Nick Offerman On ‘Margo’, ‘Death By Lightning’ & ‘Parks And Rec’

Nick Offerman is sitting in what looks like a large closet. We’re on Zoom to discuss his two Emmy nominations — for his role of Vice President Chester A. Arthur in Netflix limited series Death by Lightning; and for Apple TV’s comedy series Margo’s Got Money Troubles, in which he plays Jinx, a wrestler struggling with addiction issues and trying to mend fences with his estranged daughter.

The ‘closet’ is, in fact, a corner of his dressing room at Chicago’s Goodman Theater, where Offerman is working alongside his wife Megan Mullally in the musical Iceboy! Or The Completely Untrue Story of How Eugene O’Neill Came to Write The Iceman Cometh. “Despite my participation,” he says, “it is so funny. We’re sold out for the rest of the summer.” And working alongside Mullally is a major bonus: “I’m sitting on stage getting to watch my favorite performer do her thing. She’s a superhero at musical comedy.”

When Death by Lightning, based on Candice Millard’s 2011 nonfiction book about the assassination of President James A. Garfield came up, Offerman was “thrilled” to indulge his love of history. “Mike Makowsky, who adapted it, is brilliant. I think he wrote it when he was 30, and now he’s 34, and even more annoyingly, he’s very likable,” says Offerman, who did a deep dive on homework for the role, including reading Scott Greenberger’s book The Unexpected President. “It was such a lush production,” Offerman continues. “It’s crazy that Netflix greenlit it and let us make this beautiful. I think the cinematography and costumes and art direction should win Oscars, even though it’s a limited series.”

Like any jackass, I’ve had to have moments of comeuppance and learn that all of that is wonderful and it’s wonderfully good fortune. Obviously, you should never let it go to your head.

For Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Elle Fanning plays Jinx’s daughter Margo and Michelle Pfeiffer is his adored ex-wife Shyanne. Offerman says he feels emotional even talking about working with those two actors. “I’m on a show where I am in these relationships with the two of them and at this late date, I’m still so flabbergasted that that’s the case. They’re so incredible,” he says. “I bring the qualifications of being a jackass middle-aged white guy, and I own a mirror and I use it effectively. So, I have self-honesty.”

He also felt an affinity with some of Jinx’s issues. “I’ve been very lucky to live a life with some elements of Jinx’s life where I’ve had success in the arena as it were, the arena of superficiality of, ‘Adore my mustache. Shower me with riches because of my performance.’ That can be very fulfilling, it can be very gratifying, and it can also be easily mistaken for self-worth or for what life is about. So, like any jackass, I’ve had to have moments of comeuppance and learn that all of that is wonderful and it’s wonderfully good fortune. Obviously, you should never let it go to your head. You shouldn’t think that it makes you any better than anybody else or that it gives you permission not to be decent to other people.”

In leaning into the wrestling part, Offerman called on his early theater experience as a fight choreographer. “I’ll never get cast as Hamlet, I don’t have the cheekbones,” he says but with the help of professional wrestler Chavo Guerrero, and the show’s stunt coordinator, Jon Epstein, Offerman was, he says, “able to stand on the top rope and shake my rear end and fly off the top rope and take guys down. I got to do things that I never dreamed I would get to because my teachers were so good.”

Coming up, he’ll star in Elden Ring, a live-action adaptation of the fantasy video game, which reunites him with Devs creator Alex Garland. “I love working with Alex so much,” Offerman says. “I think he’s so brilliant. He’s a next-level thinker. Everything I’ve gotten to do with him starting with Devs — he just has such an evolved creativity.”

Below, Offerman looks back at some of his best memories from his career so far, his guilty viewing pleasures and some best advice.

My First On-Set Lesson 

To say please and thank you and to hang up my costume. Your costume is somebody’s masterpiece. It’s a Reuben sandwich that they made for you, and people throw their costumes on the floor. So the lesson on set is the same as life. Say please and thank you. Learn everybody’s name that you can. You’re all making this together. And hang up your damn costume.

The Best Advice I Ever Received

It’s funny. For whatever reason, I think because I have a calm demeanor, people don’t give me a lot of advice, even though I could really always use some. But my answer is this, and I learned it on Parks and Recreation: no a–holes. When we realized you can choose putting together a team of people to do anything, you can choose no a–holes. Even though maybe that good-looking person or that person will get you more budget, or there’s something lucrative about using a person, if they’re an a–hole, it’s never worth it.

The Part I Always Wanted

That’s tough. I generally don’t think about things like that because all of the things that have been the best to me are original writing that I could never have fathomed. They’re so much better than something dumb I could think of. So I’ll just say, loosely, a wizard pirate. Let me add to that, a wizard pirate centaur.

My Toughest Role Yet

I want to say that my first good part in college was in this play Picnic by William Inge, and I played this guy who had an emotional crying scene, and I was years away from beginning to understand naturalism. I had no idea. And I hadn’t learned that whether you’re trying to make love with somebody, or whether you’re trying to play a scene, you’ve got to communicate with those people and say, “This doesn’t feel right,” or, “Is this OK with you? Or why am I not getting this?” But there’s this fear somehow in humanity that if we don’t know it, somehow we’re going to be judged because we’re not cool enough or we haven’t achieved the mastery. But when you get to the level of working with the great people I’m getting to work with, that’s the first thing you do is you’re like, “Hey, I don’t get this scene. I’m ignorant. Can you help me?” And so maybe that’s the greatest lesson I’ve also learned. But doing that first play, I was so bad. It was so painful. But now when roles are very challenging, they’re not tough because I know that I’m going to work with my collaborators, and we’re going to either get it right or it’s going to get thrown away by the editor.

The Shows and Films That Make Me Cry