-Our first guest tonight is an Emmy-nominated actor,
renowned woodworker,
and "New York Times" best-selling author.
His latest book, "Where the Deer and the Antelope Play:
The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American
Who Loves to Walk Outside," is in paperback now.
Please welcome back to the show
our very good friend Nick Offerman.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
Welcome back, old friend. -Thank you. Thank you so much.
I am on strike as an actor. -Yeah.
-So I will be comporting myself as an author.
-Yes.
You're giving off a very author vibe.
But there was a moment where you betrayed actor.
When I embraced you... -Mm.
-I often feel like when I embrace you,
you feel like a piece of woodwork yourself.
-Well, thank you. -Yeah.
You do not have sort of weak author bones.
-I appreciate that, but the joke's on you,
because I was acting strong.
-Ohh.
And that is allowed during the current strike?
You're allowed to act strong?
-Well, it should have been between us.
[ Laughter ]
-Oh, I see. I see.
-It wasn't meant for public consumption.
-You -- clean shaven, Nick.
-I am. After 23 years, Megan Mullally and myself --
Megan Mullally? -Yes.
I'm very familiar with her. -Hold for applause.
-Does she tell you when you come on,
"Just remember to hold for applause"?
-No, I've just learned.
I hope for all of you that you find a partner
that when you say her name,
people applaud like you won an Olympic event.
-Does anyone ever -- When you say that you're married to her,
does anyone ever yell out, "How?!"
-Yeah. "What?!" -"You?"
-I have a terrific personality, that's how.
[ Laughter ]
One word -- girth.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Girth --
Girth Frescura, he's our chef, and he keeps me trim.
[ Laughter ]
After 23 years, Megan Mullally said to me,
"I've had enough of a mouthful of thistles
when we're making sweet love
and otherwise, other times than every Tuesday."
And so -- And so she asked me to be clean-shaven,
and I said, "I will.
I want to stay married to you."
So I did, and I was pretty cool with it,
except that when you shave your beard,
if you have anything extra going on,
if you have any Homer Simpson happening --
-Yeah. -So then I call up Girth
and I say, "Maybe slip me a little more egg whites, Girth."
-I see.
So the very act of being clean-shaven
has required you to lean into fitness a bit more.
-It has, yeah. -Because you're out --
you're basically out from behind your shadow at this point.
Everybody can see the real you.
-I've had to start reading for roles 15 years younger.
[ Laughter ]
It's a real drag.
-You wrote this book a couple years ago.
This is the paperback version of this book,
for people who've been, you know,
holding out for a better deal.
-That's right. Easier to carry.
And, like, half the price.
-And, by the way, you know, I would say,
when you go for your long walks,
when you go for your weeks in a national park,
do you ever bring a book with you?
Are you someone that will read?
Because you never want to bring a hardcover on a hike.
-No, it's true. Megan makes fun of me
because when we go on trips, I pack, invariably --
I am dumb and donkey-like, and so I will --
It doesn't matter. Whatever the book I want,
if it's in hardcover, it's going in the suitcase.
So my bag ends up weighing 120 pounds,
and that's how I keep it trim.
-You took a hike -- I was telling you backstage,
this is before clean-shaven.
These are just two of my heroes.
This is a Jeff Tweedy, frontman of Wilco,
and George Saunders, as good a writer
that we have living in America today.
And these are friends of yours that you actually went --
you went on a week vacation with them.
-We did, yeah. We --
Invariably, in 2014,
we all met each other in a triangulated way,
two at a time. -Yeah.
-So three meetings of two each.
And somehow Mother Nature brought us together,
and we fell in a peculiar bearded love tryst,
which, I mean, you know, with all due respect to my ego,
I'm the little brother
in the back seat of these guys' Trans Am.
Like, they are the coolest, two of the greatest poets
and philosophers and just beautiful hearts.
And so I'm so grateful to carry their luggage.
And it was Jeff's idea.
We were playing a show together in L.A.
And he said, "What if we go walk somewhere pretty
and you could, like, record the conversations for your book?"
And I said, "Thank you, Superman.
I will take you up on your suggestion."
-This book makes a case for nature
and makes a case that we sometimes,
when people talk about Mother Nature,
we actually put it farther away than it is
and that we can be a little bit more in touch with it
and realize how not a day goes by that we're not
benefiting from those resources.
-It's true.
I mean, putting nature far away
in a sort of national park sensibility
I think is part of consumerism.
It's part of what they sell us
so that we forget that nature is right here.
We're also nature and, most importantly,
the food that we eat and who creates the food
and provides the food that we eat.
We've all been taught, me too,
to lazily forget about, is this healthy?
Where'd this come from? How was it produced?
Is it good for the planet? Is it good for us?
And so it's a huge conversation involving climate change,
involving our natural resources that I just want to humorously,
you know, say things like "girth" and then be like,
"Also, who made your hamburger, you know?
Was it grass-fed beef?"
There are ways to grow cows
that are healthy for the planet and for us.
And there are other ways that most of us use
for fast food, 'cause they're industrial.
-First time I met you,
we were at the UCB Theatre downtown.
You were telling monologues, and you were --
I believe you had -- maybe in Red Hook,
you were making your own canoe.
-My first canoe I built in Red Hook.
-And you were also the first person I'd ever met
who was currently working on their own canoe.
And you have continued to make canoes.
-That's right. -And you recently were --
you took a canoe out in the L.A. River.
-That's right. -Which is not a place
where people take canoes. -No. Hence --
I mean, I was on assignment for "Outside" magazine.
I've been writing a column for them
since the book came out, for a couple years.
And so we had this idea.
This next issue is going to be about makers.
And I said, "Well, why don't I do an 'Outside' magazine thing
with this canoe that I made?
I don't know if you have one of those."
And so actually our friend Morgan Sackett,
who produced "Parks and Rec" and "The Good Place,"
he's paddling in the bow, and I'm in the stern,
and we went down the L.A. River, and it was quite thrilling.
-That's very exciting.
And if there was anyone I could pick to do it,
it would have been you.
-Well, I appreciate it.
-We're about to wrap up here,
and I know because of the current SAG-AFTRA strike,
we can't talk about your past work.
So I will on purpose be vague and just say you did a thing --
you were in a thing with another person last year
that was really special.
And it was a thing that a lot of people told me to watch,
and they said, "You're not going to believe how good it is."
And sometimes people raise your expectations too much
to do a disservice to the work.
And then I saw it, and it was even better
than everybody told me it would be, this thing that you did,
and you continue to be good at the things you do.
And thank you so much for being here, man.
-I really appreciate it. Thank you, Seth.
-Nick Offerman, everybody.
His current tour runs through the fall.
He's a humorist, too.
He'll be discussing "Where the Deer and the Antelope Play"
October 7th at First Congregational Church in L.A.
with George Saunders. -That's right.
See him with George Saunders.
We'll be right back with Siobhan Fallon Hogan.