Offerman has written several books, including his latest, the cheekily titled Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside.
In his spare time, he can be found at his woodshop in Los Angeles building hand-crafted items. He brings his latest show, simply dubbed Nick Offerman: Live!, to Connor Palace at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 29.
He speaks about his career in this recent phone interview.
What are you up to today?
I’m in Los Angeles. I’m writing a new song for a specific gig I have coming up [that involves] entertaining a group of oncologists. I’m trying to toe the line/straddle the fence of humor and appreciation while telling them I would like to see their asses unemployed.
How far along are you?
I’m pretty well into it. It’s a matter of finesse. If you get it right, you can say something really rude to them, but they have to understand that it’s funny and that you don’t actually want them to eat shit: “I don’t mean to be a jerk, but I’d love to see you out of work/so you’ll have to go find a new career. In a world of nothing but survivors, I’d make you all Uber drivers, delivering drunks instead of chemo and radiation.” That’s the idea. I have a solid foundation in place. Here’s the best part: “While I hope whoever finds a cure for cancer will play a handsome severance for all the work you’ve done/I’ll be the first to raise a glass knowing that finger up my ass means I’m just having my prostrate felt for fun.” We’ll see. In the last couple of years, I’ve done gigs for a convention full of tire salesmen or an arena of union electricians in Chicago. When I do those specific gigs, I’m very grateful because it means that someone picked me as the jackass they wanted to entertain them, and so I try to reciprocate by writing something that’s meant to specifically tickle them.
That sounds like work but also fun.
It beats pouring concrete.
Talk about what kind of impact has the Hollywood strike had on you?
Well, this phone conversation [and upcoming tour] is a direct result, so I thank my lucky stars. It’s all been leading up to this. Lady Fortuna has put us together. It’s a very tumultuous time and a very confusing subject because while the reasons for the strike are clear and profound and salient and the strike is incredibly important and imperative, at the same time, I happen to be one of the actors and/or writers who won the lottery and things went well for me so that I don’t have to worry about my rent at the moment. While we’re on the picket lines and standing strong in solidarity, asking for things that are so incredibly reasonable, like I am so often with American politics, I’m so embarrassed by the conversation — whether we’re talking about healthcare or residuals for TV shows. Nonetheless, here we are, and the capitalists/the robber barons are insisting that they be allowed to hoard the wealth, so they can purchase a 22nd yacht. I can’t help but be aware of all the people who rely on our business and are not making an income right now. It’s getting really dire for a great portion of the people who work in the film and TV industry. I do talk about it some in my show. Famously, one of the other issues on the table is that we need to get it in writing that we humans can’t be replaced by AI. To that end, I’ve even written a cautionary love song to Siri.
AI would replace the writers and not the actors, right?
It’s not just the writers. It’s everybody. It’s the actors too. We’ve already had to fight because the producers wanted to hire extras for one day and create 3-D versions of them and then just use the cartoon version of those people for the hundreds of days they should be paid. It’s here and present. You can easily extrapolate from that. This started, to my knowledge, when [actor] Paul Walker tragically died in the filming of Fast and Furious, and they built a digital version of him, and it became de rigueur to create a 3-D version of your performer. For anything with a budget, they take you in a room surrounded by 360-degree cameras to build a digital version of you, so, God forbid that anything happens to you, they can finish the film without you. It’s literally upon us. We’re fighting, so I can get paid real dollars instead of [having studios] purchasing a NIck Offerman program that only requires virtual bacon and eggs. It’s just shameful. It’s so gross because these are artists. It’s just gross. My mom is a retired union nurse, and my dad is a union school teacher. I’m happy to be from a union family, and I’m happy to have the common decency to stand up for the community rather than hoard all the money for myself.
Talk about how your Defiant Theatre days in Chicago helped you develop that character.
Let’s see, it’s 2023, so it’s 30 years. I did one TV gig in a weird summer of 1991, but I just say I officially started in 1993 professionally in Chicago. All through theater school at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, I completely sucked. I did not begin to figure out naturalism, and I couldn’t get cast. There were roles in plays where I was a clear favorite: A strapping drifter who could swing an ax. I was the only guy for miles around who could do it, but I wouldn’t get the part because I sucked so badly. Even from my years with the Defiant Theatre in Chicago, my best takeaway had less to do with acting and more to do with the things I was able to accomplish offstage, namely building all the scenery and making prosthetic makeup and building props. I was making prosthetic makeup and building props. Much like I did in the agricultural family I grew up in, I learned to be self-sufficient and to use the tools and skills I had at hand to continue to produce a living even if I wasn’t in the spotlight at the moment.
How’d you learn to do both comedy and drama?
It’s an interesting question. My wife, the goddess Megan Mullally, is also a legendary comedy performer, but she’s also an incredible dramatic actor, which people have just seen less of. It’s really the same toolbox. Performing comedy, we like to say it’s just like dramatic work, but the stakes are even higher. Sometimes, that takes things into the ridiculous. The thing I’m known best for, which is Ron Swanson on Parks & Rec, that guy is dead serious to the point of being ridiculous. I’m not particularly a clown like a Jim Carrey or a Robin Williams or, close to home, like Ben Schwartz on Parks & Rec. They are broad performers. They do loud, obvious clowning. Whether I’m in a production of 12 Angry Men or Chekov or a comedy, my particular toolbox involves a centered presence and a gravitas that I rely on.
You were terrific in Fargo. What kinds of challenges did you face there?
The way I choose roles since I’ve become lucky enough to choose roles from what is offered to me is mainly based on the writing. With a show with exquisite writing like Fargo, [creator and writer] Noah [Hawley] contacted me and sent me some of the scripts. Half of the season had been written. I said, “Yes. Your season one was incredible, and I love these scripts, so please count me in.” The best episode that I got to do was one he hadn’t even written yet. It’s just based on the writing that moves me and inspired me to think, “I get what you’re putting down. I think this is fresh and new whether it’s funny or scary or cathartic, I want to be part of your team.” When the writing is great, it’s very important. It’s like a restaurant finding the recipes that are so good you say, “This gnocchi blew me away!” So I look at the recipe and say, “That sounds delicious. I will provide the mushrooms for your dish.” One of the confections of that sensibility is that the great writing by nature of being great writing answers a lot of the questions and does a lot of the work required when dealing with lesser writing. Noah Hawley is also a great novelist. You can tell that a novelist has answered a bunch of these questions. You read a scene, and we learn as actors in acting school to ask, “What are we trying and what are we after? What is in my way?” You break it down to what you’re trying to accomplish. When you are handed great writing, all of those answers are right on the page [in Fargo]: “I’m trying not to get killed by this local crime family and if I had my druthers, I would just drink myself to death. These people are going to drag me out onto the porch to try to talk down these criminals. So here we are, and I wish I wasn’t shit-faced.”
I love the witty subtitles for your books. Is there a new book in the works?
I have five published. The company always makes me add a subtitle, and I try to make a joke out of it. It’s easy to say my titles without the [subtitles]. They add these subtitles that wind up being hopefully humorously lugubrious. It’s me being a smartass. I never imagined that I would publish a book in a million years. I love reading, and books are a huge part of my life. It all happened by mistake organically in your very charismatic state [of Ohio].
How so?
When Parks & Rec started to happen, colleges invited me to perform standup. The first couple of times, I said, “Thank you very much, but I am a theater actor from Chicago, and I don’t do standup.” The third college was Ohio State. I said, “Hang on a second.” It caught my eye. It was getting to speak to 2,000 kids, and it pays great. I told my agent to tell the Buckeyes that I would happily perform my stand-up. I took the opportunity to start trying to write standup, and I still have not succeeded but i discovered along the way that I can succeed as a humorist, a derivation that means I don’t have to talk as fast as a standup, but somehow people still keep laughing at what i say. I wrote some silly songs too, and it worked. It was a wonderful surprise. I’ve been doing it for over a decade now. It’s a blast. I love entertaining an audience. Rashida Jones came to a show in Los Angeles early on and said, “I love your point of view. I feel like you’re reading from your book.” I thought that there were a bunch of stories that I didn’t have time to fit into 90 minutes on stage, so I asked about getting a book deal and met with some publishers from New York and wrote my first book. Lo and behold, I love writing books. Enough people enjoy them that I get to keep doing it. Right now, I’m working on book six. It’s basically woodworking for kids. My third book, Good Clean Fun: Misadventures in Sawdust at Offerman Woodshop, is a proper woodworking textbook. It’s all about having a woodshop, and it’s an actual instructional book. This will be a lightweight version of it using only handtools for things to make for and with kids. As long as they will keep letting me do it, I will keep doing it. It allows me to stay engaged in the world and stay curious. Any method I can find that helps me resist becoming more of an asshole than I already am I will jump all over.
I know you’ve been here before. Any great memories?
Cleveland is among a handful of cities that I really love. It’s a city with big shoulders. It’s one of those Great Lakes cities. Mine is Chicago, but I shot a great film in Cleveland called Kings of Summer several years ago. I enjoy seeing Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Cincinnati and Buffalo, these industrial cities that have fallen on hard times and had their rivers on fire and other harsh things happen, go through this refurbishing and the ups and downs of gentrification and reclaiming of waterfront areas. Being around Cleveland on and off for the last 15 years, I love the neighborhoods and the great sense of community. It’s a great town for food and drink and theater. I love getting to participate in the culture of Cleveland. It’s one of those things that played out well timing-wise. I got there just as things were blossoming, and I said, “Wait a second? Isn’t this the town that Letterman always shit on or that other people looked down upon?” I thought, “Man, Cleveland is fantastic.” I’m grateful to be coming back.
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This article appears in Best of Cleveland 2023.
