Amy Poehler attends the Los Angeles premiere of "Dig" at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on Nov. 9. Amy Sussman/Getty Images Amy Poehler may have a new career as a podcasting mogul, with her show Good Hang, but the comedy star is going back to her TV roots.
Poehler has re-teamed with Parks and Recreation creator Mike Schur for new series Dig, which follows a group of archaeologists (and some college students) who spend their summer working on a dig site in Greece. When they discover a rare artifact that could change history, they become entangled in a dangerous international conspiracy. Poehler is joined on the cast by Hugh Laurie, Geraldine Viswanathan, Antonia Thomas and Fina Strazza, and came to Schur with the idea to adapt Kate Myers’ bestselling novel Excavations as a series.
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“When we read the book, we thought this is a really good place to put a bunch of funny people together. An archeological dig is very strange; some people know everything about it and some people have no idea how it operates,” she told The Hollywood Reporter at the show‘s L.A. premiere on Monday, adding that the story had “really good parts for women” and early on they knew they wanted Laurie as the dig’s site leader.
Since Parks and Rec ended in 2015, Poehler has starred in some animated projects (including blockbuster Inside Out 2) and directed several films, but has stayed largely stayed away from TV.
“I had been back and forth doing small stuff here and there; it’s been over a decade since I’ve made a show and things are very different, in a good and bad way,” Poehler explained. “I’ve been kind of figuring out what to do next and taking my time and knew getting to do it with Mike would be the best thing. So I was just kind of waiting for the right thing.”
J. J. Philbin, Antonia Thomas, Michael Schur, Amy Poehler, Fina Strazza and Geraldine Viswanathan at the premiere. Amy Sussman/Getty Images Though Poehler and Schur — along with Schur’s wife J.J. Philbin, who serves as co-showrunner — bring some natural Parks and Rec DNA to the new series, the star said it’s “very different” than their local government comedy.
“It’s much more of a mystery and it’s tonally a lot different, I think,” Poehler said. “It’s a tight 10-episode kind of puzzle box mystery, so I think you really do want to watch the next episode to see what happens. But workplace comedies, when they’re successful, all have some kind of spirit that’s shared which is, how are these people going to figure it out?”
Schur added that Dig is “not in any way a continuation of” Parks and Rec, but he and Poehler wanted to recapture what they felt working on that series. “We talked a lot that the feeling that people get from watching this show should be like, ‘This is really fun, I’m really enjoying this.’ That was a north star — that vibe which we took from Parks and Rec should be the vibe of this show.” Philbin also noted, “I think there is some crossover in that I feel like it’s very good people who care a lot about their work and care a lot about each other, at the end of the day.”
Dig starts streaming Nov. 23 on Peacock.
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