The Princess Inquiries

The correspondent, in a lame attempt to keep his job, tries to steer this sinking ship toward one question posed pre-interview by his editor. To wit: So, you were all funny girls growing up? And, we mean, was that hard? You know? Because, like, in the movie "Mean Girls" (in which Poehler played Rachel McAdams's mom), it's so competitive in high school, and uhhh, was it a coping . . . mechanism . . . thing?

"Oh, now he's getting to it," Sedaris says.

"Bill, what exactly is your point?" Rudolph asks.

"You don't pay attention to this when you're a child," says Sedaris, whose brother is the essayist David Sedaris. "You're into props and wigs and you want to make people laugh and you're that person; you don't even think about it. You might think about it now. But when you're a little kid, you don't think about it."

Oteri says, "I was never the clown. Or when I wasn't the clown, I was pretty quiet."

"Like a silent clown," says Poehler.

"Like a sad mime," says Rudolph.

You see what you get?

"I have an older brother." Rudolph says. "Did you all have brothers? It made you part of the gang. Kinda cool, sorta tomboyish, to be funny."

"Little did I know that men weren't going to find it attractive," Oteri says. "Yeah. Yeah. That a hard rain was gonna fall."

"We were all a little loudmouths. It was fun," Poehler says.

"My friends thought I was funny, so they thought I should go into comedy," Rudolph says. "It made them happy."

The princesses are famous for their impressions and mimicry, but in "Shrek the Third" they pretty much do themselves. On "SNL," Rudolph did a great Condoleezza Rice and Paris Hilton; Poehler did Madonna and Julia Roberts; Oteri did Barbara Walters and Fran Drescher. Now Sedaris breaks into a Francis McDormand. It is uncannily good.

So do you ever run into the people you do? (Get ready.)

"When you say do?"

"I run into him all the time."

"I don't do very good impressions," Poehler says. "But Michael Jackson calls every time I do him. But it's just to talk."

They can go on like this all day long.

Somehow, they begin to discuss birthdays, and birthdays lead, naturally, to astrology. The house is packed with Virgos and Aries. Fire and Earth.

"So what are you, Bill?"

Pisces?

"Oh, an alcoholic!" Sedaris says. "A dreamer. A fish swimming in and out." They get the exact date and Sedaris shouts, "A cusp!" and they all start hissing like asps.

"Get off the cusp."

"Step away from the cusp."

Sedaris says, "But seriously, you've got some problems."

"Wait a second," Oteri says. "I spaced out at one point. I didn't realize you were interviewing us."

Obviously not.

Poehler takes pity. "Listen, Bill, write this down. This will save you. There's little girls now and they're into princessy things. Girls go through this princess phase. It's nice to play modern versions of those in this movie." That would be "Shrek the Third." Yeah. "And for lack of a better word. These princessy . . ."

Archetypes?

"Don't stop me," Poehler says. "They're girly. Pretty, pretty pretty. But we're self-reliant." In the movie "Shrek the Third." Yeah. "It's the new version. Maybe in a culture where now there's a lot of style without a lot of substance. Maybe these ladies are the opposite of that."

Thank you, Amy Poehler, Snow White. "That was a ton of material I just gave you, Bill," she says. Now, the photographer wants to take their picture, and the three different makeup artists descend to comb hair, brush on product. Now the princesses are yelling at the photographer.

"I want a lot of filter."

"Use the real soft light, baby."

"And put some Vaseline on that lens!"