The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Nick Offerman

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

Actor Nick Offerman talks with Andy Richter about learning practical skills from his farming family, why acting is just like a martial art, and tips on staying a healthy showbiz professional.

Hello everyone, this is the three questions, the award-winning podcast. I'm saying this just because in the future I know it's going to win awards and when people listen to this 20 years from now uh to say uh who's this guy talking to nick offerman i will have won awards um and i'm talking to nick offerman thanks for all the trophies yeah thanks everybody this will make up for the empty space in my heart hey let's talk about the empty space in your heart, Nick Offerman. All right. How much time you got? Oh, I don't know.

So anyway, hi. We were just talking about how excited we are to actually be doing a podcast so we actually get to speak to someone. It is. It's a strange silver lining to the quarantine. You get to have people come over and visit. And it's one of those things that, you know, I'm in touch with my friends and we reach out and we're taking care of each other, you know, everybody doing okay. But to actually schedule these, it's like scheduling a play date for your kids. Yeah. Where it's like, ooh, I get to talk to Andy today. Yeah. Hopefully there will be laughs and maybe some tears.

Well, I guess. I could cry. I mean, I could, you know, I could treat this like any other webcam session that I do. And those usually involve tears. Well, let's see where it goes. All right. Have you always been a very sort of, cause you're, you have the kind of a laconic aspect to your personality, but, but are you a big social kind of person? Like, have you always kind of been somebody that needed people?

Um, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I grew up in a big family and And in hindsight, it occurred to me, my mom's whole side of the family run a farm in Illinois. And so I grew up in this big sort of community where we would make big meals together. Everybody's a gardener and very self-sufficient family. And when I went away to theater school and then became a professional person, actor, and carpenter in cities, mainly Chicago and L.A., in hindsight, I put together my own wood shop in Los Angeles, but I also was always part of a small theater company. And looking back, I was like, oh, I'm always trying to replicate my family, the community experience of like many hands make light work. Let's get a bunch of us together and then we can do the dishes a lot faster. Yeah, Yeah.

Yeah. I have a friend who's like had a pretty tumultuous childhood, but there were just tons of kids around. And so she's, she's just decided I'm going to have as many kids as I want. Cause I, the only place she feels at peace, I guess is in the chaos of,

of, of a million kids. kids you know there's something there's something uh i don't know soothing i think about when you when you have that sort of circus uh atmosphere you it's understood that nothing will get done neatly or succinctly, but a lot of stuff will get done and life is kind of like that. And so it, I don't know, I've always, it ties into being laconic, I think, is I've always had a very stress-free nature of like, well, just, we're just going to do our best every day and work hard and hopefully we'll be able to pay the taxes in April. And you were, you were like that when you were little too, right?

I, yeah, I started, I started earning wages at age three. So. Wow. The tax man has been, uh, at my doorstep. What were you doing at three? Uh, well. Shoe shines at the, at the, at the railroad station? Split in time between uh my cooperage where i was building small barrels and casks for the local rye distillery

and i'd go to school by writing in my own barrel down the river uh yeah but i mean um that is kind of though uh you know uh are there well what i was gonna say uh is are there like high strung people in your family um i don't think so um there's there's one, we had one grumpy family member and he or she eventually cheered up in their early 40s. They found finally like a romantic partner who's really great. Oh, good. really great. Oh, good. And everybody, you know, we all would pay this romantic partner a lot of money to stay because it's really cheered up the village.

I think that's going to be really hard for your family to figure that out, who you're talking about. You were so cryptic. They'll have no idea. All right. So you're from manuka illinois which is uh are we in the same because i'm from yorkville illinois which is a very similar town um although i think yorkville is maybe closer to bigger things you know like aurora and bigger towns than manuka i think manuka definitely had that kind of in the middle of cornfields feeling more so than yorkville yeah for sure yorkville was is a big i mean i wouldn't call it a city but it's a it's a

like exponentially bigger town yeah manuka um and and but there's something yeah there's something about manuka that um i always say that it's an hour it's an hour and 50 years southwest of chicago yeah it just felt growing up felt like we were stuck in the 50s yeah yorkville was kind of the same way like i because my version of that is it's about an hour west on what used to be the Eisenhower, the I-5. But I said, but it, you know, nobody went into the city. Like we're going into the city to hang out and have dinner. It's like, that would be like saying, you know, we're going into a war zone. You know what I mean? People were just terrified of the city. It's amazing. Once I, once I graduated college and moved to, and I'd go home to see my folks for dinner and said, holy cow, it's 45 minutes when there's no traffic.

And now in Los Angeles, 45 minutes is how long it takes me to get to the grocery store. Yeah, yeah. But growing up, it was like going to the Cubs game or going – like once a year, we'd go at Christmas to see Michigan Avenue or go to see the tree at Marshall fields. Yeah. Yeah. And we, yeah,

like you said, we might as well have been going to Oz or London or something. Have your, have your people been in Manuka for years and years and years going back? In the area, both, both, both my parents parents grew up like uh my dad's folks grew up in joliet and lockport and my mom's folks grew up um confusingly directly south of

chicago is another small town called mokina also off route 80, not to be confused with Manuka, but that's, that's where, so they all grew up in a pretty rural farming, like hardware based families. And actually when the, when the quarantine hit in early March,

I was just starting to shoot an episode of Lisa Kudrow's, who do you think you are program where they find some story in your ancestry and like take you around to unfold the mystery of the story. Yeah. I really, I want that to happen. I want something to do that to me. Cause I just know it's yeah,

it's really neat. And their researchers are astonishing. Megan had already done one where they found her great-great-grandmother in Macon, Georgia. And there was this whole story where there was a letter in the City Hall archive in Philadelphia that the mayor of Philadelphia had written to pardon Megan's great-great-grandfather for being an abolitionist in Georgia. Oh, wow.

It was really crazy. It's good that she was on the right side, at least. It is. It's nicer. I mean, I'm sure we all have angels and demons and the whole spectrum. But yeah, so beyond my grandparents, I know that it's been agricultural-based family by and large, originating mostly in Ireland and England. Yeah. But your dad was a teacher, correct?

Yeah. But your dad was a teacher, correct? Yeah. He grew up on a farm four miles from my mom and became a school teacher, taught junior high social studies and was voted... He's incredibly charming. He was voted kid's favorite teacher and he would like drive a school bus and he coached sports and he was a great renaissance man still is did was he still actively involved in the day to day farming or was that sort of no no his family his family kind of broke up his folks got divorced um his dad became the mayor of manuka for a while when I was a kid. You're a real blue blood, Ben. Not a big deal. It actually did come in handy a couple times when I got pulled over.

I bet. Late at night. But yeah, he's an incredible worker, my dad. And so, um, throughout my life, he, and then I both worked for my mom's family on their farm when they would need hired help. We'd, uh, we, that was an incredibly wonderful part of my childhood was like, I would, I would, it was the kind of thing I'd pay to go like drive a combine or work in the bean field. And they had pigs until I was in high school. I loved it.

I was obsessed with it. And then when they began to pay me wages to like work with them, it's like getting an acting job where you're like – Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, you're going to give me money and a sandwich? Yeah. Holy shit. yeah okay okay you're gonna give me money and a sandwich yeah yeah it is because i don't you know you get used to it when you grow up in a rural area but there is so much seasonal work on a farm where there are days where there's not a lot to do and then there are days where there's too much for you know the 10 extra people that you get there to do yeah i mean

a lot of it depends on things that are out of your control like the weather or the the locusts or the market you know sometimes you yeah you harvest your crops but the prices are too low so you sit on them and stuff like that yeah yeah it's complicated. I personally, I don't think, like it's a weird, seemingly low stress job, but the stress of just the tightrope stress of it. Day to day, you're not getting on a subway and you're not having a boss yell at you but you are always you know at the mercy of so many other things and uh and it is kind of like you just make money at one point like you grow shit sell it get that big check and then that's it yeah yeah it is, it is. I mean, I really admire my family members that do it because you're self-employed. There's no job security. And like you said, it's a tightrope situation where anything across the whole year can wipe out your year's income.

Yeah. And everybody has loans from the bank so they can afford this big expensive equipment. It's, it takes a lot of, of pluck and gumption and elbow grease. And there, you know, it's,

it's, for me, that's become my soapbox issue. When I can, I try to focus the attention of my audience back on the small local farmers in the country who have been forgotten by industrial farming uh because they they are truly heroic and especially in a situation like a global pandemic you realize how valuable, like what a national defense commodity is your local food.

Yeah. You know, when the airlines get shut down, suddenly you're like, oh shit, somebody plant some blueberries. Now, you know, obviously you didn't stay. Now, obviously, you didn't stay. I mean, at a certain point, there had to become a creeping realization that you didn't want to be a farmer. No. And when does that happen?

And talk about that a little bit, if you don't mind. Well, it is interesting because, yeah, I was thrilled as like a teenager to get to work on a farm. And I also framed houses. I worked as a framing carpenter and I did some black topping. So I really loved being physically able to earn like a man's wage at age 16 with like tool skills and just you know raw strength and stupidity uh but well and also you know how to do shit like you know how to you kind of like you know how to do shit that will come in handy when the shit goes down as opposed to like you know lots of people that like don't even know how to fry an egg, you know what I mean? And that really comes from, for me, from my farm family.

Yeah. Everybody knows how to like, oh, you know, the truck won't start. I know how to start a fire so we can keep warm until Aunt Dee comes and picks us up. we can keep warm until aunt d comes and picks us up um but yeah but then when it came to like choosing a life path or a vocation or a college you know um i think i think really um just very organically the the small town incredible conservatism, the misogyny, the homophobia, the racism. I was just very aware that my little town was not good. It was not the real world. It was sort of stuck in a bubble.

And I wasn't incredibly perceptive in any way i just had this gut gut feeling of like i want to get i want to get out in the world and like i don't know uh be more open-minded and and entertain people or like get involved in the medicinal aspect of show business of like of theater of, of holding up a mirror to society. And like, you know, I came to understand that people could get paid to act in plays and cities. And I was like, I said, okay, that's, that's what I've been looking for. And, and the funny thing is this about, Oh, this is, uh, last couple of years of high school.

Like once I found out you could get a degree as a theater actor and then like go to Chicago and get paid to do plays, I was like, oh, shit. If I had known that, I would have moved there when I was 12 with my hobo bindle. I would have moved there when I was 12 with my hobo bindle. Yeah, I could have set fires for people for extra money. Exactly. But the funny thing is, almost immediately when I got to college down in Champaign-Urbana, the University of Illinois. I was there for two years. I thought there was an incredible musk around the quad that

comes through on a zoom call even yorkville class of uh 85 84 as a guess yeah when when were what was your graduating year of high school? 88. 88. Okay. And, and so the crazy thing was as soon as I got to, as soon as I got out on my own and had to like have a checkbook and, you know, uh, yeah, yeah. I would find my parents. Yeah. All that stuff. Yeah. I immediately, I went to a pay phone and called my dad and said, please tell mom,

everything you guys have been trying to teach me just landed. Now that I'm no longer at home being spoiled by you, I get it. The simple lessons of decency and work ethic, my parents did such an incredible job of, because I was such a pain in the ass. I had three siblings, but I was by far the biggest asshole, really the only asshole. Like just surly and difficult?

More nefarious. Like I was duplicitous. Yeah. I did everything I could to make everyone think I was like a golden, you know, I was like a captain of the football team. I would do just good enough as a student to get an A. Like I was always testing the rules. How much can I get away with and still emerge victorious or stay out of jail? And then meanwhile, my cousin and I would be like, there's a great story where we did a bunch of graffiti. And then we marked up the graffiti so that everyone would think the cheerleaders had done it.

So we were troublemakers. And then, and then the next day I was the student council president and I, I put together the committee to go clean up the graffiti. So I was, I was a Machiavellian. Right. It's like a, you're like a, you know, like how they're firefighters that are also arsonists. Exactly, yeah. Yeah.

Which, you know, is a part of human nature that is fascinating and a conundrum. But really, as soon as I was responsible for myself, that's when everything shifted and I began to say, okay, now I understand all of the heroic aspects of my family on the farm. I don't want to stay there and be part of that sort of closed-minded community, but I'm going to take all these incredible life lessons. And to, to this day, I still aspire to be as, as hardworking and prudent as my family.

Yeah. Um, when you are start to say in Manuka, I want to be an actor. I'm going to go to theater school. You argument with like, ooh, la-dee-da, somebody's, you know, fancy or, you know. Not even. It was so, I mean, it was so foreign.

It was unheard of. And so even when I wanted to do it, I didn't, again, I learned in hindsight that what I was missing was any cultural, um, I didn't have anybody cool in my entire sphere. Yeah. There was nobody handing me or like, here, this is David Byrne here. This is, you know, this is Laurie Anderson. Check it out. I just had, instinctive need to be like, I want to do showbiz. And so even for me, it was an epiphany to learn that people did plays professionally in Chicago. Yeah, yeah. So when I announced that at home, my family, my mom and dad were actually really generous where they said, look, this sounds crazy. It sounds like you just said you want to become an astronaut or something. Yeah, yeah.

But you've always applied yourself and done your best with whatever crazy idea you get after. So we will support your weird choice. So we will support your weird choice, but we just urge you to have some way to make money while you're chasing the cliche of a life in showbiz. Have some way to pay your rent. And I said, okay, don't worry, Mom and Dad. It's not like I need to open a wood shop. Right, exactly. And of course, they were exactly right. And the tool skills that I had learned from my dad and the rest of my family paid my rent for many years.

Yeah, yeah. So you're at U of I and are you in theater right away? Are you in theater right off the bat? Yeah, they have a really nice program. They take 16 actors a year. They have this incredible facility designed by the same guy who designed Lincoln Center. So it's one block with four theaters all connected through the basement. And it's a big scene shop and costume shop.

And so I had to go audition to like get into the conservatory program. And it's funny, people always accuse me of false modesty when I say this, but I'm being completely honest. I was so ignorant. I was so ignorant that when I auditioned, they ask you for two monologues. I didn't even know what a auditioned, they asked you for two monologues. I didn't even know what a monologue was. So one of my monologues was a scene of dialogue from a play where I played both parts. Like I, I just went in and was like, I was like, look, I'm super enthusiastic. Uh, I'm, I'm a complete babe in the woods. And I, I swear to God, it's, it's like a sports team. You need, you've got a theater

department where you're casting, you know, plays and musicals for a season every year. So you need good looking people, talented people, and then you need beefy people to carry those other people on and off stage yes yes and me and this other dude from bowling brook uh totally got in where they were like okay you guys sing and you're gorgeous and then nick if you can just push the uh the meat cart yeah stop right there just learn to do your old your own old age makeup that'll be very helpful for us. Exactly. Because you're going to play old people. And that's actually perfectly true.

My first role was a 92-year-old man named Farapont in Three Sisters. And I did the most insane Night of the Living Dead. I had three lines about the samovar. And nobody told you to take it down a notch. They just said, swing for the fences. We're in Champaign-Urbana.

Who cares? Well, is this... Because I can only speak from my own experience and my own experience it was when because i went to i didn't do plays it in our high school because they just were so dumb like they didn't do anything challenging it was all like really like scripts that dean martin and jerry lewis turned down you know and And probably were cheap, like the cheap ones from the, you know, because they have to pay to do these plays. They have to license these plays.

Yeah, we had those as well. Yeah. Plays that seemingly written specifically for high schools. Yes. We did one called The Primetime Crime that was like Charlie's- A murder mystery or something? All the TV cops get together to solve a mystery. Wow.

See, ours were even more, like you said, had that time capsule kind of feel. They all seemed like all these plays had been written before anybody ever had oral sex or something they just were all like so and the one like i don't remember all of them but the one that i remember just because i can't believe that somebody went like yeah this this was a good one boys and ghouls together it was halloween themed boys and ghouls together my brother played a mummy because he was six foot five. Wow. Yeah. But I didn't do plays.

I did speech team, which I don't know. Manuka, did you guys have speech team? We did. Yeah. We had a very minor league version of all that stuff. all that stuff. So we, I did that as well. Um,

where, uh, the, the, I was in a category called extemporaneous, I guess, where you just make up speeches. Yeah.

Yeah. And I learned a lot. I saw some incredibly talented people, um, you know, my own age and was like, Oh Jesus Christ. Like they're,

they're, they're ready. Yeah. And, uh, they're, like they're ready. Yeah. And they're years ahead of me. And so I tried to do, you know, all the right things. But again, I just had no guidance. I liken it to, I also played the saxophone in the band and jazz band. And the teachers that I had were fine band teachers, but once they taught you how to read the music and perform it competently, that was where the education stopped.

Yeah, you're on your own. when I tour, um, that I learned, Oh, the, the education should continue where you were taught to improvise and scales and, and all of that. And the same thing with like speech team, I just had nobody sort of, I don't know, teaching me to tap into my own voice, uh, to my, to my own skill set. And so I was really, you know, a clumsy freshman. Yeah. I did prose, which is, you know, reading short stories. And so it was, you know, which I, I didn't do the acting ones. I liked the fact that I could read it, you know somehow and and uh but going one year i went to speech camp speech team camp and that was like my first exposure truly from coming from yorkville illinois to gay kids to i was kidding you not jewish kids to black kids like i just you know i had had such a sheltered lily white existence and i wonder if maybe you or I was kind of that same way for you.

I've said that very thing. Yeah. And it's funny to say that about Champaign-Urbana. Yeah. But, oh, no, it's a crazy town compared to 10 minutes outside of it. Yeah, it's like Morocco. Yeah, yeah. 10 minutes outside of it.

Yeah, it's like Morocco. Yeah, yeah. And specifically, all those things, all the minorities, you know, all the just all, which are no longer, it's no longer accurate. All the non-white people. Yeah, yeah. Also, in my class, I met my first Jewish people. Yeah. And was like, oh, my God, I've heard of you and read about you but i've yeah hadn't like they taught me what uh what locks was uh-huh and i shook their hand i specifically remember having

when i when i my life became people with jewish people thinking like oh yeah people have an axe to grind with these guys. What's the, like, I didn't even fully understand. I mean, I'm sure that I grew up around some sort of casual anti-Semitism, not enough that I could really remember because they were, they didn't seem to, you know, there didn't seem to be a lot of like real heartfelt anti-Semitism, just kind of lazy anti-Semitism. Yeah, but I didn't even I could never I never could like sort of like absorb like, well, what's what's the problem? You know, sure. And it's funny. Most of most of the people exuding the anti-Semitism or racism, if you put that question to them, they probably couldn't either.

Yeah. I mean, I could sense the racism, like when we would go play sports against Joliet schools. Yes. And specific, you know, the east side or the west side, you know, know the the east side or the west side you know it's like uh make sure take special care to with your wallet or whatever yeah yeah yeah that's where those people are that steal things and eventually i was like oh that's like there wasn't a lot of n word being tossed around but but that was the version of it where i was like they know better than to say that you shouldn't say that word but yeah because there were kids in grade school

that used the word just sort of innocently if such a thing is the case but they were kids and that's the only word they knew for African American people and it was uh you know everyone else in the class kind of it was you know kids that

didn't have the benefit of a very uh comfortable upbringing let's just say and it was kind of shot it was like even you know when you're six and you hear somebody use that word you go you're not supposed to use that word. And the kid's like, what did I say? I remember that sick feeling of because an otherwise like nice kid where you're like, oh, wait, what? Jimmy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You shared.

You gave me one of your Twinkies. And now you're here. You're using the N-word? Yeah. Oh, I know. I know. Yeah. Well, it's always, I was always struck by like, when you grow up in a small town with kids that you go to kindergarten with, and then you end up in high school with them too. Like it, to me, it was always funny to think back, like

the kid that was kind of like just kind of an asshole in third grade is an actual hardcore delinquent like that was like that was the beginnings of anti-social behavior and now this person is actually going to juvie you know kids oh kids they become grown-ups and that's when it all goes wrong. So you, were you four years at U of I and, and just doing theater the whole time? Yeah,

it's a four year program. And it really, I couldn't get cast for the reasons I mentioned. I, I got small roles, but I met these incredible friends. Yeah. Is it frustrating as you go along?

I mean, are you like teed off? Yeah. I mean, it's frustrating just the way life is frustrating. It's frustrating like I really wish girls would kiss me. Yeah, yeah. But understanding why maybe they won't yet right especially not at a funeral yeah uh i uh i especially when i'm an altar boy serving right they're not allowed up there but um i understood it it made sense to me. And I had this really great friend, still a wonderful friend named Joe Faust, who we became inseparable.

And he was really cool. He knew all the cool stuff. He was a really great actor and director. And I sort of became his muse in a way where, like, at first he explained to me, even he would do a play where he would direct it and not cast me in a role that I was perfect for. And I would say, what the hell, man? Like, we're best friends. And he would say, when you're casting a play, you have to cast the best person for the play. And you're not that good of an actor yet. You're still learning. And this other guy is great. And I would say, well, you're right. He is undeniably great. And so with lessons like that, I was able to say, okay, you know what? I'll build the set. I'll, you know, do the small role. I did a lot of fight choreography.

And eventually, once we moved to Chicago, we all started a company called the Defiant Theater, which was this great irreverent company. And into the first season, I finally got cast in like the lead of a show for the first time. And, and it was, you know, it was, it was all part of my, my learning curve. Uh, but I, I understood it and I was, I had a blast. I mean, um, there was also a whole, there was actually a year off in the middle of the four years uh because it's it's a large tangent but there's this incredible kabuki theater adjunct to to the theater department um our sensei shouzo sato

was this master of the zen arts who had moved over from japan and he taught this Japanese traditional theater style called Kabuki. And he would do plays like Shakespeare plays or Greek dramas in this traditional Japanese style. And then in our case, we did the Iliad. We did a show called Kabuki Achilles, and we ended up touring Japan and Europe and taking a year off to do it professionally in a theater outside of Philadelphia called the People's Light Theater Company. And so the years were just full of these strange bounties for a bunch of farm kids who suddenly were flying to Tokyo. were flying to Tokyo. So it was an incredible life education, even though I wasn't prepared. Again, if it was a baseball team, I just wasn't good enough to start.

To start. So I got in and knocked out a few pinch hits, but it set me up with a good set of fundamentals to leap into Chicago. Now you're saying this in the comfort of having made it, you know, for lack of a better term. But when you're in school and when, you know, you're sophomore into junior year and they're casting another play and you get another three-line part, are there moments of like, what the fuck am I doing

here? No, you know, uh, it's interesting because that, that was a big part of the whole experience and, and, uh, every year they start with 16 actors in the program and the faculty are, are very discerning as they call every year that you get called into their office at the end of the year. And they say, listen, Beth, you're wonderful in this way and that way, but I don't think you're going to make it as an actor. And so by the time you graduate, you're down to like six people. Yeah, yeah. And so that was prevalent. But the thing was, I've always been blithely, I've always been optimistic.

I have a lot wasn't getting cast, but I knew it wasn't because I was without merit or talent. I knew it was just because I was too, too much of a newbie. I sort of, I was like, I haven't yet begun. Yeah.

And these kids that are getting cast have been in place in the, up in Chicago and the suburbs in chicago in the suburbs since they were eight years old like oh i see and so it all made sense to me um and i was and i was just having an amazing time like the the amount of of education and culture that I was just dumping into myself. Yeah. Didn't leave much room for that kind of worry. Yeah. I also, even in college, I worked in the scene shop and got paid. And so just immediately I was like, oh, I'm going to work in show business.

Maybe I'll just have a scenery shop. But whatever it is, this is my my place i completely relate to that yeah and i think too i think for you too it was uh you were used to working in a working community you know like on a farm and everything and it's like not everybody's the star but there's lots of work for everybody to go around and every play needs somebody to turn on the lights and hang them you know so yeah i i had the same feeling for me though it was more when i got to la and i just had this feeling of there are so many people here that work in show business and they're not all Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks or one of the Toms. Sometimes they're Tom Green. Yes, exactly. For different periods of time.

But yeah, but you can build sets here and you can do, when I got out of film school in Chicago and I started working in production, it was like, oh, I could be a prop guy. I could definitely be a prop guy for the rest of my life. And it's kind of fun. It's like a fun job. It's really fun. The hours are long, and it's always tenuous to be working freelance. But the actual doing of it is really fun.

It's a creative endeavor. It is. Even if it's just a Montgomery wards commercial or something. It is. You're, you're helping put on a show in one way or another. Yeah. I love the story of my friend,

Dean Holland, who he, he won Emmys for editing the office. And then he came to parks and recreation as our editor, but also started directing and he ended up directing the most episodes of parks and recreation. And he's just this brilliant, brilliant comedy director and editor.

He invented, um, the, those, uh, fast cut things in parks and Rec where you'd see Amy doing 17 takes of improvising a joke. He was revolutionary. He grew up on the East Coast, one of the Carolinas, wanted to be in showbiz but like worked in restaurants and was

like a you know a lower level chef and just want but was like i really i need to be in showbiz he his buddy got him a job in la as a chef at an editing house like a post-production house yeah yeah and a nice one where like j-lo would doing a music video, and Dean's the guy that would come in and be like, what can I get you guys? I can make anything. I got a nice kitchen. He hung out with the editors in this post-production house. They taught him, like after hours, he bugged them, and they taught him to edit and use

an Aid machine and he started getting work editing you know just like as a hired guy on like reality shows became big and sort of switched into the editing bay from the kitchen and then greg daniels when he was creating the american office wanted people from the world of reality. So through that connection, Dean was hired as an editor. And so it's the same for me. I always say when people say how my kid wants to get into showbiz, what's your advice? I say become a woodworker. Yeah.

Because like find your thing, whether it's a chef or building scenery, that is your in. Yeah. Because that like find your thing, whether it's a chef or building scenery that is your in. Yeah. And the biggest lesson I always tell people is whether you're Dean or me, get in there, just, just show up wherever you are, find the theater doing the best stuff you can. Maybe it'll suck,

but still find the best possible place. And then just, just hang out. Like make them kick you off. See when they're striking the set, grab a broom and start sweeping. Yeah. And just show them, I want to be here. I will sweep.

Right. And somebody will say, hey, what's your deal or whatever? And eventually they'll do a show about sweeping people. And there you are. I know a guy. They're like, wait a second. Where's that kid? Now this is excellent advice unless you're a sociopath.

Sure. And if you're like a sociopath, don't do this. Don't force yourself on a community theater and then, you know, creep them all out with your weird leering absolutely yeah only do it if you really kind of have some talent and some ambition don't don't do it if you're just a creep and if they if you're creepy and they tell you to leave leave yeah leave yeah i mean i mean but well i mean you're a little creepy, aren't you? For sure. Oh, yeah.

I mean, until that was my big challenge. I mean, I was, I think, 38 when, thanks to the temerity of Mike Schur and Greg Daniels casting me as Ron Swanson, up until that point, any job like that, the company is like, he's a little creepy. I know you because I think the first time I ever saw you was like on Deadwood being just a terrible person. Just a scumbag. Yeah, that's, I mean, I come by it honest. Nice. as a trained theater actor uh which i am not i'm just a bullshit artist who manages to fake it um what how do you feel about the like how much do you learn in class opposed to how much you learn by actually doing something? Well, I think it's completely subjective.

It's different for everybody. You're learning these fundamentals and you're learning like how to stand and how to breathe and all of these skills, these tools that can apply to the thing. But until somebody jumps you in an alley, that's the thing. Then you're like, okay, what of my training can I bring to bear on this real life situation? well can i bring to bear on this real life situation and so i i think that um you know the the the training was really for what was really great for fundamentals for me all this all the all the sort of conceptual and theoretical stuff like the stanislavski stuff or the method acting. I get it. Again, it's like it's an exercise. It's a sort of mental exercise.

Like, yes, you have talked me through the sort of techniques, you know, that I will use my human body and spirit and intelligence to portray this plumber on this show. But really, the Beatles song, All You Have to Do is Act Naturally, for me, that was the problem all through those years of college, was I was trying too hard to do what they were telling me in class. was I was trying too hard to do what they were telling me in class. And eventually in Chicago, it finally clicked that you don't have – the most important thing is to appear as though you're not doing anything. Right.

And just take naturalism at its literal word and walk on stage and people say, oh, I accept this portrayal instead of like walk on stage. Yeah, get low to me. Yeah. I mean, I had this idea that I think is probably common. Because I came from this small town and I lacked much culture at all. I felt like a rube. And so I didn't have the self-possession, the self-confidence to get a role and say,

okay, I'm great. I'll just do this part like me or some version of me. Instead, I was like, oh, I'm nobody. I'm worthless. So I've got to be real cool when I do this part. And people are like, why are you walking so strangely and making that face? Did you hurt your back? Yeah.

Can you put your collar down on your jacket? That's not done. You're just a plumber. Yeah, exactly. Why are you smoking a cheroot in this scene? The only problem I have with that, because that's all excellent advice, is act naturally is a Buck Owens song. Ringo just covered it.

Thank you. I'm sure. That ran through my head as I said it. I almost slammed the computer shut and said, enough with this Philistine. Apologies to Buck. Yeah. Apparently, and he's one of my favorites,

but apparently a terrible person. Just an awful, awful person. It's a bummer when you find that out. It is. At this point. And, you know, have you had that? I mean, I'm not going to ask for names, but have you, like, there's people that you're surprised, like, oh, that person's a dick. Only a little bit.

Surprisingly little, you know? Yeah. Megan and I. A good feeling, you know? Yeah. You get a good feeling, you know? Yeah. We have said after Megan and I have been together for 20 years,

and we've booked Megan Mullally of Will and Grace for the three people who might not know that we're married. Right. Between the two of us, we've been through lots of incredibly wonderful life roller coaster peaks and valleys and uh in in hindsight being in the business for decades we've said you know we're pretty damn lucky like we haven't run into a lot of crazy people and usually when people are horrible uh you know you learn as an adult like as a kid i think you sort of um simplify it and think they're evil like like a villain in a story but then as a kid, I think you sort of simplify it and think they're evil, like a villain in a story. But then as an adult, you come to learn, oh, if people are treating people like that, if they're such an asshole, it usually has a really sad reason. It means that person is in way more pain than we are just being yelled at by that person.

Yeah. They're damaged in some way. Yeah. Whether it's at home or they're often... I mean, I've seen people be jerks to the crew. Yeah. And it usually invariably has to do with that person feeling insecure about themselves. Yeah. has to do with that person feeling insecure about themselves. Like they're scared about the scene they have to do that day or they're scared that they look, you know, three pounds too heavy for the gross superficial show business.

Yeah, yeah. And so they, you know, they snap at somebody and then I have them erased. I have them assassinated. When I did Elf with James Caan, which was a fucking thrill for me. Hell yeah. Because he truly was one.

The movie Thief, the Michael Mann movie Thief, being shot in Chicago when I was in high school, and it was one of the movies that made me feel like, here's movie making happening 45 minutes from me, and James Caan's in it, and holy shit, is he the coolest guy in the world. Totally. So I got to work with him, and thank God he was just the best,

just a prince, and just so much fun. You kind of had to work past an initial sort of you know i i mean for people at home famous people get a barrier built up where they are very skittish and very weird because if you're going to treat them like a famous person frequently they recede but if you treat them like a normal person they open up and if they're great they're really great yeah and he told me once about he said in however many movies he's done he said everybody that gives you that has bullshit you know that's like i won't come out of my trailer until they come out of their trailer or keeps everybody what

he said it's he said without exception he felt it was always fear it's always just people that are just afraid yeah and it's like you know everybody's afraid the guy you know the guy hanging lights is afraid that he's going to hang the light wrong sure you know the the person the wardrobe person that's putting on this shirt is going to is worried that somebody's going to say hey this shirt's fucked up you know it's you just gotta it's it's a job and it's a workplace and you gotta do it. Well, it isn't so many things. And I learned this from my dad. You as human beings, we are guaranteed to fuck things up.

Like, no, like Michael Jordan or whoever sprint, you know, John Lennon, Venus Williams, they will never play a perfect game of tennis. They will never write a perfect song. Yeah, they'll write some shitty songs, actually. Right. And even the ones that are the closest are sublime. And that's why it's so amazing to watch these human specimens uh achieve attempt perfection but but by definition we will always fuck it up and those of us that aren't those superheroes will fuck it up even way more so so that's for me that's what always takes care

of the fear it's like oh of course i'm gonna come out of my trailer and I may fall right on my face. But I'll try and make you laugh. Yeah. And then hopefully you'll let me do it again. Yeah. Even though, you know, I'm this particular version of a clumsy donkey. Clumsy donkeys are part of the story, you know? clumsy donkey clumsy donkeys are part of the story you know yeah well and you also have to look at it from the fact that like everyone there is invested in your success yeah like they're not

they're not there to make you fuck up and to make you look like an idiot they're there because you're part of a of a communal effort yeah and so they're there to facilitate you being as good as you can be. And I think that's the case with like, it doesn't matter if it's a film set, it's, you know, if it's an insurance office, if it's something you just kind of,

I think it's such a better way to just, if you can convince yourself that the world is there to, to help you, you know? Yeah. You know? Yeah. You know? Yeah, we're all in it together. And if you are someplace where there's some sort of backstabbing

or mafioso tactics happening. Yeah, yeah. Find another job. Yes, exactly. Life's too short. Yeah, yeah. Well, you mentioned Megan. How did you guys tell us about your romance?

If I'm not crying at the end of this, you fucked up. All right. Kevin, the producer, can you give Andy that onion I sent over? Okay. Yes, we have people listening to this to make sure that we don't say anything bad about conan o'brien that's right uh slave driver um megan and i met in the year uh 2000 um i had been in chicago from about 93 to 97 and had a wonderful rich time doing just all theater all of all sorts big theater little theater um even theater with chicken pox love hot dogs it's a

armor hot dogs it's the theater oh i get you kids love to eat right right right that was even theater with chicken pox that That was a deep, deep pull. Love hot dogs. Well, you try. And I was still so stupid and naive that things were going great in Chicago. I did a couple movies. I got my SAG card. Movies that were shooting in Chicago and in Indianapolis.

Which ones were those? One was an Andy Davis movie called Point Break. Oh, yeah. Starring Morgan Freeman and Keanu Reeves played a physicist who had such a cool laboratory that he could drive his motorcycle right into the lab, like a Chicago loft. Sure, of course. I played his building super at two scenes, both cut from the film. Oh.

But I got my SAG card. Yeah, yeah. And then a great Sundance movie directed by Mark Pellington called Going All the Way, starring, this is 95? No, 96. Starring a young Ben Affleck, Rose McGowan, Rachel Weisz, Jeremy Davies. Oh, yeah. I think I saw that.

Yeah. And I had- It's kind of a sex comedy, sort of. Sort of. It's set in the 50s. It's based on a novel. The story is Ben Affleck was the town baseball star. He goes away to the Korean War and comes back like a commie.

He comes back really groovy. He grows a beard. And I had a wonderful antagonist role, if you can imagine. And I had a wonderful antagonist role, if you can imagine. And the thing was, unfortunately, his beard was not a great job. His fake beard. Yeah. It looked so bad that they cut like nine scenes of the beard storyline, which was where all my stars were. Where you were, yeah.

So I'm still in that movie, but I just have a few shouted things in the bar. Right. Specifically, hey, Gunner, you still planking DD Arm Brewster? Like one of those parts. That line is going to look so good on your funeral program. Remember this? good on your funeral program remember this my um but but i mean the for me like that was i drove down to indianapolis it was my first time working on location my first time getting per diem yeah where this other friend of mine uh who was in the movie was like okay this is per diem they give you

a hundred dollars now we go back to our hotel and I'm going to teach you what a filet mignon is. And I literally was like, oh my God, the world is amazing. So things were going well. And I decided to move to Los Angeles without knowing anyone in Los Angeles. You didn't know anybody. You didn't have anybody here. Really? I knew, you know, I knew people very distantly,

but yeah, nobody who like I had in my phone book. And so, and was there something making you leave Chicago at that point? Or was it just kind of like, Hey, it was more of a Lark. No,

it was, I just had this, this idea that I could stay in Chicago and have a wonderful time making theater, but I wanted to keep going to the bigger world, I guess. You know what? I had a friend in Chicago who was 10 or 15 years older, who I really looked up to. He was kind of a big brother figure and he was,

and he was sad. He was an alcoholic. And I really aspired to what he did theatrically. But that is a great sort of encapsulation is i felt like if i stayed in chicago i stood a very good chance of becoming him yeah and um so so i moved to la ignorantly and i had done a couple little jobs for like a Nickelodeon show. So I had like a, you know,

I had 3% of something going on. Yeah. Yeah. But the, but the hugely ignorant thing was, I just assumed that Los Angeles, the greatest gathering of writing and acting talent in the country would be at least as good of a theater town as Chicago. That didn't even occur to me to ask that question.

And I got to LA and of course, LA is also incredibly mercenary. And so all of this talent is not there to do a goddamn checkoff play. Right. They're there to get a job in television or film yeah and if they do a checkoff play it's just because they want a job in television or film right they're not there to do that whereas in chicago you're doing the thing because you want to do the thing exactly it's uh that's that's very well put and so And so that just slammed me right in the face. Like you've moved to this place where everything that made my life rich and made me incredibly competent and practical and efficacious didn't count in Los Angeles.

I had this great theater resume and I would get a nice meeting at like a studio and they would look at the night, real nice theaters, Steppenwolf, Goodman, you know, Shakespeare rep and great roles. And they'd just be like, do you have anything on tape? Like, you know, this is the days of video cassette. Yeah. And I'd be like, no, people usually see me in a play. And so I was really in a nutshell that led to two to three years of like depression in my late 20s, drinking too much, just like trying to find my way, working as a carpenter wherever I can. And finally I said, you know what? I have to do a play. Like, I know this isn't a theater town, but like, that's what, that's my life's blood. I need to do a play and, and maybe that'll jumpstart something because otherwise I'm failing.

Yeah. And I told my friends, like, I got to find a play. These two great casting directors named Nicole Arbusto and Joy Dixon, like, casting directors are the unsung champions of all of us. Like, they knew this super cool, weird theater company called the evidence room. They were doing this play called the Berlin circle. And there's this role of an East German break dancing soldier. It's,

it's, uh, it's the Caucasian chalk circle and mother courage Brecht plays set at the, at the Berlin wall coming down in the 80s. So by Charles Mee, who was this collage writer, really cool writer. So it's this crazy role about a guy with a big monologue comparing his phallus to his anus. And I was like, oh my God, you know, like it's me.

Right. You know me so well. I'm a prick and an asshole. I go in and audition for it. And long story short, because there was some machinations, I get the part. The lead in the play is Megan Mullally. She's just finished her second season of Will and Grace.

It's the spring of 2000. I'm living in somebody's dirt basement in Silver Lake and she's about to win her first Emmy that fall. And my wife, you know, who I

adore and veritably worship, she's so incredibly talented and has such amazing taste and discernment. She's amazing at picking shit. The fact that she rolled the dice on this muddy carpenter from somebody's basement to this day. I mean, after 20 years with her i'm like how the i know you like yeah the sandwiches that i've seen her pass up means there's no way so i mean so that's how we met and we now do you think did she have a hand did she have to pass off like like, okay, you being cast?

No, in fact, it was this insular, cool, you know, theater company in the Rampart District. They had existed for, like, four or five critically acclaimed theatrical happenings, you know, before we got there. We were kind of the only two outsiders in a cast in a cast of 20 i see so actually megan and i and and the the the machinations i mentioned were uh the director didn't want either one didn't want to cast us and and he had to be like talked into both of us um so you know that going in no oh okay no i was gonna say that sucks no like oh this guy doesn't want me it was no it was one of those things where he did a lot of work with the actors gang which is a great company we were sort of

sibling companies for a while and he he lazily or comfortably wanted to cast you know the people he knew from this other company i see um and thankfully uh he didn't otherwise megan might be married to tim robbins oh my god who's the founder of that theater company yeah yeah uh that would be terrible for me yeah well i I don't know. It might, you know, you might have. Sure. You know, you might be living in a nicer basement than you were. You never know. You're right.

Yeah. So is it romance right off the bat? Does it take some time? You know what? It took, first it was friends. Anyone who has ever been in church or a school assembly or any place where there's a somber tone and you have your friend or your cousin and somebody farts or does something, it's the person that you're like, that you're going to explode trying not to laugh. That sense of camaraderie is so delicious. It's one of the best things about working in the theater, is the friendships that you make offstage,

or the confederacies that you develop with actors of a like mind. The sense of mischief is so much fun. That's, I always refer, it's just like putting a priority on fun, like having fun. You sit next to people in something and you make some wisecrack and they look at you like,

what are you talking about? And you think, oh, well, okay. Right, next. On to the next person who's going to make fun of things with me. And then later at the tea and bagel table, someone else comes over and says, hey, I heard that crack you made. Or they reference it in some way, letting you know they're on board together. They're in it.

Yeah, yeah. On board together. So that's what happened was we just immediately were like fucking around. Yeah. And became like cracking each other up. Yeah. And the thing was I was pretty freaked out. I had been broke my whole life. I had been broke my whole life. Like my,

my family was poor, you know, uh, four kids on a school teacher's salary. Um, and my mom became a labor and delivery nurse later, but still, you know,

like a very frugal, very frugal household. Sure. And then I'm a broke ass theater troll, you know, from Chicago, from like storefront Chicago theater. And so Meg and Megan was driving a Range Rover at the time. And, and had you seen, were you fully aware of?

No. Of yeah, no. I was also, I was also in this stupid and let me, here's a specific shout out to a certain mentality. In Chicago theater, at least at the time, there were a couple defense mechanisms. And I think this is very applicable to all of life. The defense mechanism, it's provincialism. Yeah. where we would reassure ourselves of certain things so that we would give ourselves permission to stay in Chicago and not move to New York or L.A., which was scary. And so the provincial – the misconception was we would say things to ourselves like, oh, New York, that's like – Broadway is bullshit. Like, you know, York, Broadway is bullshit.

It's all for money. If you really want to do theater, go to Chicago. And the audience is all old people from the suburbs. Yeah. And then LA. At the time, David Schwimmer was a peer. He had a great company with friends out of Northwestern called Looking Glass. They're still extant. They're a fantastic theater company. a great company with friends out of Northwestern called Looking Glass. They're still extant.

They're a fantastic theater company. He had just moved to L.A. and he had just gotten cast on a show called Friendlies or Friends. The Friends, I think. And so it was a real thing where people were like, when I said I was going to move to L.A., people were like, oh, are you going to pull the Schwimmer? Are you going to go be like David Schwimmer as though it's selling out or something? Yes, yes. Because they're all committed to the religion of theater and the martyrdom of earning $12 a week,

et cetera. So I, I still, I had that. Yeah. Even in Los Angeles, I hadn't had a television. I actually have never really seen friends or Seinfeld or a whole ton of other

stuff. Cause all these years I never had a TV. I just was 24 seven, either working on a play, building the set, or at the bar. Yeah. That was my whole life. Yeah, yeah. So as an actor, you knew what was going on. You knew what shows were happening. I mean,

I remember getting the advice to like, and I went to my friend's house and recorded one episode of every show that i wanted to try and get on so that if you got an audition you pop in your episode of nypd blue and you're like okay that's sipowitz yeah yeah etc so i've done the same thing plenty of times like i guess i better watch an episode of that if I want to be on that. Yeah. And so I knew of Will and Grace, and I knew that it was like everyone was talking about it. It was a legendary comedy hit in the making. But when I met Megan, I hadn't seen it.

I hadn't seen a second of it. second of it and and i still had this chicago like rube mentality of like look i know you're supposed to be like a fancy tv lady but um i'm not impressed like i'm from the theater i'm from chicago theater maybe you've heard of it uh yeah i didn't sell out totally range rover and and then we got cast and then we met and then pretty quickly, I watched a couple of reruns because it was getting into the summer of reruns back when TV operated like a school year. And I watched it. And it's funny.

The first episode I watched, I was like, I feel so bad for these people. God, they're trying so hard Like this is so Ham-fisted And then the second episode I was like Well okay That was funny

By the end of like two or three episodes I was like These are the funniest god damn people I've ever seen And how can I get this job Yeah Especially her and sean yeah they're just you know they're i mean they're they're laurel and hardy they're i just i was like i sean was jack right yeah yeah see i was like what why isn't it instead of willing great

yeah why isn't it jack and karen because holy shit they were fucking funny i mean you know deborah messing and eric mccormick are very talented you know but they're kind of leads right whereas like that's not my thing i'm not into like good looking people being kind of funny i'm into like weirdos being really funny. Yeah. I mean, no, no question. I mean, the whole, you know, the whole company was always just amazed watching them make that show. But,

but yeah, the, the, on the track team, you know, Megan and Sean were the, were the pole vaulters. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you guys, now you guys do, I, cause we're, I, we've been talking for a while here and I don't want to keep you forever. But you guys have been doing a lot of live stuff on your own. And I mean, and you've been, you've written, is it three books or four books now? Well, four, counting the one that we did together.

Yeah. And, and I mean, all of that stuff, is that just, is that just extra energy? I mean, is that just like, you can't stay home? You know, I guess you live in a bad neighborhood.

You need to get out of there. I think, I think I spent so much of my life. Like the thing that I'm proud of is my work ethic. The values that my parents instilled in me that survived through – I'm as flawed and fucking hedonistic as any dumbass. You've been doing lines of coke this entire interview. It's very – I like how you hit mute when lines of Coke this entire interview. It's very, I like how you hit mute when you do the snorting.

That just, that just keeps me at an even keel. I understand. It keeps me up, frankly. Um, but, uh, the,

that's the one thing that I, because it's not, um, I don't know. It's, it, it's something like I will leap to sweep your floor or do the dishes. I've come to understand that that is more valuable, and I find that to be more charismatic in a person than any God-given talent or beauty or gift. Yeah. or gift. It's saying, I understand that if I contribute, if we all contribute to the best

of our abilities, it's going to be way better for everybody. That's the big family ethos. And so I spent so many years working so hard, just like building stuff and, you know, behind the scenes, that then when Parks and Recreation kind of exploded my professional opportunities, two things, the first thing that happened was colleges began to invite me to perform my stand-up for them, mistakenly, because I'm not a standup. I, and, and I demurred at the first couple of invitations and said, no, I don't do that. And then I was like, Oh, wait a second. I, I would love to try to make 2000 kids laugh. Yeah.

So I started writing, you know, these shows that are, they're not exactly standup because they're not joke heavy, but I write the show out and I do dumb songs on the guitar. This very talented guy named Mark Rivers, who was the drummer in Mouse Rat on Parks and Rec. He wrote, I love this fact. He wrote the theme song to Mr. Show. Yep. And that was his big break.

Like that brought him out from Boston. And he's a genius. He wrote all the songs when Nick Kroll had his show. I mean, all the songs for Parks and Rec. That's just a sliver of his resume. So he and I, he is the hit maker uh i i write i love writing the stupid words and the ab rhymes and then he just dresses them up incredibly he's a genius um and so so i started touring um and it went well and, and I still do it. And, um, Rashida Jones came to my show at Largo, uh, gosh, seven or eight years ago

now. And afterward, she said, I loved the show. I loved, I love your agenda that you're not just like telling fart jokes, but you're like, uh, that first show called American ham. And you're like, that first show called American Ham, I was trying to encourage the audience to use good manners and carry a handkerchief. And, you know, it was like 10 tips for delicious living was the subtitle. And she said, I love your agenda. It sounds like you're reading from your book.

And I thought, you know, there was a bunch of stories I couldn't fit into the show. So I asked my agent, hey, can I talk to somebody about maybe trying to get a book deal? So I met a bunch of people in New York, got a book deal with this great publisher called Dutton. My editor, Jill Schwartzman, who is like, you know, the unsung ring master of all my books. And been through all with all of them. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I'm working on number five right now. Wow. And I'm so, so, so like it's I don't know. I don't understand. I know I won't keep doing it forever, but like once I found out that they'll let

me like they'll pay me to write a book about something i love or care about i was like well once again i'm getting away with something like please don't tell them uh yeah that i would do this for free it's such an incredibly healthy thing. It's just like, you know, you're a remarkably healthy showbiz professional. I think you are very much on the, far, far onto the healthy spectrum of things, you know? I don't know.

I mean, I know you pretty well. I mean, maybe you're torturing animals in your oubliette somewhere. Well, define torture. I mean. I'm teaching. I'm teaching. You know, the thing is, I know myself and I know that. And like when I first moved to L.A.

when I first moved to LA and I would hang out with like Chicago actor friend groups that would go to like a couple specific bars or coffee shops. Yeah. And I began to do that. And within like a week or two, I was like, Oh, this is horrible. These are like depression support alcohol groups. These are like depression support alcohol groups. Yeah. And everyone's worth, when you show up every day or every other day, you walk in and the question literally was like, hey, did you book anything? And that's all anyone cared about. Did you get an audition? Did you get a callback?

Did you get the job and once a month once every two months one of the group would get three lines on an episode of baywatch and they'd be like oh fuck you know it's it's just amazing and i was like holy shit like you're hanging your happiness on just the sheer garbage of this so once i I caught into that, then I was like, you know what? I'm going to stay. I'm just going to keep trying to be like my family. And so I'm doing show business. They have my headshot. They have my resume. I'm here. They know where to find me, but while they're, they don't need me today, I'm not going to go to that bar.

I'm not going to hang out and be like, Oh, you guys, it's so hard being an actor. I'm going to go fucking make some money as a carpenter. Yeah. And try to build a life. So yeah.

In 20 years when I never got my big break, I still have had a rich and fulfilling life. Right. And you didn't just sit there in a reactive mode waiting to be blessed by the bullshit machine. That's the thing is that you're waiting to be validated by this thing that when you're like, you know, there's a lot of,

even Three Lines on baywatch is a lot of fun but three lines on baywatch is still three lines on baywatch when you came out here to do something you know it's it's just it's like is that validation like really do i want to be validated by the minds behind baywatch like is that who I want to be recognized by? Even the – okay, two things. One is in like 1998 or so, a friend of mine was old friends with John Cusack. And my friend was over in Silver Lake, and Cusack was coming to pick up my friend to go play basketball.

And that's the, I think it's the only time I ever met him. So I was pretty psyched, you know, like John Cusack was, has been a huge hero in my life. The films he's done and he shows up, he busts in the door without knocking,

screaming at somebody on his cell phone. And this is before a lot of us even had cell phones yeah and he's like no fuck you you know morty and and he's like you guys sorry paul are you ready and you know they get together and he he goes out the door and stands outside the door where you can still fully hear them just having this screaming fight and then and then it ends and they leave and then later we find out from our friend paul he was on the phone with his agent screaming about uh a script that he had bought you know that he was developing for himself and like they uh a studio was going to make it, but they were demanding these certain changes. And, and, and basically he's like, no, fuck you. Like I'm John Cusack.

I'm making this movie. Stop, you know, let me make my art the way I want to make it was what, was what basically the fight was. And we just said, holy shit. Like you can be John Cusack. Like at times he's the top, you know, white guy movie star of our lifetimes. And you're still screaming at somebody to get to do things in the way you'll find fulfilling. Absolutely. And that was such a huge wake up call where that has paid off again and again, where the real-life choices, the things you do with your family and your friends, mean so much more than any... I know three lines on Baywatch is one thing, but even if you make a great TV show and win like awards for it, I'm here to tell you,

even that is like, once that happens, then you're like, it doesn't fill the hole of like self-worth. It doesn't come nearly as close as like your wife hugging you or your mom and dad saying, I'm proud of you or whatever. Or honestly, for me, it's things like baking a really beautiful pie. Yeah. Or having a dog. Yeah, 100%. Or going to the beach you know just all this stuff that because it is you're right too it is like it never there's only a handful of people for whom they can truly do whatever the fuck they want

like there's there's just it just it's you're not going to get that out of this and if you're looking for for that from this you're basically hamstringing your own path towards any kind of happiness yeah yeah you're barking up the wrong tree yeah well that was a pretty good you know the three questions are like what have you you know where where are you going what are you where you've been i forget them uh but there was one about what you've learned and that's a pretty good one you know like i'd say i mean would you say that's kind of your basic sort of motto you know like that's what you'd want people to take away from the nick off from an experience i can i can zero in on that um my my aforementioned sensei sho Shozo Sato, who has remained in my life and he's still a beautiful

influence. He married Megan and I with a tea ceremony years ago. And one of the greatest things he ever told me among all the Zen koans and the wisdom that he would drop on us, you know, the wisdom that he would drop on us. He's told me to always maintain the attitude of a student. When in this life you think you're grown up and you think you've achieved mastery or you're, you're like, I got promoted at work until I'm the manager. I'm done. Now where's my fucking parade? Like when you think you're done learning

you that's when bitterness sets in it never goes well but if you remember that we're human we're we're we're never done getting better we're like yeah we can always be improving something about ourselves that has served me so well to always be like, okay, what am I, even if things are going great, like, okay, but am I paying enough attention to this? You know, things feel really good right now. So let me, let me balance that out by like being frugal and making sure my finances are taken care of or how's everybody in my family you know yeah um and and sort of the thing that goes hand in hand with that when it comes to like landing in such a crazy place as la and and sinking into like bourbon fueled depression and then and then sort of being

able to steer my way out of it. I just always encourage people. I have that great show with Amy Poehler called Making It that's crafting. It's like a crafting show, yes. It's like crafting fever, catch it, which is super wholesome and delightful. But, man, I'm all about it because what I've learned, luckily, is like the feeling, the dopamine release that you get when you do something like put together a jigsaw puzzle or make a beautiful pie or like teach your dog to bring a stick back or, you know, grow a potato, whatever it is. Yeah, yeah. you know grow a potato whatever it is yeah yeah that to me to my way of thinking is as good as if the feeling that i get when i've played like a video game or done some other you know classic consumerist distraction of like oh it'd be so awesome if we could do this all day long but the the tangible first examples grow a potato train a dog make a pie at the end of those you have a

fucking pie yeah yeah for me it's woodworking more than anything at the at the end of the thing, I have a canoe. Yeah. And I mean, and so that's just, that's what I always encourage people to do is figure out what you can do, figure out what you can do with your hands. Yeah. Everybody's good at something. And it's, if you figure out what it is, it, you definitely can please yourself and your, your role as a citizen. Because if you're growing potatoes, you're doing less damage. You're actually adding to the world. That, to me, is what I keep trying to pay attention to.

When things go well for me and I have some big year where I make a lot of money or something, And, you know, I get some, like, I have some big year where I make a lot of money or something. Sometimes it occurs to me, oh, this is when, like, sometimes people buy a yacht when they, you know, have, like, a good income. And I'm like, man, fuck that. Like, then what do you do? Like, go sit on your yacht and smoke a cigar. You can go places. You can go places in a boat.

You know what I mean? You can. And I'm all. You can fish. Absolutely. I love going places in boats and fishing. Those are two things I sincerely love to do. And so, so I'm not dissing.

I'm saying just for me, becoming a yacht guy. No, I know what you mean. I'm, I'm giving you shit, but I mean, I know exactly what you mean i'm i'm giving you shit but i mean i know exactly what you mean it is like yeah or i mean i feel that way as time has gone on about like really nice cars yeah like i just feel like at a certain point like you know like you can get a really nice honda like you don't the notion of getting like like a Lamborghini or something like that to me is just like, couldn't you do something else with that money? It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

It's the idea of spending more than my parents would ever spend on a house. Yeah. On a car. On a car. Yeah. my parents would ever spend on a house. Yeah. On a car.

On a car. Yeah. But, but again, we also have this sort of bread, meat and potatoes upbringing where. Yeah. If it has Palmer windows, I'm like.

Cool. Right on. Yeah. Yeah. We made it. and I also it's, it's time. Like it is like,

like, cause when I first came to LA and was making money, I was like, yeah, I should get the LA and was making money, I was like, yeah, I should get the Mercedes and I should get the fast Audi and, you know, and I went through that. And then like, it was, especially it was having children and realizing that like, no matter, and even now they're, they're teenagers and young adults. And it still is like, there's no point in like, it's like inviting, you know, like inviting a wild animal into a pretty salon.

You know, like they're just going to fuck it up. There's no sense in making it too nice. No, we, I mean, for, I don't know, at least 10 years now, when we have needed, when we needed to get a new car, um, and Megan and I are both old fashioned. So we like keep our car for 12 years. Yeah. Um, but when we needed to get a new car, we,

we discern sort of the size, you know, like, okay, what's, what do we want practically? Yeah. And then thanks to modern,

uh, information, you can immediately just go and see okay what is the safest one of those right right let's get that great yeah power windows yeah let's party all right well power windows fucking a seems like a good place to leave this. Yeah, let's make a t-shirt with that. Well, thank you so much for making the time for this. I appreciate it. It's an absolute pleasure. And specifically, I don't know if...

I've listened to a bunch of your episodes and I really enjoy it, your podcast. And I've heard a lot of people say, um, this is so great because, you know, across your career that Conan, the, all of the iterations of Conan's show have been where people started or also people, uh, that did like improv with you in Chicago or all that stuff. I'm completely ignorant to all that shit. But just because I didn't know about comedy until I was 34. I was like, oh, fuck.

Yeah, see, I didn't know about theater. When I was in Chicago, there's this vibrant theater scene that I was like, not aware of because I was in my world. But, but the thing I love about this and this, I said this, I think when you were on our podcast also is specifically you specifically, like you are, and I don't mean, I mean, this is a compliment. You're the Ed McMahon of our, of our day yeah um categorically um yeah no i don't have any that's it's just true right yeah some might take ed mcmahon as a slight um yeah but but the thing is to get to have an uninterrupted like that's the thing You never get to talk enough to Andy Because Old too tall redhead

Keeps butting in because it's his show Yeah old Never stops needing Excuse me guys Let me talk in one of my funny voices Come on man Oh thank god you get it Oh

Oh my god That's the only reason I do this. It's just, you know, it's again, like you said, they don't need to pay me to do this. I just do it just because I have so much to say. Now, listen, I can't. I am very, very happy. And I have talked about this before. To be number two two being number one is

just too fucking much you know i've been you know i've been the star i've been number one on the call sheet on television shows before and you know they're mostly kind of like you know i wasn't an owner i was i was basically i was signing the backs of the checks not the fronts of the checks you know right and just having been along for the ride through different iterations with conan and seeing the pressure that's on conan to be conan on conan and the conan conan conan conan yeah i I just am like, I would just be, I would feel like I was breaking out in hives. Yeah.

Just because of the responsibility and the attention. And it just, I like to be left alone. Yeah. I agree. It takes a very special chemistry to pull off the dynamism that Conan does. And I think we're both glad to stand next to him. Yeah. Well, he really truly does have like a bottomless well of energy.

And he really does love doing this. And he's really kind of curious about everything. And I'm curious, but not to that level, you know, not to the level where I just don't have the energy, you know, maybe I've different under a different medication. Yeah,

exactly. Well, together we'll, we'll wallow in this laconic space. Precisely. Midwestern all the way. Well, Nick,

I love you and I miss you and, you, and give my love to Megan. It is Megan, right? It is Megan. God damn. And to your little doggies. Thank you, Andy. Love you, too, and this has been an absolute treat. Thank you so much, Nick.

I'm glad you did it. And thank you all for listening to the three questions. Come back next time where I'll talk to somebody not as good as Nick. Listen to this charming guitar riff. The Three Questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco and Earwolf production. It's produced by me, Kevin Bartelt, executive produced by Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Chris Bannon and Colin Anderson at Earwolf. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair, And if you haven't already, make sure to rate and review the three questions with Andy Richter on Apple Podcasts.

This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.