At this weekend’s BookCon festivities at the Javits Center, Amy Poehler revealed some details about her upcoming memoir Yes Please, plus some fond reflections of the ways only Jon Hamm can comfort a pregnant woman. Here’s what we learned at the panel:
Yes, the book addresses her divorce
“I don’t really talk about it because I have a real respect for my ex-husband and the father of my children, and I also don’t like people knowing my shit,” Poehler says. “But I do write about, going through something, you get such a perspective, and one of the things I write about is … the books I would now like to write about divorce.”
Chapters in the book include “Get Over It, She Doesn’t Cry Enough, He Seems Gay to Me,” and “Don’t Worry, I Don’t Want to Fuck Your Husband”
Plus a chapter called “My Phone Is Trying to Kill Me,” about the perils of social media.
There will be some sex tips.
Including “please don’t make it last so long, we’re really tired.”
And maybe some material about how to pick an ob-gyn.
Poehler tells the crazy story of how her doctor died the day before she was supposed to deliver her first son. “Dr. G was a old Italian physician who famously delivered Sophia Loren’s children, so he was quite old. And my kids’ dad and I – Will – used to joke that, like, ‘Is he too old?’” He … was pretty old.
Jon Hamm was hosting Saturday Night Live, his first time, and I was just getting to know him, and we were doing a sketch, a Mad Men sketch, I was dressed in an old-timey way, in a big dress, and I was huge. And I had, my plan was that I was gonna do the Jon Hamm show and I was due the next day. And it was an example of the beginning of what children do to you, which is they fuck up all your plans. So I remember saying to my doctor, Dr. G, ‘I’m gonna do the show and I’ll come in Sunday, and maybe we’ll do it Sunday/Monday.’
I did the sketch, I was shooting with Hamm on Friday, and I called my doctor ‘cause at the end there you kind of have to call in every day, and the receptionist was crying. I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ and she said, ‘Oh, he passed away last night.’
I was due the next day. So it’s my first kid, I’m in a Mad Men outfit, I turn to everybody and I hysterically start crying, and a really pregnant woman crying is terrifying. So, juicy tears just like squirting out of my eyes. And it was like the punch line to a joke, it’s like, my doctor just died and I’m due tomorrow. And Jon Hamm, who I am just getting to know, comes over and puts his hands on my shoulder and is like, ‘This is a really important show for me. I’m gonna need you to get your shit together.’ And I laughed so hard, I probably peed myself – I believe that going through crying to laughing adds like five years to your life.
