Amy Poehler Took Rashida Jones to a Tearful Lunch to Say She Was Chosen Over Her to Star in ‘Parks and Rec’ | Video

While appearing on Amy Poehler’s podcast, “Good Hang With Amy Poehler,” Rashida Jones reflected on when Poehler took her to lunch to gently share the news that she had been chosen over her to star as Leslie Knope in NBC’s sitcom “Parks and Recreation.”

“I actually hold this moment as like a gold standard of friendship and being able to take care of oneself and the person that you love at the same time. I really do, ‘Polos,’ because it was what you did and how you did it that was very hard because you took me to lunch and said, ‘I’m so sorry, but they offered me the part’ — both of us thinking it’s the same part I was on hold for being created by a friend of ours. And so I immediately started crying in Pastis,” Jones recalled on the Tuesday podcast episode.

“You held my hand and you were so warm and you were so — there was something about it, you were like, ‘I know, I’m sorry, buddy.’ But you also, you didn’t like, do the thing that I sometimes do where I’m co-dependent where I’m like, ‘I know I suck. I’m the worst person. I don’t even deserve it,’ like whatever I would say to try to make the other person feel better, which does not work. You didn’t do that. Like, you held your space and you also comforted me at the same time which was like, a very beautiful thing,” Jones continued.

While Jones did not get the role she desired, she did earn the spot of Ann Perkins, Leslie’s best friend. The show, which follows the comical shenanigans of an Indiana parks and recreation department as they attempt to transform an abandoned construction site into a community park, premiered in April 2009 and ran for seven seasons.

When Poehler pondered what “Parks and Rec” creator Michael Schur’s “version” of the situation was, Jones said she would explain it herself.

“I’ll tell you, because I left him a message almost immediately because I’m not shy,” Jones said. “I called him and I was like, ‘Hey, would love to talk to you.’ He was on a plane and he landed and he was like, ‘Uhhhh.’ I was like, ‘Mmmhmm, you want to tell me what’s going on, ’cause it would have been really nice for you to tell me and not Amy to tell me that I was not getting this job.’ And he was like, ‘No, no, no, back up. We changed the boss, it’s a woman and Amy’s playing the boss.’ I was like, ‘You! Oh my God, like we might be working together?'”

“Yeah, it kind of went from ‘Oh no’ to ‘Oh my God, we might be the two women on the show,'” Poehler chimed in.

Jones continued: “And I still was not cast ’cause I still had to do a bunch of chemistry reads after that, but that became this huge possibility that of like, my life being the best. From the worst to the best. They just had not decided things and they were trying to build around you I think is what happened, around that character. So I think they had just done that and I think you wanted to tell me as soon as possible because we were so close, which was the right instinct. And Mike decided to ‘get on a plane,’ which was his instinct.”

You can watch the segment in the video above. You can listen to the full episode of “Good Hang With Amy Poehler” here.

The post Amy Poehler Took Rashida Jones to a Tearful Lunch to Say She Was Chosen Over Her to Star in ‘Parks and Rec’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.