Nick Offerman

I mean, besides, you know, just the obvious of acting with your eyes, like, how do you do that?

What I determined from my first stage was the altar of the Catholic Church, where they never gave me any lines.

And so I realized if I was going to get any response out of the crowd, I was going to have to learn how to use my eyebrows and my intense gaze.

And it was there that I began to understand deadpan.

I did get to ring the bells a couple times during the Mass.

And so with my timing and depending on my eyeline, I could really make my friends laugh just with my demeanor.

And eventually they had me start doing the gospel readings in a position known as the lector.

And so then it carried over where I found that if I had the right amount of gravitas and intense focus, the parents would be tricked into thinking that was sincerity and reverence, while all my friends just thought it was the most hilarious, like Leslie Nielsen in Airplane kind of delivery.

At that point in your life, what did you think you wanted to do professionally?

Well, you know, working in the arts in any way was not an available choice.

I didn't have the wherewithal to understand that that's what I wanted to do.

I could have said to you, well, I love to play music.

I play the saxophone, and I love to, like, perform music.

but I wasn't aware that you could get a job in either of those fields.

My upbringing was such a cultural vacuum that I didn't understand that people from my school could become a sax player or an actor.

I was pretty confused.

I loved using tools and building things with my hands.

But again, I didn't understand that that was a creative job.

Like when I used to do it as a teenager, I worked framing houses and I worked on a blacktop crew.

And so those labor jobs didn't seem like something to aspire to.