me, I want to be a team." - D'Arcy Carden explaining how the core principles of improv translate into everyday human interactions.
• At 0:54:40 - "It's impossible to actually be not racing ahead or thinking back. Like it's, for me, it's a lifelong lesson. Improv helps me stay in my body, actually." - Amy Poehler reflecting on how improvising acts as a grounding, meditative practice.
• At 1:02:18 - "Jamie Babbit, an amazing director who directed that first one, was like, 'Guys, you gotta use tongue.' She's like, 'What are you doing? More tongue.'" - D'Arcy Carden sharing behind-the-scenes direction from filming a kiss scene with Abbi Jacobson on the pilot of A League of Their Own.
• At 1:08:43 - "It was dummy sides, which means like fake scripts, because they didn't want to give anything away. So it was like I was a hotline operator and you would—somebody would call in because their doll was broken and I would give them advice on how to fix their doll." - D'Arcy Carden describing the secretive audition process for her role as Janet on The Good Place.
• At 1:23:20 - "It's very, very rare to find somebody as deeply funny as you are, like Abbi was saying, like really like laugh-out-loud funny, and a really, really genuine, authentic, fun, connected person." - Amy Poehler summarizing D'Arcy Carden's reputation among her peers at the conclusion of the interview.

Takeaways

• Reframe anxiety as excitement: When experiencing physical nerves before a performance or high-stakes event, apply Amy Poehler's advice to Amy Miles by replacing the phrase "I'm nervous" with "I'm so excited."
• Practice active listening to stay grounded: Treat daily conversations like an improv scene by resisting the urge to race ahead or dwell on the past, using active listening to stay present in your body.
• Set your collaborators up for success: Approach teamwork with the improv mentality of wanting the other person to succeed, actively looking for ways to support and elevate the people around you.
• Create welcoming environments in group settings: Follow D'Arcy's example at the start of the live taping—when she spotted 2 empty seats in the front row (which Amy joked were saved for "Guffman") and invited 2 people from the back row to move up—by actively including people on the periphery.
• Pivot when a creative path stalls: If a traditional path isn't working—like D'Arcy temping and auditioning for 2 years in New York to the point of nearly moving home—stay open to adjacent disciplines (like improv) that can reignite your passion and redirect your career.
• Commit immediately when inspiration strikes: When you discover a medium or community that resonates deeply, act on it right away rather than hesitating, just as D'Arcy signed up for UCB classes the very next day after seeing ASSSSCAT and dropped everything mid-date to make a fill-in show within 30 minutes.
• Audit your smart devices for privacy: If you want to avoid digital tracking in your home, adopt D'Arcy's habit of turning off cameras and recording features on household devices.
• Balance your physical and recovery routines: For a sustainable fitness and rest regimen, consider William Jackson Harper's framework of pairing 3 days a week of strength training and 3 days of HIIT/cardio with dedicated downtime like naps and red light therapy.