Jay Jackson tells EW that Poehler was instrumental above all others in helping craft his beloved newscaster character, Perd Hapley.

Parks and Rec fan-favorite guest star reveals the on-set lesson from Amy Poehler he’s ‘used so many times since’

Jay Jackson tells EW that Poehler was instrumental above all others in helping craft his beloved newscaster character, Perd Hapley.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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January 1, 2026 1:00 p.m. ET

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Jay Jackson and Amy Poehler on 'Parks and Recreation'. Credit:

- Jay Jackson, who played newscaster Perd Hapley on *Parks and Rec*, is singing the praises of his former costar Amy Poehler.

- Coming off a two-decade career as a real broadcast journalist, Jackson remembers that "Hollywood was pretty much meaningless to me" when he got the *Parks *gig.

- But watching Poehler's "every little gesture and reaction" made him realize "this is a superior talent that I had the honor to be on this set with."

Amy Poehler's impact on the extended *Parks and Recreation *cast reaches far beyond the confines of the NBC sitcom's set.

Jay Jackson, who played the lovably obtuse newscaster Perd Hapley across a smattering of episodes spanning six seasons, says he owes much more than his success on *Parks *to Poehler. "In the beginning, I didn't know what I was doing," he tells * *in a new, career-spanning interview. "I was a TV news reporter. Hollywood was pretty much meaningless to me. Because I was dealing with death and destruction, the reality of it, everything about Hollywood seemed sort of pretentious. [That] these people think they're bigger than who they are."

Jackson was well known to residents of Los Angeles as a KCAL 9 broadcast journalist before beginning his second career playing one on series like *Parks*, *Scandal*, and *Silicon Valley*. Twenty-two years in the field actually reporting the news put him in a distant "mindset going into a set." But that changed on *Parks*.

"When I got to working on that set, after a couple of seasons, I really started to notice the craftsmanship of these actors, and how much they put into it," he says. "What really stood out was the high level of craftsmanship of Amy Poehler. You know, this is a superior talent that I had the honor to be on this set with. And then it started to hit me — 'Wow, I need to absorb everything she's doing.'"

Jay Jackson as Perd Hapley and Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope on 'Parks and Recreation'.

Jordin Althaus/NBCU via getty

Jackson continues, "So I started to do that. Every little gesture and reaction and little thing she was doing was part of getting the scene to move. I started to pick up every little detail... all of that was something that [I] needed to absorb, because it taught me how to be an actor. That's what you have to learn, and that's how you move forward in Hollywood. You have to learn how to be an actor on a set."

Jackson got his start after decades in newscasting via the Los Angeles Reporter's Clinic, an organization he set up to help journalists put together reels to audition for screen roles. An agent saw Jackson in one of their client's reels and tapped him for his first role — a TV reporter on a season 2 episode of *Dexter*.

Perd was only Jackson's third screen role, so he was still quite green to the production experience — even if he was playing a role he'd held in real life for years. The character wasn't your normal reporter character dropping exposition in a two-second cut scene to advance the action along. Perd became integral to the inner workings of *Parks*' fictional setting of Pawnee, Ind., inviting characters like Poehler's city-level bureaucrat Leslie Knope on to his news program, *Ya Heard? With Perd! *to justify her more controversial policy decisions, and often end up digging herself a deeper grave.

Jackson says it was "100 percent the actors" who transformed Perd from a forgettable, one-episode oddity to a series-wide fan favorite. "That's the beauty of working with somebody like Amy Poehler, and also Mo Collins. You get these kind of actors who know how to improvise and do their lines, and they're also professional, meaning they learn their lines. They can do the scene and get through it and move to the next and get to home before traffic."

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With emotion redolent in his unmistakable voice, Jackson confesses, "I always said that if one day, some big role lands in my lap and I'm accepting some Oscar or some major award, I can't wait to thank Amy Poehler for those little lessons that I learned from her on set."

He adds, "She wouldn't know about it, and I think a lot of actors have this in the back of their mind. That they've learned from some actor or some producer, some tidbit that got them to the next level. Mine is Amy Poehler, for what she taught me, and she wasn't even trying to teach me. But everything I do now comes back to those lessons, that I've used so many times. It's all learning from what Amy Poehler was doing on set."****

Jay Jackson with Amy Poehler on 'Parks and Recreation'.

Colleen Hayes/NBCU via getty

Jackson ultimately appeared on 31 episodes of *Parks*, sharing many of his most memorable moments with Poehler. There's season 3's beloved "Harvest Festival," in which he and Chief Ken Hotate (the late Jonathan Joss) spread hilarious misinformation that Leslie is under the influence of an ancient Wampoke curse, or "Jerry's Painting," in which Leslie is pulled even deeper into a nude painting scandal after appearing on *Ya Heard? With Perd! *with her "twin," adult film star Brandi Maxxxx (Mara Marini).

The former reporter has been singing Poehler's praises since the series' original run on NBC. In a 2014 conversation with EW, while *Parks *was in its sixth season, Jackson noted, "I work with a bunch of comic geniuses on that set. Between Amy Poehler, and Mo Collins, and [Aziz Ansari], and Chris Pratt — those guys are geniuses."

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Source: “EW Comedy”