- [Woman Off Camera] Oh, whoa, whoa, stop.
(laughing)
- Say what?
Let me know when you're recording.
(upbeat music)
(tea pouring)
- Hello audience members.
This is Nick Offerman
and I'm about to be spilling some tea
in your direction, figuratively.
The character of Ron Swanson was created by
Mike Schur and Greg Daniels.
They met a Burbank city official who was anti-government
and a libertarian and they thought that was really funny.
They didn't know that I was gonna play Ron Swanson
when they thought of the character.
But then, almost immediately they said,
"Oh, we like Nick.
"So, he's gonna have a moustache.
"He talks very slowly.
"We should probably justify his love of red meat in some way
"because Nick is spilling out
"over his pleated JC Penney trousers."
The scripts on Parks and Recreation
were so good that we never needed to improvise.
But we had such a cast of amazing creative heads
that they would then encourage us
once we had achieved the script
if we had any good ideas, go ahead throw 'em in.
When I ordered that platter that serves 12 people
and I say, "I know what I'm about son."
I believe I came up with that line.
But, it was just, they already had a line there.
It was all very collaborative.
Most of the credit has to go to the writers.
It was the episode where everybody
got to pick their bachelor party
and the character of Jerry, Jim O'Heir,
took us to his ice cream shop.
And we were all indulgently chowing down on ice cream
and Chris Pratt had a huge cone of strawberry ice cream
and he sculpted a vagina into it.
And just kept surreptitiously showing it to me.
And you know, you try not laughing
when Chris Pratt shows you
his tiny strawberry ice cream vagina.
She's my teacher, she's my hero.
I saw her on Will and Grace 18 years ago when we met.
It was like seeing Mel Brooks or Carol Burnett
or just some legend.
I thought, oh, you were born an encyclopedia
of great comedy.
She's 11 years older than me,
so there's always been a great teacher student relationship.
Parks and Rec was the first time
when she played Tammy Two,
the first time that we got to work together as a team.
We'd often worked together,
but never where it was the two of us.
It was incredibly difficult
because of all the people in the world,
she knows how to push my buttons.
And so to then put that in a scene
where she's being funny
and I'm not supposed to laugh at her
was an incredibly difficult task.
And sometimes I succeeded.
We all keep in touch, we have an ongoing cast thread
that we text on almost daily.
Somebody's always got something going on.
A couple times a year we're trying to get together
to have dinner.
Retta has a new show on NBC,
Retta also has a book coming out.
So the thread's been a little Retta heavy,
but that's great.
Amy just finished directing a movie called Wine Country.
Everybody's always got stuff happening.
It's a wonderful family feeling keeping us all in touch.
The best thing I took from the set
was all of the trim and doors and windows
from the set of the main Parks and Rec office.
Somehow found their way to my wood shop
and we milled them up into strips of red oak
and then glued them up into planks
and made them into canoe paddles,
which we then gifted to the cast and producers.
And hanging in my shop
is that original huge framed picture
of a brunette woman holding out a plate of bacon and eggs.
It's what I'm referring to when I say,
"I'm a simple man,
"I like ladies with dark hair and breakfast food."
So that hangs in my shop and inspires me everyday.