I’m only now just getting around to Nick Offerman’s Nerdist podcast from earlier this month, but it was — as most interviews with the man who plays Ron Swanson are — absolutely hilarious. Offerman always insists in interviews that he’s not that much like Ron Swanson, but then, most of everything he says contradicts that. He spent a great deal of time on the podcast discussing, for instance, his woodworking business, how he wants to be a total luddite like Sam Elliot, and how sometimes he likes to spend quiet evening at home with his wife, Megan Mullally, “reading a book and 69ing her” (the “69ing” line came out of nowhere and was delivered with such Ron Swanson matter-of-factness that host Chris Hardwick responded with a full five minutes of resplendently stifled giggling).
Hardwick also asked Offerman if he’d ever been approached about being a product spokesman, and he expressed a strong disappointment in the lack of tool companies to offer him a big hammer campaign. “It’s funny, but I think that advertising companies often look at things like Nielsen ratings,” he said.
My favorite exchange, however, was when Hardwick asked Offerman how he felt about the fact that the Dos Equis guy was basically modeled after him (and if you can’t listen to the podcast, try and hear Ron Swanson’s voice inside your head while you’re reading Offerman’s answer):
Hardwick: You know the Dos Equis Guy, the Most Interesting Man in the World character? They’ve engineered this guy, this fake guy, with all these fake things … it’s really, you’re the soul of that guy.
Offerman: I try not to take umbrage when I hear this sort of thin tapestry they’re trying to weave in that ad campaign. But I do like to think that the Dos Equis guy maybe would shine my shoes. Or I would drop my car off for him to detail. He’d do a fine job. He’d look into my rear-view mirror and mutter things to himself like, “Someday, you will drive a car like this. If you can step up into a more delicious cerveza.”
Dos Equis is a perfectly delicious beer. But there are others.
Yep. Even the Most Interesting Man in the World would look up to Nick Offerman.
There was one other cute anecdote, as well. In talking about how times have changed in television, he mentioned that, after Will & Grace got a full-season pickup during its freshmen year, the entire cast was given Porsche Boxters. Meanwhile, when Parks and Recreation was renewed for a fifth season, the cast got three copies of the fourth-season DVD Box set, and after it was renewed for this current season, the gift had been reduced to one DVD box set of the previous season.
Listen to the entire podcast here.
