Amy Poehler named ‘WSJ. Magazine’s innovator in comedy for 2026
Amy Poehler has been named WSJ. Magazine’s Innovator in Comedy for 2026. She recently received the first Golden Globe awarded for podcasting. This fall she returns to a starring role in scripted television comedy after roughly a decade with Dig, a Peacock series she created alongside Parks and Recreation veteran Michael Schur. The series follows shenanigans at an archaeological site in Greece. She is also producing a Netflix comedy series starring and written by millennial Giggly Squad podcasters Hannah Berner and Paige DeSorbo.
The WSJ. Magazine Innovator Awards program, launched in 2011, recognizes groundbreaking talent across disciplines that include fashion, art, literature, entertainment, architecture, design, technology, music, philanthropy and cuisine. The annual red-carpet gala has become one of The Wall Street Journal’s signature evenings and reflects the magazine’s editorial mission of showcasing ambitious, forward-looking individuals whose originality drives meaningful change. Poehler is one of seven honorees this year. The others are musical artist Rosalía, Chanel’s Matthieu Blazy, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, author Marlon James, filmmaker Martin McDonagh and entertainment sports team the Savannah Bananas.
Poehler said the people and process matter more to her than any single big idea. “I realized the people and process for me is the most important thing,” she said. “How we all work together is more important than the big idea.”
Through her podcast Good Hang, Poehler seeks to infuse comedy with joy and play rather than constant critique. She noted pressure on women to serve as educators and gurus and asked whether room exists for play. “We’ve gotten very intense information fed to us now for a very, very long time—it’s been a brutal decade, or longer,” Poehler said. “We should be able to have a little joy, have some fun, remember that we’re supposed to connect with people. We’re supposed to figure out a way to talk to people where we’re not trying to constantly challenge, critique or assault them all the time.”
Poehler shared her Peabody Award win with podcast executive Joel Lovell. She reflected on the larger idea that people have not yet met everyone they are meant to meet. “I got to share that night with my love. But I think the bigger idea, what I was trying to speak to—not to share too much personally—but the bigger idea was that I do think we forget sometimes that we haven’t met everyone we’re supposed to meet, that if we’re lucky, and if we’re still alive and we’re still here, that there’s stuff around the corner that we can’t anticipate that we would never know,” she said.
In the Peacock series Dig, Poehler plays archaeologist Elise, an inhibited anti-Knope who would rather dig deeper into a hole than assume leadership. “She’s more of a dirt person than a people person,” Poehler said. The character examines choices that led her to midlife. “A lot of women can relate to this idea that they’ve hitched their wagon to something,” she said, “and they’re trying to figure out if they picked the right wagon.”
The series explores a distinctly Gen X assumption that productivity equals self-worth. Poehler, like her character, surrounds herself with younger people who challenge that notion. “My ego likes to really think that I’ve got a lot of things figured out,” she said. “Then you realize, young people just poke at things that are supposed to be already certain and decided. And that’s a good thing.”
At this stage of her career Poehler said she remains attentive to the word busy. “I’m obsessed with the word busy,” she said. “I talk with my friends all the time—and my therapist—about, like, what does busy mean? Because I get a lot of self-esteem from my work. But being busy for busy’s sake, now I’m onto myself a little bit.”
Poehler also appeared in WSJ Video’s “The Job Interview” series, where she discussed leaving her dream job, finding her closest collaborators and why getting older has made her more curious at work.
