Nick Offerman, known for his iconic role as Ron Swanson in "Parks and Recreation," has carved a unique path in Hollywood. This article explores Offerman's career, his approach to acting, and how he defies expectations both on and off the screen.
An Unconventional Star
It doesn't take spending a ton of time with Nick Offerman to realize the former Parks and Recreation star keeps a pretty level head-he doesn't get irked by much. Offerman has established himself over the years as someone who doesn't play by the same rules as most others in the film and television game. His answers aren't sanitized, pre-scrubbed for damage control. What he says is 100% real, and when he says he's got no interest in any bullshit, well, he means it. Part of that bullshit, naturally, is born online. So he’s used to hearing from fans, and hearing from young people, and hearing from anyone watching Parks and Recreation for the first, second, and fifteenth times. But that doesn’t stop him from getting irked.
Defying Expectations: Beyond Ron Swanson
Offerman talks like his characters, but what he’s saying is 100% him; he’s not Ron Swanson. He’s not his latest character, the tech genius Forest from Devs. What he says his goal for each role is is to totally transform, be “totally unrecognizable” on a project-by-project basis. And it’s hard to realize just how good he is at doing that until you actually get a feel for how down-to-earth and warm the man himself actually is.
In the five years since Parks and Rec left the air, Offerman has made a major dent of his own; Devs, his current project, is the prestige TV sci-fi series from director Alex Garland. Airing as part of the new FX on Hulu collection, Offerman calls the project “the highest-level job” he’s ever had as an actor, feeling the full pressure of the responsibility to carry the emotional weight of Garland’s heavy, wide-reaching auteur vision.
For the role of Forest in "Devs," Offerman was required to learn quite a bit of jargon and technological know-how to ensure that he understood exactly what he was saying and expressing in any given scene. And Garland was able to explain some of the more advanced theories and mechanics at play so that Offerman, and the rest of the cast, were able to understand it. When the project wrapped, though, it was a different story. “In real life, I absolutely don’t give a shit about the subject matter, and so I was not interested in retaining it,” he says between sips of coffee. “I think it’s fascinating, and amazing, I just…my life is much more analog, I guess. I want to just do my work. I’m a donkey-I want to haul my load, and then receive my carrot, and then make love to my donkey wife, and go to sleep.”
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When wondering how, exactly, Offerman ended up getting the role in a series like Devs-so fundamentally different from the things he’s otherwise best known for-it makes sense to understand that Garland, who comes from the U.K., had no idea that he was famous in the context of comedy; he had never been a fan of Parks and Rec.
Garland says, “There's something really soulful about him,” Garland says. “It's in the kinds of jokes he makes that there's a kind of rueful quality behind them sometimes-it's like a keen sense of what's ridiculous, which I personally like. Because so many things are fucking ridiculous.”
A Career Built on Choice
In some ways, it feels like Offerman has been building toward a role like the one he has in Devs. He’s had small parts in things like the second season of FX’s Fargo, where he played a war veteran in a weird, screwy single-season plot. He had a small role in 2018's Bad Times at the El Royale, a high-concept thriller with a uniquely dark tone. But as much as it might seem like he was building toward something, he wants to be clear: it wasn’t deliberate.
“I’m not a big careerist,” he says. “When I got to Hollywood and saw how gross and superficial it is, by and large, I said ‘I’m not going to chase this business. That will destroy my life. I’ll turn into a drunk, or I’ll end up in the looney bin.’ And so I determined to just be a carpenter and a woodworker, and if they needed me for a show, they could call me.”
“I don't ever see studio films-they have no interest in me. Most genres of entertainment are not interested in me.”
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But still, Offerman makes it clear that it’s not a nonstop trail of contracts and offers coming to his door. He says he gets offered a lot of TV comedies, and a lot of independent films, and the buck mostly stops there. “People are often surprised to hear, the business is not not banging my door down,” he says. “I don't ever see studio films-they have no interest in me. Most genres of entertainment are not interested in me.”
Offerman doesn't hold back. “I think there are those big franchises-Marvel or Star Wars or whatever-I think those all hold within them examples of wonderful, great creativity, and also examples of less good material,” he says. “Depending on what they brought to me, and where I was, and what I had available? If Taika Waititi’s name is involved, then I will come running.”
He continues to say that while he’s open to trying most different kinds of projects, he does hold his own personal rule for a genre that he just refuses to do: TV procedurals. “Any show where like, every episode involves a forensic officer pulling a condom out of the gutter. It's a very popular genre-it’s just not my bag,” he says. “I don't want to go to work every day dealing with that sort of darkness.” Doing the same murder-of-the-week story seems like it would get stale fast, he says. “That also to me seems like it would get super redundant,” he says. “Like, wait, which rapist is this?”
The "Parks and Recreation" Family
Amy Poehler starred with Offerman for seven seasons on Parks and Recreation, but has known him even longer than that-the pair originally met back in 1996, when both were making the rounds in the Chicago theater scene. When I talk to Poehler on the phone, she’s thrilled to discuss what she refers to as Offerman’s “Philip Seymour Hoffman-level performance” in Devs.
Poehler now hosts Making It, NBC’s craft-building reality show, with Offerman, and she makes it clear in our call that the two of them aren’t just professional colleagues. They get along on the same level because they don’t like being difficult for the sake of being difficult. “We really like to work hard, we like to work a lot, we like to have a good time, and we’re not really interested in a lot of the bullshit,” she says. “And Nick really isn’t. It’s funny. I think sometimes people think he’s going to be a little grouchier, or meaner than he is. Because he’s a real giggler. Like, he’s got a really infectious giggle.”
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Even aside from Poehler, Offerman says he still keeps just as close to his former castmates as ever. The cast maintains an ongoing text thread where people check in, congratulate one another, and otherwise keep in touch. He doesn't have a ton in common with Ron Swanson, but like that character, he does have his own woodshop-appropriately called the Offerman Woodshop-which is in the midst of a big project: building a dining table for Chris Pratt’s new house.
Physical Transformation and the 100 Push-Up Challenge
Not just because the two are friends and former costars, but it would seem like Offerman owes Pratt one after the Guardians of the Galaxy star gave him a lasting workout tip a few years back: do 100 push-ups a day-two sets of 50. “It’s really turned things around,” Offerman says, walking down a New York City sidewalk. “I’ve become an actor known for my boobs.”
Embracing Growth and Learning
On a recent episode of In Bed With Nick and Megan, the podcast Offerman hosts with his wife, actress Megan Mullally, the actor said that one thing he always does as he goes through life is go through it with a learning mentality. He always wants to be open for improvement, and open to use one life experience to build toward the next one.
As much as he doesn’t like to see his role in Devs as something he’s built up to, his analogy certainly sounds like someone who took a step back and told himself yes, I belong here. “As a younger actor, I think if you told me I was going to get a job like this, I would be terrified,” he says. “I’d be really daunted, because you just think. It’s like, if I said to you 'You’re going to be playing basketball with LeBron.' You’d be like… 'No! I’ll die!’ There’s no way I would survive if he even looked at me.”
But, as he continues, you just have to take a deep breath and remember what you did, and how you got there. “If you’re playing against LeBron, you got there,” he says. “You deserve it.”