Nick Offerman: “I would’ve cut off a small toe to do ‘The Last Of Us’”

Nick Offerman has the most charming laugh. It’s quite a small noise for such a substantial man: part gurgle, part hiccup, part Porky Pig chuckle, with just the tiniest hint of that honking noise a dog makes just before it vomits. It sneaks out of him often, usually in the middle of a sentence as if he needs to siphon off a little of the delight he’s getting from his day. As well he might, though, because Nick Offerman has a lot to be happy about.

Offerman is in no need of a career ‘resurgence’ – he’s been doing very well for many years, thank you – but the 52-year-old does seem to be getting a new sort of interest lately. For years he’s been so closely associated with Ron Swanson, the character he played on sitcom Parks and Recreation from 2009 to 2015, that some struggled to see him as anything else. But with a single episode of The Last Of Us he showed those who hadn’t been paying attention that he is a superb actor, more than capable of nailing countless roles.

In a standalone episode of the excellent zombie drama, Offerman plays a survivalist who has shut himself off from the world as a plague turns most of the population into mindless flesh-eaters. But when a stranger (Murray Bartlett) comes begging for food, it starts a faltering romance that gives both men new life as the world around them dies. One of this century’s best episodes of TV, it’s already getting deserved awards hype and a lot of attention for Offerman. “I’m glad we didn’t fuck that one up,” Offerman tells NME, before unleashing a little laugh.

We’ll come back to The Last Of Us, as that’s not why we’re talking today. Offerman’s popularity means that he is coming to the UK and Ireland to do some live shows next week: he’s been doing these for a long time, but there are now more people than ever clamouring to see them. It’s not technically a stand-up show, because Offerman is not a stand-up comedian. He likes to stand in front of audiences and entertain them, but he does not do jokes.

“I wrote one joke a few years ago about a dating app for farmers called ‘Attractor’,” he says (it’s really more of an out-loud joke). “I’m very proud of that, that I actually wrote a joke.” But, generally, he likes to “hold forth with my opinions” and sing comic songs he’s written himself. He’s been working in theatre for years, but it had never particularly been his intention to do one-man shows until people kept asking. After his Parks and Recreation success, colleges across America kept offering him money to come and do his stand-up because they just assumed he had some. “I said, ‘You know what, let me see if I can exploit this and turn it into a workshop to write funny AB-rhymed songs about things that are on my tits’.”

It’s not hard to see how an Offerman show would be entertaining, even without written jokes. He’s a naturally funny, amiable person, and even though we speak on Zoom – which can be a chilly communication tool – he gives it the relaxed feel of a catch-up with a relative you really like but don’t see often. He’ll interrupt himself to “monkey around” with a loose connection and move to somewhere more comfortable, and he seems very comfortable in who he is, which in turn puts his audience – be it a packed theatre or a single journalist – at ease. He’s a beautiful speaker: talking in long paragraphs, frequently wandering off the main narrative to enjoy a little side story, but he always seems clear on where he’s going. He has an expansive vocabulary, but not in that annoying Boris Johnson-ish way of brandishing obscure words just to show you know them. Offerman finds the perfect word to paint the clearest, funniest picture. Even without the soothing baritone he’d be a pleasure to listen to. And he’s really worth listening to, because he has a lot to say.

For a long time, a lot of people have only wanted Offerman to be one thing: he is, albeit pleasantly, haunted by the success of Ron Swanson. It’s a character that came to him relatively late. Offerman grew up in rural Illinois in a family that did normal jobs, like teaching and nursing. He wanted to act, and did so happily and reasonably successfully – he was part of the famed Steppenwolf company – but he supplemented it with work as a carpenter because reasonable acting success didn’t pay the bills. Then, aged 38, he won the role of Swanson, the curmudgeonly director of a lesser government department, alongside old friend and colleague Amy Poehler. He went from anonymity to global meme-fodder overnight.

That character’s enduring appeal means many people get the wrong idea about Offerman. They think he is Swanson, who believed meat was the only food group, loved hunting and had a daily alcohol consumption of “one shelf”. There is always a very vocal corner of the Offerman fanbase who just want the curmudgeonly Swanson; who believe he represents their conservative ideals (Swanson was, for the record, a libertarian). Offerman is extremely aware of this faction and tries to good-naturedly discourage them.

“One of my closing songs [in the show] is ‘I’m Not Ron Swanson’,” he explains. “I’m very grateful that people have enjoyed Parks and Recreation to the degree they have, and enjoyed my character, but I’m a much sloppier, more complicated, giggly, foolish human being. Sometimes my fanbase will say, ‘I’m not interested in seeing this actor do anything else. He’s so indelibly this character to me’. That’s fine, but you’re missing out on the way I slip and fall as Nick Offerman too, and people seem to delight in that as well.”

Asked if he’s made his peace with the fact that he’ll simply never convince some people to accept him as anything else, he releases a Swanson-ish sigh. He might be able to were he not on social media, but he’s still exposed to those people frequently.

“[Someone said] ‘I saw Nick Offerman without his moustache and vomited and died’,” he recalls. “That’s an interesting compliment.” For the record, he has no moustache when we speak to him, and we feel no nausea whatsoever. Because he is ever a reasonable man, he tries to see the good side.

“It’s a wonderful problem to have: to have won the lottery as an actor to even end up on a show that reaches enough people that you have an impact at all, let alone a favourable one. Then to have them say, ‘Your show and character were so effective that I don’t want to have that spoiled’. But when I read my favourite authors it doesn’t occur to me not to read more of their books. When I read The Hobbit I’m not afraid to jump into The Lord of the Rings in case Gandalf turns into a more well-rounded character.”

“I’m a much sloppier, more complicated, giggly, foolish human being than Ron Swanson”

Offerman has played a variety of characters in the years since Parks and Recreation – a verbose lawyer in Fargo, a grieving tech CEO in Devs, an eccentric pirate in The Lego Movie – but his Last Of Us role pierced the collective consciousness like nothing else he’s done. People posted TikToks of themselves sobbing through his performance, and he was invited on talk shows to chat about it, even though he was just a guest star for a single episode. It was all a little discombobulating for him.

If it weren’t for his wife and frequent collaborator Megan Mullally (Will & Grace), he would probably have never taken the role. Offerman loved the script, but it came to him at an incredibly busy time. Mullally, though, said he had to do it, which he sort of knew already. “There was no room in my schedule to do it, but the writing would not be denied,” he says. “I told them, ‘I will shift the rest of my life. I will chop off at least a small toe to do this role’.”

He shot his episode about 18 months before it was broadcast, and gave it little thought in the meantime. “I’ve long since lost interest in seeing the result [of my work],” he says. “Of course I’m a narcissistic baby in that I want people to see it and love me and tell me I’m terrific… but the 7 per cent of me that is not a child has grown to understand that performing the feat… is my jam.” Which is all to say he wasn’t really looking for the extreme reaction the episode generated, and certainly wasn’t expecting it.

Offerman calls the reaction “a Christmas present”, but he’s not letting his inner narcissistic baby open it too needily. “If you’re lucky enough to work consistently, you have to become inured to the highs and lows, or you’ll blow your brains out,” he says. And besides, he’ll always have people on social media prepared to provide their less-than-glowing feedback. “In 2023 you can watch a TV show and then tweet an actor on that show, ‘I hate you, because you kissed a man’.” People always will, but the face Offerman makes suggests he doesn’t really care.

Often when someone known for comedy brilliantly takes on a dramatic role there will be discussion of them ‘turning serious’, as if comedy was just a warm-up before the real acting. Offerman, unsurprisingly, has no such plans, in part because he doesn’t see that he’s taken any kind of new career direction.

“I went to theatre school,” he says. “I aspired, from the cornfields of Illinois… to be a leading man in the RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company].” Speaking of the RSC, he has a bit of an affinity for the UK and drops British references in often: Derek Jacobi, the BBC, cricket (Alex Garland, creator of Devs, taught him about that to stop him using baseball metaphors). He says that both he and Mullally consider the UK “our ultimate Disneyland. We love the people. We think London is the greatest city on the planet.”

Back to the main point, he brings up a Brit to illustrate his point that successfully doing drama doesn’t mean you’ve given up comedy. “Look at Olivia Colman, perhaps our day’s greatest thespian,” he proposes. “She was known primarily as this great comedy actor. Then a couple of filmmakers were like, ‘Oh hey guys, there’s a whole other cave down here and it’s full of rubies, sapphires and crazy treats’.” He’s not necessarily saying he’s eyeing a Colman-esque career, but, like her, sees no reason to go in one direction: “I just want to keep working.”

“My wife Megan Mullally and I think London is the greatest city on the planet”

One thing he does have in common with Colman is a surprising late-career veer into blockbuster territory. While Colman is doing the Marvel show Secret Invasion, Offerman is about to become a Tom Cruise co-star. He’s not allowed to talk about it much, but he’s going to be in “the next-next Mission: Impossible movie”. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning will be split into two parts, with Part One arriving this summer and Part Two next. Offerman is playing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs Of Staff, i.e the highest ranking military officer in the US aside from the President.

“It was so fun in every way,” he says, particularly as the director, Chris McQuarrie, told him it would be somewhat akin to his theatre days: doing a lot of improvisation and character development rather than working from a fixed script. “He literally said, ‘Here’s how we make these movies: we jump out of a plane together and we start sewing a parachute as we’re falling’. It was a very apt description. As long as you know that going in, then it’s fun. This is the greatest playground and you’re playing with the greatest kids.”

Offerman doesn’t know who he’ll be playing with in that playground next, but whoever it’s with, he’ll be abiding by a rule that’s worked very well for him so far: “Do things with people you think will be fun. Avoid assholes: that’s just a truism of life. The more you can have a ‘no assholes’ rule, the happier your days will be.”

Nick Offerman’s UK and Ireland tour begins in Dublin on June 26 – you can find any remaining tickets here.

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