They are one of the happiest couples in Hollywood, one of comedy’s funniest duos,
and they have been married for more than 22 years! So, what is Megan Mullaly and
Nick Offerman’s secret to making a relationship last in the complicated celebrity dating scene?
In order to understand, let’s see how they got together in the first place.
By the late 90s, both actors had moved to Los Angeles. The funny thing is, it wasn’t even Nick’s
idea to move. He had a Mexican girlfriend at the time who was sick of the cold Chicago weather
and who convinced him to move to sunny California, only to back out later. Can you imagine?
“She flaked out and disappeared” Nick explained to The Believer magazine “She
turned up back in Mexico — I think she is a really successful Mexican actress
now — but I already had everything in motion, so I came here by myself”
In 1998, Megan was cast as Karen Walker on NBC’S sitcom Will & Grace, a role that
launched her into TV stardom. Meanwhile, Nick was struggling to get good TV roles.
“I was starting to get work, but it wasn’t remotely satisfying. It was garbage compared to
the theater I was doing” he told The Believer. “I was drinking a lot of Bourbon. I was miserable”.
That’s when Nick realized he needed to rejoin the theater scene.
He began working in a play for a company called The Evidence room, where Megan was also cast.
She explained that the cast was not welcoming of her at first, including Nick.
“I was kind of, like, shunned by the rest of the cast because I think they wanted to
ignore me before I ignored them.” She told Sundance Channel. “It was right after the
second season of Will and Grace and I think they thought I was like a fancy TV girl or something”
“I was pretty disposed to not be impressed,” Nick confessed in the same interview.
“But when we did the first read through, Megan just stuck out as so hilarious,
which is what prompted me to approach her afterwards.”
So Nick sent Megan a text asking her to go on a date. However, the actress did not reply at
first. “He asked for my phone number and I gave him my fax number,” she explained.
“He sent me a message asking me to go hear some music, and I didn’t get the message
for like two weeks later. So for two whole weeks he thought I just totally iced him.”
Luckily for their marriage, Megan ended up getting the message.
“I thought it was really sweet, and I think we were starting to flirt more during that time,”
she said. However, she had some doubts about the relationship at first. Megan initially
liked Nick partly because, well…. She thought he was 10 years older than he actually was!
"When we met, I was 41, and I'd always had younger guys pursue me, and I was really
sick of it," Mullally told GQ magazine. "And so I met Nick and I thought, Oh, great,'cause this
guy's like 38!'" When she found out that her co-star was 29 at the time, she wasn’t happy.
Megan also didn’t want to date somebody she worked with. “After rehearsal one night we went and drove
around. I put my hand on hers on the gearshift in the middle and that was very electric,”
Nick explained. “She gave me a stern talking to about how she
wasn’t about to ‘get involved’ with somebody she was doing a play with.
So it would have to wait until the play closed. And I said, ‘OK, I can handle those terms‘.”
However, Nick didn’t have to wait that long. That same night, the couple parked the car and made out
for TWO hours. On the opening night of their play, the couple made out again, only this time somebody
saw them.“The cat was out of the bag,” said Megan, who explained that they decided to take things
slow at first. “And then we were dating. Then I wouldn’t let him come to my apartment. Then I
would let him come in, but he had to sleep on the couch. And then he could sleep on the bed, but we
still hadn’t had sex yet. By the time we did, it was long anticipated and well worth the wait.”
Nick has talked about how dating Megan helped him get out of the dark place he was in.
He was sleeping on a couch in a friend’s unfinished basement.
The actor remembers he told himself, ‘Oh, if you want this relationship to last,
you really have to clean up your act—because right now, you’re kind of a stinky hog-like human.” He
went on to say “I feel like I was partly looking for this relationship because it saved my life."
After going on a few dates, the couple decided to make it official in the year 2000.
It was actually Megan who asked Nick out during a concert. “There were fireworks, both literal
and figurative,” the actor told GQ. “That was the first time Megan invited me to be her boyfriend.”
The relationship not only helped Nick’s personal life, but also his career.
In 2001, he played a plumber on an episode of Will and Grace, and even got to kiss Megan!
During this time, it was the actress who was getting more roles and more success in her career.
The comedy duo had an extremely happy relationship, which led Nick to propose in 2002,
when they had been dating for 18 months. The actor has explained that, in true comedian fashion,
he actually fake-proposed three times as a joke! He brought three disposable rings fabricated by
the Will & Grace costume designer to a trip to Paris. Then, he dropped the fake rings
from some of the most memorable places in the city, like the Eiffel Tower or the Pont-Neuf
“I thought it was hilarious,” Mullay told Playboy magazine. “But the rings got progressively bigger,
and for a moment I thought the last one might be real.” Nick actually proposed to her on a
trip to London, during a romantic walk at Queen Mary’s Rose Garden.
The couple married in 2003. Instead of a traditional wedding,
they decided to do their own thing and turn it into a surprise for their friends and family.
They threw a party on September 20th, the day before the Emmy Award ceremony.
The guests found out it was actually their wedding only after they arrived!
After marrying, the actors moved together to a house in Hollywood Hills.
The following years, Megan continued getting huge success in her career.
Nick was happy supporting her, even if he wasn’t getting as many roles.
He even moved to New York with Megan when she got a role in the Young Frankenstein (Reference:Video
SparkNotes: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein summary 0.03) Broadway musical in 2008. The following
year, the actor got his big break thanks to a role on NBC’s sitcom Parks and Recreation.
Nick told Backstage magazine that he talked to the producers of the show about having Megan
in the cast as well. “I said ‘I don’t know if you guys know this, but I happen to be married
to a comedy legend,’ and they said, ‘Why, yes we were aware of that, so we definitely need to get
her on the show,’” So Megan got a recurring role playing Tammy II, the ex-wife of Nick’s character.
Nick gained a lot of popularity and Megan was already famous,
so fans started getting very invested in their relationship. Both comedians used the occasion
to make funny jokes about each other on interviews and social media, turning into Hollywood’s most
fun pairing. Ever since, they help each other get parts and promote each other’s projects.
Nick has talked about how his marriage has helped him during his career.
“Megan is 10, 11 years older, and she has hit all these high watermarks,” he told Backstage “There’s
a real open student-teacher relationship where Megan is years ahead of me as far as the work
she’s done and was on top of the game long before I was. It’s like having a master teacher at home”.
In the same interview, Megan said “I started Will & Grace when I was 39,
and Nick started Parks and Rec when he was 39. And he’s really on the same trajectory;
it’s all happening with the same timing.” Well, it’s great that they both have made it work!
Today, the comedy duo has been together for 22 years. They have co-written a book called The
Greatest Love Story Ever Told and have a podcast called In Bed with Nick and Megan. They have
also starred on several TV and movie projects together. We all know it’s hard to last in the
complicated Hollywood dating scene, especially while working together. So, how do they do it?
Well, first of all, they have both said they love working together and that it actually
enriches their relationship. “People often say to us, 'Are you crazy? I can barely stand my spouse
at home every day after work, how can you choose to go to work with her?' Megan told USA Today.
“And we say, 'Well, that sounds really sad for you, because we just like each other.'"
Although they love working together, they have both agreed to put their relationship
above everything else, including work. “We have a rule that we will never do a
job that will keep us apart for more than two weeks,” Nick said during an interview with GQ.
The actors don’t have any children, which they think might have even helped their relationship.
In 2017, Megan said “We tried for about a year or so, and it didn't happen,
and took that to mean it wasn't meant to be.”
When talking about their day-to-day lives, the pair has clarified that they are actually…
well, a normal couple! “One of the things that made us click is that we are simple,
boring people” Nick told Parade “We cling to each other. We go home and read books and put
together jigsaw puzzles and play cards, to protect ourselves from the craziness of this business.”
It’s clear that Nick and Megan have made their relationship work by doing their own
thing and not sticking to Hollywood rules or by what anyone else thinks.
Here at Rumour Juice, we can’t help but wish them many more years of happiness.