Nick Offerman on Making It, Devs and the state of America

The Parks & Recreation star had some very choice words about the state of his country and of the world. But he hasn’t lost hope.

Nick Offerman may be most famous for his iconic and laconic character of Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation but he’s a man of many talents and passions.

One of his better known extra-curricular activities is woodworking, skills he’s used to create pieces including canoes – you can even buy them on his website.

It’s the combination of those two things that Offerman brings to a gentle and cosy TV series he’s been hosting with old friend Amy Poehler, Making It, which is both joyful and celebrates the craftsmanship of homemade things.

Making It, which is available to stream on Binge*, has a similar format to The Great British Bake-Off, but instead of concocting pies and pastries, the contestants undergo challenges in which they craft things using their chosen specialty – whittling, looming, decoupage, sewing and more.

Offerman hopped on zoom with news.com.au to chat about the satisfaction of making things with your own hands, consumerism and he had some very choice words about Donald Trump and the state of America.

On Making It, you talk about the art of making things being a bit of a lost art, but maybe we’re seeing a bit of a resurgence?

I hope so. I feel like more and more in popular culture and the YouTube culture that young people especially are dissatisfied with consumerism and capitalism, and they’re saying ‘Wait a second, we’ve gotten ourselves into this mess’.

Nick Offerman and Amy Poehler reunited

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It’s inexplicably tied to climate change. A lot of these things that seemed like a great idea 100 years ago, such as the Industrial Revolution, are now clearly terrible in a lot of ways.

What did people do before that? You used to know the people in your neighbourhood that would make your shoes, sew your clothing and raise the chickens for your eggs and the cows for your milk.

You used to know where everything came from. I think we’re reawakening to that sensibility of getting back to a sense of good citizenship – knowing how we’re using our resources. We have limited resources on this planet we’re sharing.

So crafting, making things with your own hands is a such a great gateway to that sensibility.

Consumerism, ordering things online is the opposite. Ordering things with a button, you’re giving away that agency. You’re saying ‘By pressing this button, I’m trusting these corporations to deal with the planet in a gentle and loving way’. And we know that they don’t tend to lean in that direction.

Does that mean you don’t have a stack of Amazon boxes by your front door?

We use those services when we have to, especially at this moment. But like everybody with their head on straight, we try to keep it a minimum. Anything that is consuming carbon, we try to keep to a minimum. It’s important for individual households to bear that in mind but more importantly, we need to get governments to come around. There needs to be legislation.

Look at America now. Left to our own devices, there’s a bunch of misinformed and ignorant people that are fiercely refusing to wear a mask during a viral pandemic. You can’t trust us as a group to do the right thing.

Power couple: Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Alliance for Women in Media )

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It seems like it’s increasingly hard to have politicians and government do anything at all about anything, because everything has become divisive. Do you have any hope or optimism about it?

I always have hope, because otherwise, what’s the point of getting up in the morning?

I’m a big fan of the writer Wendell Berry – he’s a wonderful Kentucky agrarian here in America, and he has a lot of a farmer’s common sense that he applies to all of these questions.

He speaks very eloquently about how in our country, the right-wing, the Republicans, pay fealty to corporations, which is basically a pile of money. They try to make sure that the pile of money grows healthier and becomes a bigger pile of money.

Then on the left, the Democrats and the liberals, are also interested in prosperity certainly but not at the detriment of the people and the planet. There’s much more of a civil rights and humanitarian bent.

In our recent presidential primaries, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were really great forward-thinkers who are able to see clearly to enacting policies that take of everybody instead of their cronies that own expensive hotels and golf courses.

What did you think of Kamala Harris’ nomination for vice president?

It’s incredibly exciting. [My partner] Megan [Mullally] and I cheered and jumped up and down.

Our country has been dragged through the sewer and it’s just gets worse and worse across these past four years – the majority of people agree. It’s been so embarrassing and shameful, a real low-point for our country.

So we’re excited to see Kamala up there – she’s an incredible, energetic, kick-arse force. There’s a lot of messes to clean up.

We used to be a force for good and an ally of peace of humanitarianism and then a mad man got a hold of the helm of the boat. We’ve got to rid of the jackass, the criminal.

A very different kind of role for Nick Offerman in Devs

The other series you were in recently, which I loved, was very much the opposite of Making It in that it was very stressful, and that was Devs, which had so many ideas packed in to it by creator Alex Garland. What did you make of everything the show was trying to say?

First of all, thank you. I’m so thrilled. It’s one of those shows that not everyone has seen, so I’m very excited when people have. And I highly recommend it.

Alex Garland has such a beautiful, exquisite brain. He’s a novelist turned filmmaker, and his collaborators – the art departments, the music, the director of photography Rob Hardy is incredible – and the cast is just mind blowing. I’m so grateful I got to work with all of these people.

And Alex, his notions, he’s questioning the tenets of quantum computing and quantum physics. I feel like I’m competent at a lot of things, but I don’t have anywhere near the brainpower Alex does.

So, because he’s such a good writer, I wasn’t ever daunted by the material even though I can barely grasp it. I’m a Luddite, given my druthers, we’d all still be driving donkeys. So, I’m not interested in the singularity. I’m like, ‘don’t tell me’.

Otherwise, Alex gently sat me down and walked me through these concepts, and that made it much easier for me to be able to portray this story.

Making It and Devs are both streaming on Binge

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*Binge is majority owned by News Corp, publisher of news.com.au