‘Blades’ Star Poehler Reveals Comedian Trash-Talking

Figure skating is already a strenuous and exciting activity, but it gets even more exciting when you can tear up the ice wearing Timberlands and Converse-style skates. Over-the-top skating outfits can add to the hilarity of any film, and Amy Poehler’s latest venture, “Blades of Glory,” is no exception. And she’s not afraid to admit it.

“There are some amazing, uncomfortable costumes,” Poehler says in a phone interview with The Crimson. She recalls one in particular. “It’s a very tight Lycra outfit with lots of jewels and feathers and stuff.” She adds that it “lit up like a Christmas tree.”

But for Poehler, one of the comedy world’s biggest rising stars, that kind of wild exuberance and excess is nothing new.

BRIDE AND GROOM

“Blades of Glory,” out March 30, features “Saturday Night Live” star Poehler along with her husband Will Arnett (of “Arrested Development” fame), Jon Heder of “Napoleon Dynamite,” and comedy royalty Will Ferrell.

It tells the story of two rival world-class men’s singles skaters who were once banned from the men’s singles competition, but find a loophole to compete in pairs figure skating—by skating with each other.

The movie marks the first time that Poehler has worked on a feature film with her husband, who portrayed George Oscar Bluth in “Arrested Development” and lent his voice to a vulture in “Ice Age: The Meltdown.”

Poehler says that she enjoyed rehearsing with someone she trusted.

“We did a lot of practicing, while we walked our dogs and while we were watching, you know, ‘Lost,’” she recalls.

“I’m a big fan of him, separate from being married to him,” she quips.

TALKING SMACK

On set, with both her husband and comedy greats like Will Farrell present, the competitive nature of the actors really came out, says Poehler. A lot of trash talking ensued.

“A lot of times we would all be out on the ice rehearsing. And Will Farrell is a mountain of a man, but with skates on, I think he’s officially 10 feet tall, so there was fierce trash talking on the ice about taking each other out and ending each other’s careers,” she recalls.

But the diminutive Poehler held her own. “What I lack in size,” she says, “I make up for in a fresh mouth.”

One would think that in such a fun environment, the cast would be busy playing pranks on each other, but the “Blades of Glory” cast maintained a relatively professional air, Poehler says.

“We had a total blast working on it, but I didn’t get to do anything Clooney-style cool, like filling each other’s trailers with dog poop,” she says with a tone of regret.

MEAN GIRL

In a movie about competitive figure skating, it’s hard not to draw parallels to the real life stories of Tonya Harding or Nancy Kerrigan, especially given that Kerrigan actually makes an appearance in the film. However, Poehler claims she didn’t use any figure skating greats as inspiration for her character, Fairchild van Waldenberg.

“I based my character more on, like, a great Bond villain,” she says, explaining that Waldenberg is not your typical teen skating queen.

“What I did think about was prima ballerinas and ice queens, like really rich mothers. And also, like, super villains, where from the outside they look very together and inside, they’re kind of like maniacal crazy people,” she says.

BEAN TOWN AND BEYOND

Poehler, who graduated from Boston College (BC) in 1993, grew up in Massachusetts and says the city was where she got her start.

“I kind of started improvising there at a sketch group called My Mother’s Flea Bag, which was an improv group at BC, and so that’s kind of when I first got the improv bug, so I have to kind of thank BC for that,” she says. She would later go on to be a founding member of New York’s renowned Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) improv troupe.

When she wasn’t performing with My Mother’s Flea Bag, Poehler managed to uphold the college’s fine Jesuit tradition: “I spent a lot of time off campus shuttling kegs to and fro, and that was another part of my college experience.”

PIE IN THE SKY

Besides making more movies, Poehler has many “bigger ultimate goals” for the future. “They involve world peace, stopping global warming, making sure that we all just start getting along, building a robot that can create food out of its stomach, finding a way for dogs and cats to get along, opening a UCB Theater on the moon, and building a rocket ship in my basement,” she says.

And speaking of the future, what will happen to those outrageous figure skating costumes she got to wear on set? Proudly, Poehler says, “I’m hoping one day they’ll hang in the Comedy Smithsonian.”