Amy Poehler on Why It’s “Super Fun” to Play a Teenage Boy on ‘Duncanville’

Amy Poehler is known for playing assertive, outspoken characters — think Leslie Knope in Parks and Recreation and Joy in Pixar’s Inside Out. As she puts it, the roles she takes are often “the engines who make things run.”

The lead character she voices on Fox’s animated comedy Duncanville, which Poehler co-created with animation veterans Mike Scully and Julie Thacker Scully, is…not that.

Duncan is a 15-year-old boy who does very 15-year-old boy things, which means rolling his eyes at his parents (voiced by Poehler and Ty Burrell), hanging out with his friends and making “big mistakes,” Poehler told The Hollywood Reporter. Ahead of Duncanville’s third-season premiere Sunday on Fox, Poehler spoke with THR about making the season during the pandemic, joining the club of actresses who have voiced boys on Fox animated shows and how animation lets the show erase the line between “grounded and crazy.”

What’s it been like making Duncanville the past couple of years? Your first season were finished pre-pandemic, but how did things change?

It’s been pretty wild to make it during a pandemic, and animation was one of the places you actually could keep making stuff, which we were very lucky about. We did all of this season’s read-throughs over Zoom — we never got to see each other in person. We got to record at a studio, but everybody was on Zoom the whole time. There was no one there with us. It was this weird, isolating thing. However, because this cast is so good, when we did get to check in and see each other for table reads, it felt really great. I think it really made everyone’s day to hear these scripts that are so funny [being performed]. I feel proud that we kept it going during a time when a lot of people were out of work.

How did you adapt to writing remotely?

The writers room was all on Zoom. Mike and Julie and the whole team had to adjust, like everybody else. I think there were some pros and cons about that. There was obviously the sense that we could keep working, but I think a lot of people realized that with Zoom, you just have to make your day a little bit shorter or else you’re going to go crazy. (Laughs.) So we were adjusting all the time.

A lot of the characters you play are very energetic, strong-willed women, and here you’re a 15-year-old boy.

Yes!

What was the appeal of that for you?

When we first started talking about the idea years ago, I was just excited about working with Mike and Julie. I had worked with Mike on Parks and Rec, and I’m a huge fan of The Simpsons, and getting to do an animated Fox show was important to me and exciting to me. There’s a great pantheon of women, whether it’s Nancy Cartwright [who voices Bart Simpson] or Pamela Adlon [Bobby on King of the Hill], who played young boys in this really great way. And I do play a lot of characters who, like you said, are the engines that make things run. It’s reeeallly nice to play someone who likes to just stop momentum in its tracks. (Laughs.) Teenage boys are like that — they’re not interested, for the most part, in listening, helping out the team, making things happen. It’s super fun to do that energy as the character.

Why did you settle on this age for him? Because what I remember of being 15 wasn’t always that great.

Yeah. In our first episode [of season three], we have this great, famous Twitch streamer, Ninja [aka Tyler Blevins], guest-starring. What I like so much about this episode is that Duncan, when he’s with his friends, really feels like he’s an adult. At that age, you couldn’t believe how much like a kid people were treating you, and when you look back now it’s like, “I can’t believe how young I was.” Kids who are 15, they don’t feel young. So when he’s with his buddies and he’s online, gaming, he’s king of the world. But because his frontal lobe hasn’t finished growing, he [messes up] and his whole life is destroyed.

It’s so fun to play a character that ages because they make these big mistakes, and they have big, grandiose thoughts about themselves. They’re not fully formed, which is what always makes [them] a funny character to play — at any age, I guess.

If you’re recording a scene between Duncan and his mom, Annie, are you able to switch back and forth between the two voices, or do you need to record one side first and then the other?

In a read-through I try to switch back and forth, which is really fun. When we record, I do it separately. I try to do as much Annie as I can first, when I need all my energy, and I stand up and really go for it. By the time I have to do Duncan, much like the character, I’m tired and my voice is kind of trashed. It helps a lot to do Duncan second.

What kinds of stories are you telling this season?

We have Mr. Mitch, the great Wiz Khalifa, being offered a promotion to vice principal if he can pass a drug test. Duncan sees his mom naked, which is super traumatizing. We meet Annie’s work husband. We return to Annie’s no-good brother, played by Jason Schwartzman, who comes back into her life. Duncan and Mia [Rashida Jones] share their first kiss — there’s a lot of stuff happening.

The show is set in an everyday world, but because it’s animated you can take all these flights of fancy. When you’re breaking stories, how do those elements come in?

Mike and Julie are experts at that because of their experience in the animated world. They are really good about reminding us and the writers that there’s a reason this show should be animated. You really want to write an animated script for an animated show, if that makes sense. They have such incredible experience in that world, so they’ll say, like, “Maybe here Duncan’s arms grow too long, and his Adam’s apple gets in the way.” “This is where Annie rides on top of the bus.” It’s those out-of-the-box ideas that are so fun to draw and to write for.

But I do think that just like a scripted [live action] series, you have to understand the characters’ game, you have to care about them in some way, you have to have some grounded things to start with. It’s getting the everyday idea, like Jack and Annie try to tell the kids about the time they were arrested. But then you go crazy after that. It’s a fine line between grounded and crazy, but with animation you can really do both.

What other projects do you and your Paper Kite company have in the pipeline?

Russian Doll season two just came out, and we’re thrilled that came out so strongly and so well. I directed a feature for Amazon, Lucy and Desi, that people can watch right now. At Paper Kite we’re gearing up for season two of Harlem and have a couple unscripted shows we’re working on now, as well as a bunch of animated feature stuff and scripted stuff. We’re always excited about what’s ahead. The experience of season three [of Duncanville] and hopefully more of this show — I’d just encourage people to take a look at the cast and how deep and funny it is. We’re so lucky to have these voices. We hope we can have many, many years of Duncan never growing up and never learning one thing.

Interview edited and condensed.