Parks and Recreation star and Boston-area native Amy Poehler will receive the Hasty Pudding Club’s 2015 Woman of the Year Award, honoring “a talented and hilarious actress whose brand of comedy fits so well with the Pudding’s own tradition of satire and social commentary.” She joins an elite list of actresses honored by the nation’s oldest undergraduate drama troupe, among them Julia Roberts, Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Jodie Foster, Elizabeth Taylor, Anne Hathaway, Claire Danes, Marion Cotillard, and most recently, Helen Mirren.
Poehler—who stars on the Emmy-nominated Parks as “Leslie Knope,” a role for which she won a 2014 Golden Globe and has earned five consecutive Emmy nominations—has also become a successful author: her book Yes Please debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Sellers list. “I think we should stop asking people in their twenties what they ‘want to do’ and start asking them what they don't want to do,” she writes in Yes Please. “Instead of asking students to ‘declare their major’ we should ask students to ‘list what they will do anything to avoid.’ It just makes a lot more sense.” (The popular Poehler previously offered Harvard students advice as Class Day speaker for the class of 2011 the day before their graduation.)
“We are extremely excited to announce Amy Poehler as our 2015 Woman of the Year. She is an accomplished performer, incredible comedian, and an inspiration to everyone in the Hasty Pudding,” said Jason Hellerstein ’15, president of Hasty Pudding Theatricals, in a press release. “We look forward to welcoming Ms. Poehler and celebrating and honoring her achievements in a truly unique and memorable way.”
The Woman of the Year festivities will begin at 2:45 p.m. on January 29, when Poehler will lead a short parade through Harvard Square. Following the parade, Hasty Pudding Theatricals will host a celebratory roast for the actress at Farkas Hall. At 4 p.m., Poehler will be presented with her Pudding Pot, before Hasty Pudding cast members perform several musical numbers from the group’s 167th production, ¡Oops! Madrid It Again.
