The Rec-ing Crew
Pawnee, Ind.
Joan Callamezzo
Played byMo Collins
There was no taming self-proclaimed “legendary newswoman” Joan Callamezzo.
“Until somebody says ‘cut,’ I keep going.”
Danny Feld/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images (2); Ben Cohen/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Director Dean Holland told Collins to keep shifting into a different passed-out position every time Ron took a call.
“I got ridiculous with it.
I was planking!”
Byron Cohen/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
“I was thinking at the time, ‘None of that will be usable.'”
Turns out, all of it was.
“Look at where Joan landed!”
Ben Cohen/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
“She’s a pill-poppin’ crazy person.”
Eventually, all the other writers liked to write for Perd."
Now, Perd is aParks and Recstaple, with Pawnee TV shows likeYa Heard?
Danny Feld/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
With Perd!,The Final Word With Perd, and his movie review programLights, Camera, Perd!
Is this a skit?'"
Nope, it’s just Jay.
Colleen Hayes/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
None were more important thanBill Murray’s Mayor Gunderson.
I felt terrible because I thought I must’ve done it very badly.
Why would we have to reshoot a whole scene?
Byron Cohen/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
And then I went in the next day and there was Bill Murray."
I was thrilled," Slayton-Hughes says.
“And then I got to be hugged by Bill Murray for a long, long time.”
Danny Feld/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
He got very passionate to be funny and kissed Ethel Beavers twice.
Somebody said, ‘How did that feel?
Did you love that?’
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I remember saying, ‘Oh, I wish it had been Ron Swanson.’
To stop her, Garth executed what is now a defining moment forParks and Recreation: a filibuster.
“It was on the spot, I wasn’t thinking about it at all.
Danny Feld/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
I was just thinking about the scene.
I didn’t know that they weren’t going to yell ‘cut.’
So I wasn’t thinking of doing an eight-minute monologue.”
Ben Cohen/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
“I had written one of the earlier Rent-A-Swag episodes and we needed a love interest for Tom Haverford.
Out of nowhere, it became about, ‘What if Jean-Ralphio had a sister?’
Very quickly we landed on, ‘Okay, her name is Mona Lisa and she’s just like Jean-Ralphio.
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Who could play that part?’
And I threw out the name Jenny Slate and everyone was like, ‘Perfect.’
I don’t know what to do,'” Marini says.
Colleen Hayes/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
“‘Oh, you met my client at this workshop, she’d be perfect for this role.
You should bring her in.’
And she brought me in and I booked it.”
Ben Cohen/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
(“Once again, Brandi and Leslie are essentially the same person.")
“For [season 4’s] ‘The Debate,’ we kept that going.
The writing’s so great and lends itself to this well-rounded porn star.”
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“Jerry was the whipping boy for everyone in the office.
Kyle was sort of the whipping boy for Andy Dwyer [Chris Pratt],” says Andy Forrest.
“But that went away and it was never mentioned again.”
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Instead, Kyle appeared as an attorney who constantly popped up at Andy’s shoeshine stand.
“He was the deadpan guy, the understated guy,” Forrest says.
“Oftentimes, he was the observer.
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‘What’s going on here is kinda weird and I’m going to address it.'”
“After that, they started doing all these other bits with Kyle,” Forrest says.
“I’m pretty sure the reason I kept coming back was Chris Pratt,” he adds.
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“Chris Pratt was so giving in his performance.
He would do so much and he had such good energy.
He helped me out as far as the character of Kyle.”
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“What’s the funniest bang out of person to end up running a pornographic video store?
A well-mannered guy like Dennis Lerpiss.”
“When I saw that [line] in throw in, I said, ‘You know what?
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“I already had the experience with John Redcorn,” he says of hisKing of the Hillvoice role.
That’s why he played the white people like a fiddle.”
He was essentially the best Native character on television.”
“She was like, ‘You’re gonna book that.’
Obviously a joke, but she knew that was in my wheelhouse.”
“It’s just comedians coming to play,” she says of the environment.
“I just had fun working with Todd.
And then we just had a bang-up time.
It was just so fun to have a buddy and expand that character.”
That’s very much Orin, the guy determined to inflict existential crises on everyone around him.
And, of course, he eventually makes his escape from me.
Harris Wittels, a writer onParks and Rec, played Harris, while Colton Dunn played Brett.
“He’s a super-stoned guy who wants to have fun but doesn’t quite get it.”
Mel (a.k.a.
“Apparently, I yelled better than everybody else.
I guess that was enough.
I didn’t get the other [town hall parts], which were far more normal.
I guess it counts as anger management therapy.”
“I did my bit, threw out one extra thing, and then Amy improvised back….
It just spiraled from there.”
Cowan quivers to think about what Mel’s Twitter account might look like.
“My instincts are that he would be apolitical,” he thinks.
“I had never done any on-camera stuff before,” Scully says.
Pearl first appeared in a town hall meeting about the fence Eagleton built to keep out Pawnee residents.
The nerves Scully brought to his few lines about building a second fence around the first one were genuine.
“So I had to keep talking.
I got so panicky I immediately retreated into a badJohnny Carsonimpression.”
“I was getting real worked up about social media.
The actual scenario that inspired this scene is just as funny.
“I was in the room saying like, ‘No one could possibly be following this schedule.
Everything’s out of context.’
This small-town idiosyncrasy came easily to Sarah Van Horn.
I think that’s still going on a bit in America.”
Gretel would pop in and out over the seasons ofParks and Recto add more complaints to the docket.
“It was more me than [the writers].
I just thought, ‘Well, I can get some of my jogging over with.’
And so I just started jogging around….
I did one short [take] and I did the line about getting an infection.
They said, ‘Just improvise it.’
I did that in one take, and they kept it.”
Bobby Newport
Played byPaul Rudd
Bobby Newport was as wealthy as he was clueless.
For a character so crucial to the fourth season, the producers cast Paul Rudd in the role.
“I saw it and I cracked up and I asked him what it was.
So it was a fun peek at an actor’s process.”
“That one still makes me laugh,” Markle says.
From there, he quickly became known as the chanting guy.
That was the line about, ‘I think we should all eat ham-and-mayonnaise sandwiches.'”
“The director thought that was so funny,” Markle continues.
“We did another take.
He said, ‘Now get the audience behind you.’
And so, that was the whole thing with me starting to chant.
“They came up with the name Chance because of the chanting.
The last name was Frenlm.
I have no idea where that came from.”
