The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

by Nick Offerman

  M: (Laughs) Just the one.

  N: I don’t have anywhere near the crazy, photographic memories that you have . . .

  M: I remember being baptized when I was eighteen weeks old!

  N: Also, you remember lengthy dreams with great alacrity. But one of the few things I do remember was when I was maybe four or five. My dad would have a card game, and they’d have a big case of twenty-four brown bottles of Alpine or Falstaff beer. My job was to keep everybody’s cold beer refreshed. Then I would take the empties and put them in the return crate, under the coats, in the mudroom. And I would sit under the coats—it was really cold and dark under there among the work boots—and I would meticulously drain all the dregs from the beer bottles.

  (Both laugh)

  M: How old were you?

  N: Four or five.

  (More laughter)

  N: Which could be considered an art. (Clears throat)

  M: They say to be really accomplished at something, you need ten thousand hours of practice, so I guess . . . that would be . . .

  N: It’s one of my areas of mastery.

  When I think about art in my life—I could go to a museum, I could go to a ballet, which I did every once in a while—I could go and appreciate the work and whatnot . . .

  M: When did you go to ballets . . .?

  N: Well, I dated that ballet dancer for years.

  M: Oh Christ on a cracker . . .

  N: I don’t know how to quantify it, but Joe Foust, my bosom friend, college roommate, and collaborator from the Defiant Theatre—I had friends as a kid who would turn me on to comic books, or music, but it wasn’t my jam. Joe Foust was the first person who I thought, “Holy shit, you have all the right stuff. You have art and music and books and movies that are so delicious in a way I never knew.” There were others—the next big one was Pat Roberts—and then you.

  I pay a lot more attention to working. Left to my own devices, I’ll say, “I’m going to go build something, or do some work.”

  M: All I ever want to do is read. I only leave the house under duress.

  N: The breadth and number of books you read is jaw-dropping.

  M: Thank you, I think. I’ve always been a big reader. When I was a kid, I would beg my mom to take me to the library, and I would check out, like, eleven books and read them all. From the time I was eight or nine, I always wanted to go to the library. I’d lie on the floor in my bedroom and read every single book.

  N: Books were a big deal in our house. And that was where, more than anywhere else, my own creative voice and tastes began to develop.

  M: I feel like reading was my acting class, like that was where I learned. Because most of the line when I read, I make the movie of the book in my head.

  N: I’m going to blow this open a little bit . . .

  M: (Laughs)

  N: . . . and say in hindsight, and maybe I’m getting a little Wendell Berry, that because we didn’t have art around my house, per se—there was Norman Rockwell, there was my father’s Currier and Ives calendars—there wasn’t art. But I feel like, much more than the classical definition of art, there was the art of the family, and the art of a low-income household. The art of living. (Laughs)

  M: Caretaking.

  N: I feel like it’s still demonstrable in me.

  M: Very much so.

  N: I feel like I don’t need to use the kitchen, because we live a luxurious life, but I’m driven to.

  M: Not me! (Laughs)

  I think that’s true. And I didn’t have those wholesome comforts of home so much. But my mom had a penchant for interior design, and that’s something I think I inherited from her. She was pretty passionate about it, but her own ’60s/’70s Jackie O version of it. I had that, and television, and movies sometimes. And music. But I didn’t have the personal touch. You know.Of humans.

  I already said this, but in the last few years, I’ve taken to saying that I came out of the womb in a top hat and tap shoes, because I think it’s really interesting that from my earliest memory, I always wanted to do something creative. I used to draw—I still draw—

  N: You’re really good at drawing.

  M: Thanks, honey! (Both laugh)

  But the main thing for me, from the beginning, was music. Again, because I felt I could express myself emotionally or feel feelings I wasn’t really allowed to display in real life.

  I was in the car with my mom a lot. Where I grew up, everything is close together. If you were in the car for more than ten minutes, it was an outrageously long drive. So I don’t know when these millions of hours I remember being in the car actually transpired, but that’s how I remember it. And somehow, in these few minutes in the car, I managed to learn all the lyrics to every song on the radio, and sing it exactly along with whoever was singing it, male or female. And I’d be completely outraged if it wasn’t in the right key for me and I’d have to transpose.

  There was only one station that played “modern music.” It was called WKY. And because it was basically the only game in town, they played everything. They played everything from the Stones to Frank Sinatra, and everything in between. I think it had a huge influence on me, because both of the bands I’ve had as an adult have been cover bands that run this crazy gamut of music from all different genres and eras.

  N: Your bands are like a really eclectic, weird radio station art project.

  It’s interesting, now that I’m thinking about it—it’s making more sense to me that I’m not a refined artist. My parents’ art was taking three acres of land and drawing—“OK, this third of an acre will be a garden.” They were both good at sketching out ideas. My dad designed a small barn, and he and I built it. I remember them building a three-bin compost corral out in the garden. And also this two-story decrepit farmhouse that we got for free. That was a work of art. And they figured out how to use four kids and their humble resources. Every other summer we would scrape and paint the entire wooden-sided house. I think they really instilled a sense of creativity in me, but one of great economy. They wouldn’t go out and buy a set of paints. They would say, “What do we have here that we can do with?”

  M: You have a good business sense, too. I wonder where that comes from?

  N: It must inevitably come from them, as they, of course, are incredible keepers of a budget, raising four kids, most of the time, on a schoolteacher’s salary. Because mom didn’t go back to school until Matt was going to school on the bus.

  M: Matt Damon.

  N: Matt Damon, childhood friend and lodger.

  (Both laugh)

  M: He’s the child you took in.

  N: Yes, he went back to his family in, I believe, a South Boston neighborhood. He’s never forgiven me.

  M: I hope Affleck doesn’t catch wind of this.

  N: But talk about the nuts and bolts. I think both of us, once we hit Will & Grace and Parks & Rec, our career trajectories are pretty public knowledge. But I love all that stuff about Risky Business and Blue Velvet, and getting flown out from Chicago to LA because you were a foxy twentysomething wunderkind . . .

  M: Basically, my deal was that I had the door shut to my only-child bedroom for most of my childhood coming up with magical moments, and I was in a ballet company. But I also did summer stock from the time I was twelve. There was a summer stock company in Oklahoma City called the Lyric Theatre. My father had done some shows there.

  When I was twelve, I auditioned for Fiddler on the Roof. My mom and I decided I should sing “Do-Re-Mi,” you know, “Do, a deer, a female deer” from The Sound of Music—I think that was the first movie I ever saw—as my audition. When I sang it for my mom and my father, they were like, “Uh-oh.”

  N: I’d love to hear you sing that song. And I’ll be the children.

  M: (Laughs) I’ll sing it for you later.

  N: (Singing) “Mi, a name I call my
self. Fa, a long, long way to run.

  M: Sing it!

  N: Go on.

  M: So. I did that show when I was twelve. Then I did a couple of shows there when I was fourteen. I was in the chorus, singing and dancing. I did Kismet and then The Music Man. I had super long hair, and I remember in Kismet there was a number where I had to whip my ponytail around in circles, and that was pretty scandalous. And when I was eighteen, I did Shenandoah, and that was my first real speaking part. But before that, also when I was eighteen, I got this weird summer job with these two guys from Oklahoma City—it was a random sequence of events. We somehow got booked at a club in Westwood, California, called Yesterdays, which at the time, in 1977, was the hottest game in town.

  N: What was the name of the manager?

  M: The manager of Yesterdays was named Brick Houston, and he was a former actor. I sang there—I was the entertainment, along with this guy who played guitar. I did that for the whole summer, and then I went back home and did Shenandoah.

  I always say that I never had a job that was outside entertaining, but I did, kind of, because I taught ballet classes when I was in the ballet company.

  N: But that doesn’t count.

  M: I taught ballet classes to children. (Laughs)

  N: That was your flipping burgers.

  M: I actually got the opportunity to choreograph a ballet, but I never did, because I ended up bowing out of the ballet company because I wanted to do other things. But I guess my love of making up dances for myself in my room has now carried over to me choreographing for Nancy And Beth.

  Originally I wasn’t going to go to college—I was just going to go to New York and audition for Broadway shows. Then my mom said, “I’ll make a deal with you. Apply to one college, and if you get in, you’ll go, and if you don’t, you can go to New York.” We decided on Northwestern, and I remember lying on the floor of my bedroom at two in the morning and writing the most bullshit essay in the history of the world for my college application. And then I somehow got accepted. So . . . hilarious.

  N: So you were legitimately trying to throw the essay?

  M: Yes! It was like The Producers.

  N: Northwestern is going to be so pissed when they read this book . . .

  M: Maybe they have a copy of it.

  But I ended up going, and it was great. I tried to be a theater major at the beginning of my freshman year, but I was too freaked out because everyone was so uninhibited. I had never been around “theater kids” because I was the only person my age that I knew of in Oklahoma City who really had those kinds of aspirations, kind of like my father driving around in a Rolls-Royce wearing a cravat. I bought vintage clothes in high school, and wore my hair in a weird way. But I was the only one.

  So I transferred out of the theater department almost immediately, into the Department of Interpretation, which is hilariously irrelevant and sounds very Kafkaesque to me now, but I did it because the chairman of that department was Frank Galati, who was a brilliant theater director. Interp, my major—which can’t possibly still exist, right?—was the oral interpretation of prose, poetry, and theater. I’m not sure what the practical application of that is, but I did it, and it was fine, and then I basically just studied English and art history.

  N: So what year was that?

  M: That was 1978 and 1979.

  N: So I’d just like to throw in . . .

  M: That you were nine?

  N: I’d like to throw in a nugget. In 1994, Frank Galati cast me in the adaptation of As I Lay Dying at Steppenwolf, and I believe it was the only time in my life that I was cast as the hunk.

  M: Wait, do you want to hear something even crazier? I auditioned for that.

  N: WHAT?

  M: Yeah. I didn’t get it.

  N: I was the hunk to the character you would have played. Her name was Dewey Dell.

  M: Oh, wait. No, it was something else. I think it was A Death in the Family by James Agee. (Laughs) It would have been weird if we were both in the same show and didn’t realize it until just now.

  N: That would have gotten this started way sooner.

  M: (Laughs) So at Northwestern, even though I wasn’t a theater major, when I was a freshman they were going to do A Little Night Music, which is a Sondheim musical. I decided I would audition for it, and everyone said, “Don’t even bother because freshmen never get cast in University Theatre productions.” So I thought . . .

  N: (Funny voice) Guess what happened . . .

  M: I thought, Well then why didn’t I just move to New York? So I auditioned and got cast as the maid, Petra, who has this song called “The Miller’s Son.” Everybody was furious. But that production was when I realized that I didn’t know anything about acting. I had a little acting experience from those summer stock productions I did in Oklahoma City, but very minimal. However, this girl who was a sophomore, who was also in the show, was incredible. Her name was Suzie Plakson. She met up with me at my dorm, and I said, “I don’t get it.” And she said, “You know your character in the show? Make friends with her.” I said, “What do you mean?” and she just repeated, “Make friends with her.” And that was a turning point because, ultimately, that somehow made sense to me. Also, a few years later, I was supposed to do a part in a movie that was pretty bad, where I had to get drunk and barf and then make out with a guy in the scene. I was with Laurie Metcalf and John Malkovich at a flea market in Pasadena, and I was supposed to shoot it the next day. I said, “Laurie, I don’t know how I’m going to do this part. It’s horrible.” I described the role to her, and she said, “Make her really happy.” And I did. And it worked . . . and it’s been working ever since.

  (Laughs) And that is my career trajectory. Thanks, everybody!

  N: Good-bye!

  What is it about our career trajectories that is applicable to our relationship? The headline is that even though we both come with very different skill sets and are years apart, and from Oklahoma and Minooka, pretty disparate locations, we hit a lot of the same touchstones on the way. The main one being with the Steppenwolf people in Chicago.

  I think it’s interesting that we both kind of went our way until our late thirties, when we had the uncanny, incredibly unlikely experience that we both got our jobs on our TV shows, popular Thursday night shows.

  M: How old were you?

  N: Thirty-eight.

  M: And I was thirty-nine. And what are the chances that the only two members of the same household would both get jobs on half-hour network comedies that became popular shows? And both of our characters became—I don’t want to say became iconic, but more or less became fairly iconic characters. What are the chances of that happening?

  N: I think that can be said without sounding like back-patting. I think it’s pretty factual that they were both unique standouts in their own way. And not only that, but both NBC, both Thursday night, both shot on the same lot. It’s really nutty. And something that we’ve touched on in other chapters—it’s really interesting because Will & Grace was a bigger ratings hit. You did, what, two hundred episodes?

  M: One hundred ninety-four. Now 210, I think . . . ?

  N: We did 125. Will & Grace won a bunch of Emmys. Megan got nominated seven times and won twice, I believe?

  M: C’mon, Bob.

  N: Plus scads of other awards. Parks & Rec was left very much alone (Laughs) by the award shows, by and large. We got a couple of nominations here and there, but very few.

  M: (Whispers) You got a Critics’ Choice Award.

  N: Regardless of my participation, it was a very different experience. Our show also came about . . . There was the transition between the majority of people watching on broadcast to the majority of young people, especially, watching on their computers. And that was something our show had to deal with, because our ratings were much lower, because they weren’t yet counting the ratings of people
watching on other broadcast services, or streaming, or whatever.

  In any case, they had a similar impact in terms of taking our careers several notches higher, to a level where people suddenly knew who we were. We came out of the situation with a clout that we didn’t have previously.

  M: I think the great thing about being able to achieve a degree of success like that is that it just opens doors. It opens other doors that you hadn’t been able to unlock before. That’s the best thing about it.

  N: I agree. Moving to LA from Chicago—that was the theater kid’s dream, at least to me. If I could get on some show, like David Schwimmer, who had left Chicago theater and got on Friends and made a bundle, then you could afford to make whatever artistic choices you wanted to. Because your rent has been paid, with plenty left over for making art, if you’re not stupid.

  It brings to mind when, about fifteen years ago, I was attached to a great, weird little indie comedy with some guys who had been attached to Steven Soderbergh over the years. They were part of his team. At the same time we were trying to get that movie green-lit, Steven was also trying to get a movie adaptation of the great comedy novel Confederacy of Dunces off the ground. Will Ferrell was supposed to play Ignatius at the time. It’s legendary: John Belushi, John Candy, Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis—at one point, Vince Vaughn was mentioned. All these different comedy guys were supposed to play this incredibly plum role at different points. And I remember thinking, “God, I wonder what would have to happen for that part to come around to me someday?”

  Amazingly, about twelve years later, it was Steven Soderbergh’s longtime collaborator John Hardy and independent producer Bob Guza who eventually hired me to star in a stage production of Confederacy, in the role I had so passionately craved. Mr. Soderbergh even came on as an additional producer. The show was a big hit, and impossibly fun, which just goes to show that you never know what little offshoot of the path will lead to further satisfaction. I found that very moving. When we were first doing a script workshop reading in New York, at intermission we were peeing next to each other, and I said, “Hey, John, this is going great, thank you again for having me. But I just have to ask you, how did you ever think of me? How did you think I could do this?” Because everyone thinks of me as some sort of manly, sheriff–Ron Swanson type. And he said, “I don’t know. We just had this feeling.”