Nick Offerman is deeply uncomfortable with the idea of promoting himself in any way, including his Pittsburgh show on Saturday.
“When asked to sell myself or write a jingle for Nick Offerman, it’s like, ‘You should have no trouble getting to sleep,’” the actor and self-described “humorist” told the Post-Gazette. “People seem to like it. If you’d rather stay home and make a chair or read a book, I wouldn’t blame you.”
That’s a pretty on-brand sentiment from the guy arguably most famous for portraying the gruff but lovable Ron Swanson on the NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation.” Pittsburghers familiar with Offerman’s three decades worth of film and TV work, five books or just his modern woodsman persona can catch him Downtown on Saturday at Heinz Hall for an evening of music and wry observations about modern society that he hopes everyone can agree are objectively funny.
Tickets to “Nick Offerman: Live!” are available via pittsburghsymphony.org. Offerman has been to Pittsburgh twice over the last decade to shoot the 2015 film “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” and season one of the 2022 Amazon Prime Video series “A League of Their Own.” He also came here in 2016 for a Byham Theater two-hander with Megan Mullally, his wife and fellow actor, and in 2017 for a solo show at Mr. Smalls Theatre.
“I find that I really vibe powerfully with the sensibility of the audience,” Offerman said of his prior experiences on Pittsburgh stages. “I feel like more of the audience can tell the difference between a standard and Phillips screwdriver than people on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.”
He has the time to tour these days due to most domestic film production continuing to be suspended indefinitely during SAG-AFTRA’s strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Offerman has also used this unexpected period of down time to start new woodworking projects, enjoy nature with Mullally and occasionally make an appearance on a picket line.
Prior to Hollywood’s labor strife, Offerman was in the middle of a banner 2023 from a career standpoint. He received rave reviews for his touching turn as repressed loner Bill in an episode of the HBO series “The Last of Us” and was rewarded for his efforts with an Emmy nomination for guest actor in a drama earlier this summer. He also appeared in the recently released dramedy “Dumb Money” and will be on the big screen again soon in “Dicks: The Musical.”
“An interesting thing about show business [is] if one is lucky enough to see any degree of success, it often can mean you’ve taken 100 shots and when you sink a good one, everyone cheers and says, ‘This guy is amazing,’” he said. “You think, ‘I’ve been out here shooting for some time.’ It’s been really nice. I’m very grateful to get to work in the business.”
The entertainment industry has been under heavy scrutiny this summer thanks to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and recently settled Writers Guild of America strikes that some claim (and others dispute) were responsible for Amazon choosing to reverse its season-two renewal of “A League of Their Own” in August.
Though guild rules prohibited Offerman from speaking specifically about his current or past roles, he did bring up a Pittsburgh-shot show he worked on that “was incredibly full of heart and powerfully salient social content” that he felt got a raw deal due to the “eternal push and pull of commerce versus art.”
“It can be demoralizing about our business that things like that are not considered exceptional among the products on the shelf,” he continued. “It’s simply another product. That will always be the case.”
Nothing about the way that show was treated soured Offerman’s view of the Steel City, which he has always found to be “full of an incredibly charismatic personality.” He has gotten to explore Pittsburgh on foot and by paddleboat, and he always looks forward to checking out the city’s “incredible menu of food and drink on offer” and what he believes is “perhaps the most fortuitously situated baseball stadium in the country.”
On the team that plays at PNC Park, he said, “I hope you have your turn again soon.”
There’s just something about “great blue-collar cities” like Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and (“rivalries aside”) Cleveland and Cincinnati that makes the Illinois-raised Offerman feel right at home.
“It’s a more muscular cultural base that I find appealing,” he said. “It’s more like Chicago than Paris, and for that I’m grateful.”
His stage material tends to contain “more anecdotal and circumstantial” bits than traditional joke-writing. Offerman has always bumped up against how some straight male comedians take shots at their spouses in their acts, so he set out to make folks laugh “with how much I love my wife.”
In terms of music, attendees can expect some Offerman originals like “Us Dip***** Got to Stick Together” and one inspired by the “astonishing amount of homophobic hate online” he got for playing a gay man earlier this year — presumably in “The Last of Us” — in which he facetiously expounds upon how “I thought I was a man and Ben Shapiro actually set me straight.”
Offerman recalled “Parks and Recreation” co-creator Michael Schur espousing the virtues of generating humor while never losing respect and love for their audience. That’s the general philosophy behind everything Pittsburghers will see and hear at Heinz Hall on Saturday.
“If you love gorgeous cheekbones and rippling pectoralis muscles, not to mention the most hilarious jokes this side of [late comedian] Henny Youngman, this is not the show for you,” Offerman said. “But if you enjoy the smell of a freshly sanded walnut plank, then we’re in business.”
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: September 27, 2023, 9:30 a.m.