“Both good and bad”: Nick Offerman’s mixed emotions about working with Bruce Willis
Sometimes, an actor will play a role so perfectly that they will forever be known as that character. It happens with TV a little more than movies, maybe because TV shows can run for hundreds of episodes for many years at a time, but it shows what a great job Nick Offerman did that as soon as anyone says ‘grumpy’ or ‘moustache’, you immediately think of Ron Swanson in Parks and Rec.
To be honest, you don’t even need to have seen any of the 125 episodes of that excellent comedy to know Swanson, he’s the subject of countless memes that will have popped up on your phone at some point or another, and so good was Offerman in that role that you couldn’t really imagine him playing any other kind of character whatsoever.
But he managed to change that in a big way thanks to episode three, season one of the post-apocalyptic video game adaptation The Last of Us in 2023, an incredible piece of television that saw Offerman take home an Emmy award for ‘Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series’, as well as collect some pathetic abuse from homophobes online.
It showed just what a talent Offerman is, and reminded others that this was an actor who had been honing his craft long before he was smashing up computer keyboards in a car park on Parks and Rec. In fact, he’d been popping up on TV shows and movies for the best part of two decades, having made his debut in hospital drama ER as far back as 1997.
The following year, he made his first appearance in a mainstream movie, acting opposite Nicolas Cage in City of Angels, but it was an interaction with another action film A-lister that left the biggest impression on him after landing a part in the 2005 comic book noir Sin City. Offerman told The LA Times: “It was a really big deal to audition for Robert Rodriguez in a hotel room at the Four Seasons. I didn’t hear anything for two months, and then I got a call, ‘You got the job.’ I was over the moon.”
He added, “Getting to work with Bruce Willis was a great education, both good and bad. He’s amazing at what he does, but he’s perhaps not the greatest collaborator. We spent a lot more time with his stunt double. Bruce would come in at the end and say the line once and then go back to his trailer. It was a great lesson in how to treat your fellow actors – or not treat them.”
Co-directed by Quentin Tarantino, Sin City featured plenty of other stars as well as Willis, including Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Jessica Alba and Benicio del Toro. It was a critical and commercial hit at the time, with Offerman taking on the role of a low-rent criminal for hire named Burt Shlubb.
Most recently, Offerman has continued to move between movies and TV shows, last year making the excellent indie crime film Sovereign and appearing in the last Mission Impossible film, The Final Reckoning, in addition to a Netflix historical drama called Death by Lightning.
He’s currently starring alongside Elle Fanning in the Prime Video series Margo’s Got Money Troubles, and will also test the assembled geeks of the internet’s patience once again as he’s part of another video game adaptation, this time Alex Garland’s The Elden Ring, which should hit cinemas in 2028.
