Jim O’Heir has almost 200 acting credits to his name, appearing on dozens of iconic TV shows like ER, Friends, and Better Call Saul. But as he reveals in this episode of The Last Laugh podcast, he almost turned down the role of Jerry Gergich on Parks and Recreation because his agents worried it was too small.
O’Heir writes about his fateful decision to take a chance on what could have remained a “background” part in his new book Welcome to Pawnee, which is part-memoir, part-oral history and all-around love letter to the show that changed his life. The veteran character actor shares stories about auditioning for Ron Swanson, finding out he and Retta had been elevated to series regulars just as Paul Schneider (Mark Brendanawicz) had been let go, learning that Christie Brinkley had been cast as his wife, and why he believes the show is still comforting people in dark times nearly a decade after it went off the air.
When O’Heir’s agents called with the news that he had been cast on Parks and Rec, they told him he “might want to turn it down” because the role of Jerry, who doesn’t even speak until the third episode, was essentially a “background” character.
“Nothing wrong with background work, but at this point in my career, that’s not what I was doing,” O’Heir tells me. But he ultimately decided to take the offer because after watching creators Greg Daniels and Mike Schur’s work on The Office, he just knew Jerry had huge potential. “I saw what happened on The Office with Stanley and Meredith and Angela,” he says, referencing characters who started out in the background of scenes but ended up as core members of the cast. “I had no guarantee of that, but I said to my reps, I have to give this a shot. They had hesitation, which was warranted. But I had zero hesitation, and thankfully it worked out exactly as I had hoped it would.”
For seven seasons, Jerry Gergich was the perpetual punching bag of the Pawnee Parks Department, constantly embarrassing himself in increasingly absurd ways, including ripping his pants, farting and setting himself on fire. But O’Heir insists he never let his own feelings get hurt by the insults hurled at his character.
“It went too far sometimes for the other cast members,” he says. “Never for me.” O’Heir recalls castmates Amy Poehler and Chris Pratt in particular asking him, “Are you OK with this? Is this bit OK?” His response? “Are you kidding me? I live for this stuff. I was born for this. There was never a bit that I thought was too far.”
The only scene from the show that ever made him “uncomfortable,” he reveals, is one where he had to be in a bathtub without his shirt on. “I am a big guy, there’s no secret there. And I play characters who are big people, because that’s who Jim O’Heir is,” he says. “But I’ve never wanted to mock that. So that was the toughest scene I ever shot, taking my shirt off and getting in the tub.”
But on the plus side, he says it made him “very popular in the gay world of bears, which he has embraced with open arms. “Someone thinks I’m attractive in any way, I’m on board,” he says. “I don’t care who it is, God bless them!”
O’Heir also got the last laugh, so to speak, when the show cast supermodel Christie Brinkley as his wife Gayle. As the actor puts it, the show’s writers decided they had to give Jerry a “reason that he hasn’t killed himself” after the way he’s been treated in the office, so they decided to grant him a surprisingly beautiful wife and “three gorgeous daughters.”
“They gave me a gift,” he says. “Ultimately, Jerry has the best life of all of them.”
Nine years after it ended its seven-season run, Parks and Rec is as beloved as ever and continues to serve as a “comfort show” for fans, especially in dark moments like the imminent return of Donald Trump to the White House.
O’Heir, who says he’s currently “in mourning” for America, calls Parks and Rec a “bright light in what could be a dark world,” pointing to the character of Leslie Knope, who never lets bad news get her down. “Leslie, I think, would be the same headspace I’m in right now,” he says. “And yet, she wouldn’t just sit down and go, ‘Well, that’s that.’ She’d fight for another day.”
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