Just because Nick Offerman plays a dad whose son (Melissa & Joey‘s Nick Robinson) chooses to run away from home and build a makeshift house in the woods with two friends (Super 8‘s Gabriel Basso and Hannah Montana‘s Moises Arias) in The Kings of Summer, in theaters today, doesn’t mean the Parks and Recreation actor didn’t bond with his onscreen offspring. “It’s important to me to let young people know that I’m just as big of a jackass, if not more, than they are,” says Offerman. “Because I often play an intimidating or stentorian figure, I like to let everyone know that I’m not really that way, that they shouldn’t be scared that I’m the high school principal who’s going to give them a detention if they misbehave. So instead, we just get involved in a lot of grab-ass and tomfoolery.”
“If you say to me, ‘Name an idyllic setting from your teen years,’ the thing that pops to mind is a beautiful quarry that’s overgrown with forest that is now a swimming hole where young people can jump off a cliff into the water,” he says. “I don’t know if it’s from the movie Breaking Away or what, but that to me is the most romantic image of teenage freedom. And so on the day that we were shooting the three young guys jumping into the quarry, [costar Marc Evan Jackson] and I were up the road shooting a scene where we’re out fishing in a boat at the other end of that same body of water. And the timing was such that I was able to go out and do a bunch of jumping off that cliff with those guys, and of course,” he continues, with a laugh, “they were so acrobatic and athletic. I just was such a big fan of their youth, and in my head, my dives were commensurate with their own in terms of grace and élan. But I saw a couple of photographs of my dives, and they were hilariously nothing of the sort. I looked like a manatee that somehow had been thrown off of the cliff. But I felt free nonetheless. I may be a sea cow, but I know my liberty.”
Below, we talk more about the film (which also costars his wife, Megan Mullally), his summer goals for the Offerman Woodshop, the play he and Mullally are currently doing in L.A., his role in the Jennifer Aniston-Jason Sudeikis comedy We’re the Millers, and the naming of Baby Swanson. READ FULL STORY »
