Amy Poehler has some choice words about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ snubbing of comedic performances.
The Saturday Night Live vet and Parks and Recreation alumna blasted the Oscars for devaluing the genre in a recent interview on her Good Hang podcast. As part of her standard format, she invited The Roses star Benedict Cumberbatch to the show to come up with questions for her guest, co-star Olivia Colman. It was during their introductory discussion that the Doctor Strange actor made the point: “If you can do comedy, you can do anything, I really do believe that.”
Poehler responded, “Of course. You don’t have to tell me, babe. Every single year at the Oscars, everybody gets blanked and all the serious people get up and accept and accept and accept, and it’s some hot bullsh– because comedy is not easy,” before complimenting Cumberbatch and Colman on their abilities to juggle both drama and farce.
Alongside horror, comedy has long been traditionally sidelined by the storied Academy. Usually, films can squeeze through the Best Picture nomination process if their more broadly accepted genres are littered with comedic elements; as such, satires, black comedies and off-beat indies tend to make the cut, even if they are not awarded.
In the past decade, notable standouts include Get Out (Jordan Peele’s visceral horror, which contains some admittedly laugh-out-loud moments), BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee’s crime-comedy featuring John David Washington) and The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos’s zany 18 century-set aristocratic thriller, which got Colman a Best Actress Academy Award for her idiosyncratic portrayal of the frail Queen Anne). This year’s Best Picture winner Anora could be classified as a romantic dramedy of sorts, and other recent noms in the category, like American Fiction, Barbie and winner Everything Everywhere all at Once, certainly have humorous throughlines.
Watch the full episode of Good Hang below: