That Time Jon Hamm Helped Pregnant Amy Poehler Through An Extremely Difficult Moment

This weekend saw the inaugural BookCon in New York — like ComicCon, but for the book industry. The event attracted names as disparate as Stan Lee, Farrah Abraham, Grumpy Cat and John Grisham, and Lena Dunham read an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir, Not That Kind Of Girl. (“What a great panel of guys,” she said before her event, gesturing towards Martin Short, Alan Cumming and Cólm Toibín. “I feel so lucky. I fucked all of them, but I still feel empowered.”)

But perhaps the best moment came from Amy Poehler, there to spruik her own memoir Yes Please, which comes out at the end of October. Poehler revealed some chapter titles — ‘He Seems Gay To Me’, ‘Don’t Worry, I Don’t Want To Fuck Your Husband’ and ‘My Phone Is Trying To Kill Me’ — before telling an excellent story about picking an ob-gyn to deliver her first child.

“Dr. G was a old Italian physician who famously delivered Sophia Loren’s children, so he was quite old. And my kids’ dad and I – Will [Arnett] – used to joke that, like, ‘Is he too old?'” He … was pretty old,” she says.

And thus begins the story:

Jon Hamm was hosting Saturday Night Live, his first time, and I was just getting to know him, and we were doing a sketch, a Mad Men sketch, I was dressed in an old-timey way, in a big dress, and I was huge. And I had, my plan was that I was gonna do the Jon Hamm show and I was due the next day. And it was an example of the beginning of what children do to you, which is they fuck up all your plans. So I remember saying to my doctor, Dr. G, ‘I’m gonna do the show and I’ll come in Sunday, and maybe we’ll do it Sunday/Monday.’

I did the sketch, I was shooting with Hamm on Friday, and I called my doctor ’cause at the end there you kind of have to call in every day, and the receptionist was crying. I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ and she said, ‘Oh, he passed away last night.’

I was due the next day. So it’s my first kid, I’m in a Mad Men outfit, I turn to everybody and I hysterically start crying, and a really pregnant woman crying is terrifying. So, juicy tears just like squirting out of my eyes. And it was like the punch line to a joke, it’s like, my doctor just died and I’m due tomorrow. And Jon Hamm, who I am just getting to know, comes over and puts his hands on my shoulder and is like, ‘This is a really important show for me. I’m gonna need you to get your shit together.’ And I laughed so hard, I probably peed myself – I believe that going through crying to laughing adds like five years to your life.

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