‘Parks and Rec’ Star Jim O’Heir: ‘Welcome to Pawnee’
The Last Laugh
The Daily Beast
4.6 • 661 Ratings
🗓️ 20 November 2024
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jim O’Heir has almost 200 acting credits to his name, appearing on dozens of iconic TV shows like ‘ER,’ ‘Friends,’ and ‘Better Call Saul.’ But as he reveals in this episode, he almost turned down the role of Jerry Gergich on ‘Parks and Recreation’ because his agents worried it was too small. O’Heir writes about his fateful decision to take a chance on what could have remained a “background” part in his new book ‘Welcome to Pawnee,’ which is part memoir, part oral history and all around love letter to the show that changed his life. The veteran character actor shares stories about auditioning for Ron Swanson, finding out he and Retta had been elevated to series regulars just of Paul Schneider (Mark Brendanawicz) had been let go, learning that Christie Brinkley had been cast as his wife, and why he believes the show is still comforting people in dark times nearly a decade after it went off the air. Plus, O’Heir delivers perhaps the all-time greatest answer to our final question: What’s a memory from your career that you laugh about now but really was not funny when it happened?
Buy Jim O’Heir’s Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Last Laugh. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast. |
| 0:09.0 | Nick Offerman, who has been on this podcast a couple of times, |
| 0:13.0 | described his co-star Jim O'Hare's character, Jerry, |
| 0:16.0 | this way, as Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation. |
| 0:20.0 | A shlameel is the guy who spills soup at a fancy party. |
| 0:25.6 | A shlamazel is the guy he spills it on. |
| 0:28.6 | Jerry is both the shlamel and the shlamozo of our office. |
| 0:34.6 | That clip does a pretty great job of summing up Jerry, or Larry or Gary, depending on |
| 0:41.2 | the season, who was always the butt of everyone's jokes, but also somehow became the heart of one of the |
| 0:47.0 | truly great sitcoms of the 21st century. Now, Jim has put the entire story of Parks and Rec and |
| 0:53.2 | his pivotal role in it into a new book called |
| 0:56.1 | Welcome to Pawnee. It's part Hollywood memoir, part oral history, with some incredible stories |
| 1:02.2 | from creator Mike Schur and actors like Chris Pratt, who had far less on-screen experience |
| 1:07.7 | than Jim when the show started in 2009. Unlike Chris Pratt or Aubrey Plaza, who have gone on to become huge movie stars since getting |
| 1:15.6 | their start on Parks and Rec, Jim will probably always be best known for playing Jerry. |
| 1:19.6 | But as he writes in the book and tells me in this conversation, he is totally at peace with that. |
| 1:24.6 | Before we get into the interview, here's a scene from Parks and Rec |
| 1:27.9 | in which the crew is trying their best to refrain from making fun of Jerry after he injured |
| 1:32.6 | himself in what he claimed was a mugging. He doesn't make it easy for them. So, as we know, |
| 1:38.5 | spring hunting season is upon us. Uh, anyway, here's the info about the new licensing system. |
| 1:45.0 | Um, what do you think your computer is plugged in? |
... |
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