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Settle In with PBS News
The point of being human, according to Nick Offerman
00:29:50
Geoff Bennett talks with comedian and actor Nick Offerman about his love of woodworking, how it shapes his acting, and his dream role.
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- [00:00]
A
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B
Hey everybody, it's Jeff Bennett and welcome to another episode of our PBS news podcast, Settle In. Nick Offerman is best known as the mustachioed deadpan libertarian Ron Swanson on the old NBC sitcom Parks and Rec. Since then, he's deliberately avoided typecasting, from playing a grizzled survivalist in HBO's the Last of Us to most recently President Chester Arthur in Netflix's Death by Lightning. He's also much more than an actor. He's a writer and longtime woodworker. And his latest book, Little Woodchucks, aims to get kids excited about DIY and building things. He recently joined me on his phone during a break on set, so for those watching, the video may wobble here and there, but we talked about the lessons he's carried from woodworking and what it takes to resurrect a president largely forgotten by history. So settle in and and enjoy our conversation with Nick Offerman. Nick Offerman, thanks for being with us.
- [01:30]
C
My pleasure.
- [01:32]
B
So this book, Little Woodchucks, it is such a joyful, mischievous guide to working with your hands. What made you come up with this idea to write a woodworking book specifically for kids, but also their parents who might be learning alongside them?
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C
Well, I've had my wood shop for 20 plus years and I ran it, ran the shop with my co author whose name is Lee Buchanan. And before, I mean, we both came from families where we were taught to use tools and make things, whether it was sew buttons on our clothing or make things in the kitchen or make things with tools in the shop. And it has just made our lives better. And so over the years we talked about different ideas for passing along this knowledge to families because it's funny, you know, the book is designed for families to learn to make things together. But it's kind of a gentle way of saying, hey parents, you can teach your kids to use tools. But also I know a lot of you also don't know how to use tools. So this is a really fun way to put people's phones and iPads down and spend time together improving their lives without using Any algorithms without using any apps, just with a hammer and a pair of pliers and a good time.
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B
That's one of the things I love about the book. There's no QR code that you have to scan to go on to then watch a video to figure out how to build this stuff. It's all step by step with some incredible photography. Do you have a favorite memory of a hands on skill you learned years ago from a family member?
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C
Gosh, sure. I mean, my dad taught me to use tools in general and my farmer, uncles and grandparents, but honestly it was learning to swing a hammer. Being able to nail two pieces of wood together in many different applications is just a superpower. Like, it's one of the things we learned. It comes right after maybe fire and the wheel and then it's the hammer and the nail. And so as a kid, you know, it's tantalizing because your strength and your coordination aren't quite up to driving a full set of nails. But just every year I would try harder and harder until finally my skills allowed me to like build a tree house down by the creek. And so that to this day when I drive a nail, I just, I feel like Thor with his hammer.
- [04:08]
B
Well, what do you think we lose as our tools and our lives become more automated?
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C
I mean, the thing is, for me, the whole point of being human is that I have this incredible set of skills. I have a brain, I have coordination, I can read a language and I can then write that language. And the, that manifests the knowledge and culture that I have grown up learning. And so using tools and using my hands to make things allows me to participate as a citizen of the world in a way, in an active way that I consider even a responsibility. And I feel like the more and more passive we become and the more we allow corporations to make our decisions for us and to make all of our implements so that we just buy things and then when they break, we throw them away and buy more things. I think that's irresponsible. I think that's not being a good citizen of the planet. I think it's an existential question. It's beholden. And not everybody can swing a hammer. I understand that. But if your thing is maybe being an accountant or doing things that work better in an office, you still need to be aware of how things are put together. And if you can't build it down desk, then you should find someone, you know, who can build a desk for you rather than pay a company to have it made overseas and shipped in that's not a good way to run a country.
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B
Do you think we as Americans have the patience and perseverance that woodworking demands? And if not, is that a trait or a set of skills that can be taught?
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C
I don't ascribe it to a nationality. I think that humans have the patience that it requires. But, but the companies that are selling us their products and get rich quick schemes and time saving devices, for me, that immediately feels wrong when somebody says, hey, if you use this program or you allow us to do this work for you, then it'll get done a lot faster and you don't have to get your hands dirty. Things like that, that appeal somehow to the lazy side of humanity where we're like, oh great, I don't have to get my hands dirty. Somebody el will do the hard work. Well, I've tried stuff like that and I find immediately that it's disappointing that getting my hands dirty is the whole point of being alive. And so I, I, I would hate for someone to take away my agency. Like it's really important for me to be able to drive my vehicle and operate and maintain my household rather than than pay some company to do it.
- [07:06]
B
You've talked about your craft as a form of gratitude, that making something with your hands is a way of honoring the world around you. How does that philosophy show up in your daily life?
- [07:18]
C
Well, I mean, I have been lucky enough to figure out my true vocation, which is first and foremost entertaining people. So the things that I make the most are performances. I tour as a humorist and I perform my writing and I also write books. So those, those are the main things that I make. My wood shop I put together while I was waiting for these other jobs to kick off. And so I sort of accidentally became really good at building furniture and boats and other things. And so even though I now make most of my living creating performances and writing books, I still maintain my wood shop. And I love, I consider it my garden in a sense. Like I'm often touring the world entertaining people. And so I can't be home to keep an actual garden, but I keep this wood shop where I have four or five young sprouts, woodworkers whose health and nutritional value are very important to me. And so to me, that's how I have developed a life where I make a really happy living being creative. Everything that I do that I get paid for is an opportunity for creativity. And that bleeds over into my relationships. Like, I love being a good husband to my wife. I love being A good son to my parents and a good sibling to my sisters and brother. And they're all opportunities for creativity. I'm constantly thinking, have I talked to my mom recently enough? If not, can I send her something? Can I make her something? Everything in my life is an opportunity for creativity. Not just my relationships, but getting across town, I have to drive across Los Angeles later today. That is certainly an opportunity for my creativity, to try and plan it out in a way and execute it in a way that it won't leave me shaking my fist at anybody or screaming at my dogs when I get home.
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B
Well, let me ask you what's. Since we're talking about woodworking and how it can change one's life, what's a tool that you consider underrated or misunderstood that's deserving of more respect?
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C
Well, I mean, the thing about this is most of the adults that I know and certainly, and so their kids, by default, just don't use hand tools. They weren't brought up in a culture where they are able to manipulate things like wood or metal or fix the things around their house when they break. And so to answer your question, the simple hand saw. If you, you know, if you start making the projects in this book, which are. And something that I hear from people is that they're daunted. They say, well, I don't. I never use hand tools at all. I wouldn't know where to start. You know, I'm scared. If you take this book to the hardware store and find the old guy or the old gal who is like, they're like a librarian. They're just waiting for people to come in with a book like this and say, look, I want to make this project. They'll say, where have you been? I've been waiting for you my whole life. And so some of the projects are quite simple. Some of them just require gluing some pieces of wood together. If you. If you go to the hardware store, they will give you everything you need. And something that is so fun is if you buy a saw, there are a few kinds of saws. There's what's called a Western back saw or a trim saw. There's a Japanese pull saw. All of these saws, if you get. They're available anywhere that tools are sold. They are so incredibly fun to use if you take your time. And it's always good to understand that when. When you get into woodworking, you're going to make mistakes. So go in knowing you're going to make mistakes. That's part of life. That's one of the reasons that the short attention span of the information age is so unhealthy for us, because we never learn anything. We say, well, I just want, I want to know the answer immediately. Well, then that doesn't stick. That's why we no longer know any phone numbers. People aren't able to write longhand. We're not using these parts of our brain. And so if you go in understanding that you're going to make mistakes and you say, okay, I see now how I have to do that better and better. So using a saw, for example, if you scribe a line across a board and just try to cut a straight line, it's going to take you a few tries to get the hang of steering your saw right. But it feels amazing. I'm telling you. When I run workshops with grownups where we take a long plank of maple that has the sides of the tree down the plank, so it's a live edge plank. And they're just, they pick out a section and they're going to cut it off to make a charcuterie board. When they cut through that plank, the fact that they have done this with a man made implement centuries old, this old technology, just using a saw, they look at me like they just flew an airplane for the first time. It's really an incredible feeling.
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B
So if you could assign one woodworking project to every kid in the country, what would it be?
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C
It would, it would be. There are two projects in the book that are, that are great beginner level projects. One is called the toast tongs and it illustrates the incredible power of wood glue. You take a couple of like tongue depressors or thin pieces of wood that you don't require any cutting. Like you can get different pieces at the hardware store, wood shims and then a couple of pieces of a block. So you're basically making a big pair of tweezers by gluing a block between the end of two, you know, oversized popsicle sticks. And when you do that, and you can then use it to pull your English muffin out of the toaster, I'm telling you, it feels like you, you have invented the bicycle. It's, it's. And wood glue is such an incredible product. It is so strong. So once you, once you see that you can glue pieces of wood together to make any number of things, it's just really exciting. And then the other project in the book is called a box kite and it's this big structure using only long dowel rods and wine corks and paper and Glue. And you're building the structure of a kite that is so much fun to use because it has these big pieces of paper. You can decorate it however you want to. And it's. It's. I just. It. I still. I'm 55 years old, and I still get as giddy as a school kid thinking about putting one of these together, because not only is it a really beautiful and easy piece of engineering, but then once you've made it, then you get to go out to the park and fly it. And I just. I just love seeing things that we people can make with our brains and our ingenuity. So those are two great projects to start with because they don't require any power tools or anything particularly dangerous. And they're really fun. And there's also a lot of leeway. You can, like, screw them up. They can be kind of janky and not perfectly straight, and they'll still fly like an angel.
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B
Well, that's one of the things I love about the book, is that these projects, when you show the finished result, they look as if the kids actually made them, as opposed to, you know, no disrespect to set designers, but set designer making them and saying, here, kid, hold this. But, you know, before you found success as an actor, you spent years, you know, building sets, sanding floors, taking odd jobs. What did those lean years teach you about perseverance?
- [15:25]
C
Well, you know, my mom and dad are incredible citizens. They. They raised four, really, four kids with good values and a great work ethic. And so, you know, going into the arts is a risky proposition. And I said, I want to go to theater school. I want to try and be an actor. And they said, well, we support you because you have a good work ethic, but try and have something to fall back on so that you can make a living in case it takes a long time, in case you don't get cast on Parks and rec until you're 38 years old, have another way to feed yourself. And I already had these tool skills that I grew up with. And so I became a carpenter. I started framing houses, and then I ended up building a lot of scenery, as you pointed out. And I just was always really grateful. I mean, there were years in my twenties when I thought that that might be my life. I was like, well, I'm not really getting cast in plays the way I want to, but I really love building scenery. And so I just was always very grateful that I had the skills to get a job. And if I ended up just being a scenic Carpenter in Chicago. For my career, that would have been a pretty wonderful theater community to work, and I would have been very happy. So that's the thing is when you learn how to make things with tools and with hand skills, it bleeds over into the rest of your life. And so I know a lot of surgeons and bankers and lawyers who come home after work or on the weekends, and they love to make things in their woodshed or they become knitters, or they make stained glass, or they work with leather because it really feeds an important part, I think, of the human animal. To make things and to have an impact on the world around you, immediately make things for your family. It's an incredible way to tell people that you love them to make things. And so I've always been so grateful that I have those skills. While I'm waiting for the next script.
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B
To come in, you've had one of the more unconventional journeys in Hollywood. Was it being cast in Parkinson rec at age 38 when you realized I might actually make a life, make a living doing this?
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C
In my early 30s, I had met the love of my life, the illustrious Megan Mullally, the underappreciated goddess of stage and screen. And so I met her when I was 30 doing a play. And I've been in a pretty good mood ever since. That really, I think, was the most important step up in my life, that I knew that I was going to have a happy life. And even then I was working consistently as a journeyman actor. So I was doing guest spots on like, er, the West Wing, Deadwood, and I was in a Miss Congeniality movie with Sandra Bullock. So I was getting jobs. I was unknown, but I was working. And so for an actor to just get paid on a semi regular basis is like winning the lottery. So I was pretty happy. But then when Parks and Rec happened, that just skyrocketed things to a whole new stratosphere that I'm still astonished that I get to work with the people that I work with on the kind of material that comes my way.
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B
What does woodworking, or what does being handy bring to your acting? How do those two sides of your life talk to each other?
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C
Well, you know, they're both sort of crafts that require one to keep your tools sharp, in a manner of speaking, in a way. The, the, the thing I love about woodworking is that there's no studio giving me notes and there are no collaborators. Like, I'm making all the decisions about how this table is going to turn out. And I love that that autonomy and then that gives me strength in my own decision making and my own sort of taste and acumen, which then gives me more confidence when I go back into making a film or a TV show where I can say, okay, guys, I've thought about this, and what if we do the scene this way? Or can I change this line a little bit? So, you know, that's, that's why, that's why I wrote this book, to encourage people to understand how their creativity affects their entire life. The things that you. That you learn using hand tools or making things in the kitchen will come up in ways that you would never expect in other avenues of your life. It's just really important to never give up on our human creativity. And that's something that AI can never do. It's something that software can never achieve for us. And that's the thing is it's easy to think, oh, it's so comfortable to let companies do things for me. But my favorite writer, Wendell Berry, has this great quote. It's the troubled stream that sings. Like, if the water's flowing down the canal, it's boring and nobody's gonna care, but if the water's gotta work over the rapids, it's the troubled stream that sings and makes the music that we love.
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B
That's great. That's great. I want to ask you about this new Netflix series, Death by Lightning. You play President Chester Arthur, a figure that I would think it's fair to say most Americans know little about. What drew you to that role?
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C
Well, first of all, I think that's a spoiler alert to say President Chester Arthur. And hilariously, most of the audience, you know, does. Won't actually know. You know, they've probably heard the name Chester Arthur. But the, the incredible. I mean, the incredible thing about how that series came to be. You know, our wonderful writer, Mike Makowski read the. The book Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard, who's a historian whose books I happen to love already. I. She has a wonderful book about Teddy Roosevelt, a great Winston Churchill book. And so Makowski read the book and just said, holy cow, this story is incredible and nobody knows it. I knew only the bare bones from Sondheim's Assassins musical where Charlie Guiteau is one of the characters. But I mean, reading the script and especially learning about the journey, the sort of the crazy roller coaster arc that Chester A. Arthur goes through in his journey becoming vice president, and then, spoiler alert. Ultimately, president just blew me away. I was so excited to hopefully inspire the audience. I mean, it's such a lush production. Matt Ross beautifully directed it. Benioff and Weiss and Bernie Caufield produced it. They also made a little show called Game of Thrones, and this felt as lush. Like they. They lavished so much attention on the beautiful.
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B
The.
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C
The sets and the costumes and the cast is. Is so astonishing. I just love the idea of inspiring our American audience to the idea that we can actually get past the corruption in politics and we have the power to choose somebody with integrity. It's crazy that that would be a novel idea, but it's certainly one we seem to have gotten away from, right?
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B
I mean, it was Chester Arthur who dismantled the Spoils system. And I will leave it to our audience to make up their own minds about how that shows up in our current politics. But when you were preparing for this role, what aspects of his life, his temperament, his achievements, surprised you?
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C
Oh, well, I mean, I was surprised to learn that his journey to the White House was so unconventional. And so first I read the script and said, holy cow, this guy was pretty much a crook. He was kind of like a bruiser, heavy, controlling the treasury of specifically the New York harbor, which is where, I don't know, two thirds of the nation's income was coming in through New York Harbor. And that's why the New York Republicans of the day controlled so much of the government, why Roscoe Conkling had so much power, the New York senator. And so I was astonished to learn that Chester Arthur was this sort of bruiser, almost a Mafiosi, kind of like heavy for Roscoe Conkling. But then reading about Arthur and researching him further to then learn he was actually a really good guy. Before that, he was kind of a civil rights lawyer, and he did some really wonderful work in the city of Manhattan for minorities. And then his wife died, and he sort of, like, went off the deep end a little bit and sort of like, fell into the sort of Spoil system that Roscoe Conkling was responsible for. And so ultimately, it was an incredible story to learn that he had been through so many ups and downs, and something that didn't make its way into the series was there was a woman whose name, I believe was Julia Sands. When Garfield was shot, and everybody was, like, waiting on the edge of their seat to see if Chester Arthur was going to succeed him as president. He got these letters from this woman, Julia, that said, listen, buddy, it's time for you to step up to the plate. It's time to put on your big boy pants and you have the opportunity to be a good man. And we need you, this country needs you to be a good man. And he was really moved by this woman's letters. He went to visit her, and something about her. I think he must have equated her with the voice of his dear departed Nell, his wife. He was really moved, and he really took it upon himself to say, I'm going to do my best to carry off the presidency with good character. And I find that so inspiring. No matter how many scandals you've been involved in or how corrupt you've been, it's never too late to repent.
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B
True character counts for a lot. What's a role that you haven't been offered but that you would leap at?
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C
Boy, you know, it's a good question, and I've learned over the years Ron Swanson was a great lesson in so many ways, but one of them is if NBC had come to me and said, nick, we think you're terrific. We love your mustache. We love how slow you talk. You name. What is your dream role? Go ahead and write whatever your dream role would be. It would have been so much more clumsy and stupid because I'm not a brilliant TV writer like Mike Scher and the other writers of Parks and Rec. And so I've learned that I don't really. I'm not interested in answering your question because I, you know, the. The great roles, I mean, you know, maybe doing sort of a. A great Shakespearean role or Poirot, like a great detective or, or, you know, playing. Playing Macbeth or, or Iago or, you know, some. Some wonderful Shakespearean role. But I've learned that the. The great writing that I get to be associated with is so much better than any part I could ever think up to. You know what I mean? There's a boy in me that wants to answer your question by saying the. Any of the Three Musketeers or Robin Hood or, you know, Blackbeard the pirate, or, or, you know, I wouldn't mind taking a swing at. At Theodore Roosevelt. But any of these roles, it all depends on someone writing a great script. You know, it's like, I'm not going to get cast. Maybe I'll get cast as, like, Superman's dad, or, like, if anybody ever does old Superman, like, you know, those things are kind of outside of my bailiwick, but it just all depends on someone having a great idea. In fact, Mike Makowski said that he thought of nobody but me the whole time he was writing this version of Chester Arthur. And so that is what I really depend on are these brilliant writers to give me something to chew on that's so substantial.
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B
You mentioned the great mustache. Chester Arthur's mutton chops. That was your handiwork.
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C
Sure. I mean, that's. You know, I'm very grateful that I have a good head of hair and that I can grow facial hair, apparently with aplomb. And it's. You know, most of those guys had an incredible department head named Cilla Horfath who lives in Budapest. She ran this trailer of ladies that were such geniuses at building those beards on those guys. Some of the guys had partial beards, but, I mean, they're. They're just absolutely magical. But wearing it was really hot when we were shooting and having, like, spirit gum and whiskers on your face, if you can at all avoid it, you do. And so I always love to have my own facial hair. And everybody is happy about it except my beautiful bride, who's like, really? You're gonna. You're gonna we things into our bedroom.
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B
For the next three months or however long the shoot was.
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C
She's a very patient woman.
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B
Terrific. Well, Nick Offerman, a real pleasure to speak with you. Thanks for making time.
- [30:17]
C
Oh, thank you so much.