Chris Pratt sometimes worried that the Parks and Recreation jokes about Jerry Gergich (Jim O’Heir) went too far. He said as much in a conversation with O’Heir for O’Heir’s new memoir Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation, which just hit shelves last month. O’Heir told Pratt: “I remember you, particularly more than some others, being worried about some of the Jerry bits being…mean.”
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“I remember you saying, ‘Jimmy, you okay with these?’… Do you remember that feeling at all?” O’Heir went on. Pratt replied: “I do, I do. I was concerned in some of those moments because I care about you and I love you, and I knew that there were some jokes that were, like, mean. But meaner than they were funny. If it’s a joke, it’s funny. But if it’s mean for the sake of being mean, well, I’m not a huge fan of mean-spirited humor, and I just wanted to check in on you.”
Pratt wielded a lot of influence on set in the show’s later years, as he was becoming a household name in movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World. He recalled “one time where I put my foot down on something… There was that time you use the printer and it says something like, ‘Jerry sucks’ on a piece of paper, and I just said, ‘I don’t think that’s funny. I don’t know about it.’ For the most part, I rolled with it, but there were a couple times where I think it went too far and I was concerned for you.”
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Parks and Rec was an earnest show about people trying to do the right thing in absurd situations, so the running gag that they all hated Jerry could sometimes feel out of place. However, a big part of the bit was that the rest of the world seemed to be completely enamored of Jerry, and his co-workers just didn’t get it. Jerry’s life outside of the office was so good that he was mostly unbothered by his colleagues’ torment.
O’Heir wrote that he felt the same — for the most part. He wrote: “My theory was, ‘It’s funny and these are just jobs. I’m happy to be around.” However, he did tell Pratt that the frequent check-ins meant a lot to him, saying: “Just so you know, that meant the world to me. You checked in on me, [Amy Poehler] checked in on me, and it’s not like I expected everyone to check in on me, but the fact that you did was so special.”
O’Heir has been reflecting on Parks and Rec a lot lately — in addition to his book, he has been co-hosting the podcast Parks and Recollection, where he and writer Greg Levine dive deep into the sitcom episode by episode, typically with other actors or crew members as guests. That’s available now on most major podcast apps, and O’Heir’s book is available in print, digital and audiobook formats.
