Amy Poehler’s Teenage Trauma Is So Relatable

Amy Poehler‘s teenage self was just as embarrassed by her parents as everyone else.

The Parks and Recreation alum stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday night to talk about her new series Duncanville—an animated series in which she voices a teenage boy named Duncan (as well as his mother).

Speaking of her own teenage self, the Saturday Night Live alum shared with Jimmy Kimmel, “I wish I could say I was cool and rebellious. I was not. I had a nice group of friends, and we stuck to the rules. But we did drink in the woods, stuff like that. But I was petulant. I was a petulant kid.”

Her favorite thing to do when she was young was go to the mall. But there was a strict plan of action for whenever she went, and it wasn’t set by her dear old mom and dad.

As the star explained, “I remember there was a rule at my house that my dad—I would go to the mall all the time, that was what I did.”

“And my dad would pick me up from the mall, but he had to stay in the car,” she added. “Like, he wasn’t allowed in the mall ’cause it was too embarrassing.”

And here’s where things got hilarious. As Poehler shared, “One time, he came into the mall and I just screamed at him like, ‘What are you doing in the mall?!’ I screamed at him and got home and I ran upstairs, and my mom was like, ‘Bill, why did you go into the mall?!’ My poor parents!”

As Kimmel teased, “It sounds like your dad may have been getting the worst of it, though.” As Poehler joked back, “So, therefore, life was easy.”

Of course, being a teenager feels like the most overwhelming thing in the world. And that’s what the 48-year-old’s new show (co-starring Parks and Rec alum Rashida Jones and Modern Family‘s Ty Burrell) is all about.

When asked about her preparation for the teenage boy role, Poehler joked, “Well, you have to take all the words you usually say and just reduce it to, like, two words.”

As Kimmel asked, “Did you study teenage boys?” The actress quipped back, “I did, I went to the mall.”

And she actually did go to the mall! Just not with her dad. Luckily for us, she shared what she learned in her studies.

“What I love about teenagers that age,” she said, “is that they have no freedom, they feel really confined, they think that they are smarter than everyone else, but they don’t know what they’re doing. And when you’re around them, they look like goofballs and they’re pushing each other, just being like Adam’s apples everywhere.”

As she continued, “But they can say stuff that devastates you. You could just walk past them and they could be like, ‘Ha, look at your shoes.’ And you’re like, ‘What’s wrong with my shoes?’ And all of a sudden, you go home and you just want to buy a cemetery plot.”