It’s not every day that TV star, producer, and all-around entertainment powerhouse Amy Poehler is asked to work as a stand-in. But it’s also not every day that a former First Lady and current candidate for president stops by a show about pothead slackers, friendship, and bizarro adult babies. So when Hillary Clinton appeared on the third season of Comedy Central’s Broad City earlier this year, Poehler apparently stepped up to save the candidate from having to stand around all day while Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer filmed reaction shots.
That’s per a New York Times interview with Jacobson, who noted that the executive producer didn’t use her well-honed Clinton impression while acting as a stand-in. She also said the Broad City staff didn’t really expect Clinton to do the show: “We wrote the episode a year before it came out. Hillary was the only person running at the time—not that we would have ever had another candidate on—but we wrote it not thinking we would ever actually get her on. Afterward, I said in some interview that it wasn’t a political statement, which was a stupid statement to make. Of course it’s a political statement!”
Jacobson was promoting her new project, Carry This Book, in which she draws the contents of various public figures (including Clinton’s) bags. Besides discussing the book’s inspiration—Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam War-era short story collection, The Things They Carried—she also talked about meeting Glazer for the first time, and confusing her with Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat.