Nick Offerman's seven mustachioed seasons as Ron Swanson on "Parks and Recreation" were nothing short of iconic. If Offerman first made his mark playing a man with a deep antipathy for digital technology, his latest role as a high-tech maven on "Devs" couldn't be further from that.
"He's a somewhat eccentric Silicon Valley iconoclastic brainiac," Offerman said of the character he plays on the new FX series on Hulu. "Imagine if Elon Musk were twice as strange. And hairier. The hairiest of the computer geniuses. He's created a quantum computing company that is dominating the landscape and the repercussions of his success have him on a path that drives the narrative of the show." The sci-fi thriller from "Annihilation" director Alex Garland centers around "the biggest questions in life and how we will answer them when our computers become too powerful."
Raised in the farming community of Minooka, Ill., Offerman and a group of friends moved to Chicago after college and formed Defiant Theatre. The company would go on to create a number of distinctively high-energy, highly physical shows before shuttering about 10 years later. Offerman left for greener pastures on the West Coast midway through Defiant's run, but continued doing theater in Los Angeles and met future wife Megan Mullally when they were cast in the same play.
Offerman's time on stage was formative _ personally and professionally _ and that's what came to mind when asked about a worst moment. But first, a preface: "The theme here is concussions," he said. "When I was in college, I smoked my first marijuana as a sophomore with my friend Joe Foust and I enjoyed it very much _ so much so that I thought it would be fun to partake of it while I was on stage in a production of 'Man of La Mancha.' And long story short, I ended up cracking my head open and having a severe concussion.
"I ran this story by Joe, who is my historian, and he said, 'No, no, no _ there's an even worse story when we did this show 'Ubu Raw' in 1996."
Offerman picks it up from there.
My worst moment ...
"The Defiant Theatre was a company started by a bunch of us that graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We were all the class of '93 or so. And I think what is considered the greatest show we did was this Kabuki-flavored version of Alfred Jarry's (1896 play) 'Ubu Roi,' but we spelled it r-a-w because we were terrific rascals. It was a wild bacchanal, a wonderful carnival of a show.
"And I played Pa Ubu in a fat suit and a mask that was quite substantial and heavy. It was built on a bike helmet, a huge latex head patterned after the famous Max Ernst sketch of Pa Ubu. The mask was made by a great artist named Stephanie Nelson (who works frequently as a designer in Chicago theater). It was like 12 pound or something, built up with some newspaper and sawdust. The only part of me that was visible was my lower lip and chin.
"Thankfully my main talent in those days were those of the donkey: I had incredible stamina, I could take a lot of punishment and I could kick and bray loudly. I was also the technical director for our company. I had all the tools and I was in charge of building all the scenery. And this was a big production, so we built this huge set.
"The thing about our productions was that we never had any budget, so we had to use creativity and gumption and elbow grease. And by and large, the last couple of weeks of rehearsal and tech we would be pulling all-nighters to finish the set.
"Joe directed the show and co-wrote it, so he and I were kind of the two main knuckleheads when it came to him directing and me playing the lead, but also choreographing these massive fight scenes and we also were building all the props and the set. We were absolutely exhausting ourselves. And when we finally put away the paint brushes and the screw guns and swept real quick so the audience could come in, Joe got to go sit in a chair but I had to strap on my armor (laughs) and do the show.
"So I think it was either our final dress rehearsal or our opening night. We had a piece of scenery that was a 6-foot step ladder with a piece of plywood cut in the shape of a boulder affixed it to the front of it. The boulder would appear on stage, and Pa Ubu would climb to the top of the boulder, so I'm straddling the top of this 6-foot ladder, bellowing some bombastic foolishness.
"It was scripted in the show that I would fall face first off this thing and probably do sort of a half flip, which was a little extreme, but I had the padding of the fat suit so it was not outside the realm of my bag of tricks.
"But apparently on this night I was so exhausted, I just passed out. And I landed squarely on my head.
"Everyone in the place was immediately alarmed. And I got to my feet weaving and continued with my dialogue, but I was whispering my lines. So then Joe came out and stopped the show and said, 'Are you OK?' and I said, 'Yeah, what are you talking about? What could possibly be the matter?' I was just completely out of my mind. And he said, 'You fell on your head.' And I said, 'You're crazy, I'm fine _ on with the show. Be gone.'
"So he made an announcement to the audience that we were going to carry on with the show. It's a testament to the generosity of the Chicago theater audience that apparently no one asked for a refund. I think part of the reason people came to see our shows was that you might see a guy fall on his head.
"It sounds very scary, but apparently I was very indestructible for that decade. We always found it very funny that I was feebly going on with the show (laughs).
"So we finished the show that night and then we got our heads together, and someone said, 'Well, we should probably take you to the hospital.' And we tossed it around and determined that nobody had health insurance, including me, and I couldn't remotely consider going to the hospital.
"And I said, 'You know, I think maybe the pub is the thing to do.' So that's what we did."
How was Offerman feeling the next morning?
"I mean, I had been a football player. And this was my thing _ I was a pretty clumsy actor at the time, but I was very athletic and I could take a beating. A lot of our shows had me crashing through walls and doing my own stunts. So no, there was nothing remarkable the next morning. It was just business as usual.
"The bike helmet that the mask was built on absolutely must have protected me. The way Joe tells the story, it was the kind of fall that could easily have ended things _ I'm deeply grateful for that ridiculously heavy helmet and mask _ but he also rattled off four or five other occasions like that, and I don't remember them at all."
The takeaway ...
"I can pretty accurately recognize these days where I will potentially injure myself and I try to avoid that. A big part of that is just practicality. I'm often working in film and TV, and you come to understand that if you're foolhardy and you try the stunt and you hurt yourself, you could possibly shut things down, which costs people money and then you're a fly in everybody's ointment.
"But first and foremost, if you're going to be in the show, then you have you get a little bit of sleep. Beyond that, I think it was one of the first times I learned my limits. Before that I was still of the opinion that there was nothing I couldn't do. And that night disabused me of that notion (laughs). It made me grateful for any scene of dialogue where I get to sit in a chair and speak at a moderate volume."
