We knew coming into the Parks and Recreation reunion special that the main cast — Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, Aziz Ansari, Chris Pratt, etc. — would be involved, but the guest stars were a fun unknown. Would Jeremy Jamm show up? Or Dennis Feinstein? Or Tammy II? Or Bobby Newport? Yes, yes, yes, and yes, although Bobby, the lovable dumb-dumb played by Paul Rudd, was a close call.
The episode originally began with Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman, as themselves, explaining the fundraiser. But, as creator Michael Schur explained in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, “the problem was that it was kind of a bummer to see, ‘Hi, I’m Amy Poehler.’ ‘Hi, I’m Nick Offerman.’ And then you dip to black and you come up and they’re there again, but they’re playing characters instead of themselves.” It wouldn’t have been confusing — although Offerman and Ron Swanson are essentially the same person — but it would have been jarring. So the writers came up with a new opening:
“So we were like, ‘Well, who else could we get that would be really fun to see?,’ and very quickly thought of Paul — and very quickly shot him the joke that he just has no idea what’s going on. We texted him and said like, ‘Hey, would you be up for this?’ And he said, ‘Sure!’ But he’s on the East Coast, he’s not here. So we were like, ‘Okay, we only have a day to do this, so we can FedEx you this rig and then you would get it tomorrow.’ And he’s like, ‘I have an iPhone! I have a little microphone. Let me just do it and see if it’s okay.’ I wrote a script for him, I emailed it to him, and then an hour later, he was like, ‘Here!’ He had just done it.
Is it possible to not like Paul Rudd? (That’s a hypothetical question. It’s not.)
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
