Good Hang with Amy Poehler - Lena Waithe

Lena Waithe is always cool. Amy hangs with the 'Chi' creator and 'Cats: The Jellicle Ball' producer and talks about the best part of working at Blockbuster, falling in love with Prince, and why everyone should be watching 'Couples Therapy. Host: Amy PoehlerGuests: Bill Rauch, Zhailon Levingston, and Lena WaitheExecutive Producers: Bill Simmons, Amy Poehler, and Jenna Weiss-BermanFor Paper Kite Productions: Executive producer Jenna Weiss-Berman, coordinator Sam Green, and supervising producer Joel LovellFor The Ringer: Supervising producers Juliet Litman, Sean Fennessey, and Mallory Rubin; video producers Jack Wilson, Belle Roman, and Aleya Zenieris; lighting director Caroline Jannace; audio producer Kaya McMullen; social producer Bridget Geerlings; video editor Drew van Steenbergen; and bookers Kat Spillane and Paige GarbariniOriginal Music: Amy Miles Buy a car online on Autotrader. Really. You can search through tons of cars, compare prices, check out financing and trade-in options, all from your couch, your office, wherever, and if you want to start online but still hit the dealership for a test drive, you can do that too on Autotrader.com/buy-online. This episode is brought to you by Subaru. Love goes the extra mile in the Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid and Subaru Forester Hybrid. Visit https://subaru.com/hybrid to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Duration: 1h 16m
Broadcast on: 04 Aug 2026
Audio Format: other

Host: Amy Poehler
Guests: Bill Rauch, Zhailon Levingston, and Lena Waithe
Executive Producers: Bill Simmons, Amy Poehler, and Jenna Weiss-Berman
For Paper Kite Productions: Executive producer Jenna Weiss-Berman, coordinator Sam Green, and supervising producer Joel Lovell
For The Ringer: Supervising producers Juliet Litman, Sean Fennessey, and Mallory Rubin; video producers Jack Wilson, Belle Roman, and Aleya Zenieris; lighting director Caroline Jannace; audio producer Kaya McMullen; social producer Bridget Geerlings; video editor Drew van Steenbergen; and bookers Kat Spillane and Paige Garbarini
Original Music: Amy Miles

Buy a car online on Autotrader. Really. You can search through tons of cars, compare prices, check out financing and trade-in options, all from your couch, your office, wherever, and if you want to start online but still hit the dealership for a test drive, you can do that too on Autotrader.com/buy-online.

This episode is brought to you by Subaru. Love goes the extra mile in the Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid and Subaru Forester Hybrid. Visit https://subaru.com/hybrid to learn more.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by eBay Live. Here's how it goes. First, you're watching the eBay Live stream telling yourself, "I'm just looking." And then, boom, you see a vintage Rolex go for an absolute steal. Suddenly, a rare beanie baby pops up, adrenaline hits, and you're bidding. You might lose that first one, but you bid again and win. And that winning rush? Incredible, because you beat everyone to it. Meanwhile, on eBay Live, you don't just watch the action. You're in it. Download the eBay app to stream and shop live. eBay Live, things people love. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Good Hang. We are very excited about our guest today. It is Lena Waith, writer, producer, actor. Lena does so many things so well, and she's the coolest. And we're going to get into how cool she is today. We're going to get into the way she likes to work. We're going to talk about our love of Chicago. We're going to talk about Blockbuster, a place where you had to go and rent videos in person. We're going to talk about the fact that she is the first Black woman to ever win a prime time Emmy in comedy writing. We're going to talk about couple of therapy. We're going to get into it. But before we do that, we always have this section of the show where we speak to somebody who knows our guest, who wants to speak well behind their back and give me some questions to ask. And joining me are the two directors, Tony award-winning directors of Cat's Jellicle Ball, the show that is out on Broadway as we speak. And that Lena is a producer on. And so let's hear from Jaylen Levinson and Bill Roush. Gentlemen, hello. All right, if you've been putting off car shopping because it sounds like a whole thing buying your car online on auto trader makes it way easier, like almost easier than ordering your coffee easier, really. You can shop tons of cars online, compare prices, check financing and trade-in options all from wherever you are. And if you want to start online and still go to the dealership for a test drive, you can do that too, really. What's great is the flexibility. Start online, finish up the dealer, or the other way around. Your info stays with you, so you're not starting from scratch. Plus, you're working with local dealer listings, so there are real people behind the scenes. And when you're ready, you can pick it up or have it delivered. So whether you know exactly what you want or you're still scrolling, trying to figure it out, auto traders got options that fit how you want to buy. Buy your car online on auto trader, really.

Hi, Bill. Hi, Jaylin. Nice to meet you. By the way, congratulations, Tony. Winners. That did happen. Thank you. Thank you. Before we talk about our guest, just talk me through the evening of the Tonys, which is my absolute favorite award show. Yeah, it was very surreal. I was there with my mother and my partner and me and Bill sat by each other, and we had to keep playing musical chairs because we, Bill had family. I had family. We wanted to share the time that we sat by them during the award show. Hold on. I'm going to pause right there. You guys were making sure that you gave everyone in your family enough time. Well, yeah, we need to talk. This is why you can't bring family to award shows. Well, for those people that haven't had the pleasure of coming a broad way and seeing Jellicle Ball, can you just explain what it is? It is Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical cats set in the ballroom scene that grew out of Harlem. And so our cats are not cats. They're human beings competing in a competitive ball. And I have never been part of a project in my whole life that more people love, like whatever your age, whatever your relationship to ballroom, whatever your relationship to Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, people who love it, people who think they hate it, everybody has just an overwhelmingly positive experience at the Jellicle Ball. And Jalen, can you explain when you say ballroom, what that means? Yeah, so ballroom is an underground queer culture that really started in New York around 1970, '71, '72. And really the main architect at the very beginning was a powerful, beautiful woman named Crystal LaBeja, who was a trans woman of color who had felt rejected by the queer pageant scene and left that scene to start what we know to be ballroom. And when I

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