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Amy Poehler has a few regrets about the characters she played on Saturday Night Live.
The Parks and Recreation star, who was part of the sketch comedy show’s cast from 2001 to 2008, reflected on SNL during a conversation with her former costar Will Forte on her podcast Good Hang. Poehler and Forte both acknowledged that some of their work on the show now seems offensive in retrospect.
“There are so many things I look back now and I go — you think, ‘Oh, it’s all about getting a laugh,'” said Forte, who worked on SNL from 2002 to 2010.
“Agree,” Poehler said. “The part about getting older and being in comedy, is you have to figure out: Everything has an expiration date.”
The Baby Mama actress went on to explain how the “In Memoriam” segment during SNL50: The Anniversary Special reminded the world of the show’s myriad mistakes over the year.
“They had that segment, which was like, ‘Here’s all the ways we got things wrong,'” Poehler recalled. “And they showed way inappropriate casting for people. We all played people that we should not have played.”
Poehler then suggested that she should have known better.
“I misappropriated. I appropriated. I didn’t know. I did know,” she said. “It’s very real, and the best thing you can do is make repair, learn from your mistakes, do better — it’s all you can do.”
Dana Edelson/NBCU/getty
Poehler was only prominently featured once in the 50th anniversary “In Memoriam” segment. The montage of problematic SNL sketches included a segment in which Ben Affleck berates a man played by Fred Armisen who appears to be disabled. Poehler then walks into frame and says, “Oh my God, Ben Affleck just yelled at that mentally challenged guy!”
The montage also featured 20 rapid-fire clips of cast members in “questionable makeup” that blurred out performers’ faces as they wore blackface and other racially insensitive makeup designs — some of which could have included Poehler, as the actors’ faces are all obscured.
Some of Poehler’s more questionable impressions from her time on SNL include Michael Jackson, Yoko Ono, and Kim Jong-il.
Tom Hanks introduced the “In Memoriam” segment with a cheeky condemnation of SNL viewers who embraced “SNL characters and sketches that have aged horribly” over the years.
“Even though these characters, accents, and let’s just call them ethnic wigs were unquestionably in poor taste, you all laughed at them. So if anyone should be canceled, shouldn’t it be you, the audience?” Hanks asked. “Something to think about.”
