Nick Offerman

Now, initially, you thought you would major in music, but everything changed for you when your then born-again Christian girlfriend auditioned for the dance department, and you drove her three hours to the audition.

And while waiting for her, you hung out in the hallway of the Performing Arts Building.

Can you talk a little bit about what happened when you were there?

Yeah, I mean, it was pretty astonishing.

If you've ever been to the Lincoln Center in New York, it's just amazing.

Many times, yeah.

The theater and dance facility at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana was designed by the same architect as the Lincoln Center.

So similarly, it's a city block with four theaters, one facing each street direction, all connected underground by levels of construction.

Carpentry shops, costume shops, massive hallways where you can build a house set and then load it with forklifts into the massive backstage opera bay doors and stuff.

So it was this incredible facility that I'm hanging out in the hallway while my girlfriend is auditioning.

And I can't remember what the inciting moment was, but I ran into these two acting students at the time named Jennifer McCarthy and David something.

And I can picture his face.

He played Hyman.

And as you like it, David Coronado.

Wow.

And I ran into them and magically, I don't know how we struck up a conversation.

I think they must have said, hey, kid, why are you loitering in this hallway?

And I said, I'm waiting for my girlfriend.

But somehow we got onto the subject of love.

i said what what are you doing here and they said they were theater students and i said what do you mean and they said we're studying to become theater actors and i said what hang on what does that mean and they like you can get a job doing plays is that a thing i mean i had heard of london and i had heard of broadway but i i was in illinois and