Parks & Recreation won the audience over thanks to its sense of humor and its relatable characters, and one of its most popular ones is Ron Swanson, played by Nick Offerman – but his role in the series was almost completely different and wouldn’t have had the same warm reception as the great Ron Swanson. Created by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, Parks & Recreation took viewers to the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana, to meet eternal optimist Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and her friends and coworkers from the Parks Department, with whom she went through a bunch of ups and downs throughout seven seasons.
Through Leslie, viewers got to know her closest friends and coworkers quite well, with many of them becoming fan favorites, among them Ron Swanson, the director of the Pawnee City Parks and Recreation Department and thus Leslie’s boss. Ron stood out for his hatred for the government (though he worked for it) and for his deadpan personality, which was key in his peculiar sense of humor. Nick Offerman perfectly brought Ron Swanson to life, but his role in Parks & Recreation was almost completely different as he was considered to play another character.
Nick Offerman Nearly Played Ann Perkins' Love Interest
Speaking to The Guardian in 2019, Nick Offerman revealed he auditioned for the American version of The Office, and though he wasn’t cast, Michael Schur wrote down his name and brought it up years later when developing Parks & Recreation. Offerman explained that NBC wanted him for a role in which he would have had to kiss Rashida Jones, but they didn’t think he was “visually in that category” – or, in Offerman’s words in his book Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man’s Fundamentals for Delicious Living, he wasn’t “handsome” enough for the role, so he was cast as Leslie’s boss instead.
The character Nick Offerman could have played was named Josh, and he was written to be a love interest of Jones’ Ann Perkins. Adam Scott also auditioned for the role but didn’t get it because, in his own words, he “kind of blew it” (via GQ), but he was eventually cast as Ben Wyatt. The character of Josh kept changing until it became Mark Brendanawicz, played by Paul Schneider, Pawnee’s city planner and Leslie’s crush who ended up dating Ann Perkins in Parks & Recreation season 2. However, Mark didn’t last long in the series and left at the end of season 2 after taking a job with Norton Construction, and he was never mentioned again, which made way for some fun theories about what happened to him, but behind the scenes, Schneider left due to creative differences about his character.
Why Nick Offerman's Original Parks & Rec Role Wouldn't Work
Although Nick Offerman is very talented and has proven that he can play a variety of characters, it doesn’t seem right to have him playing someone other than Ron Swanson in Parks & Recreation. Offerman’s comedic style fitted perfectly with Ron Swanson’s personality, and he managed to make an extremely deadpan and stereotypical masculine character into one of the most likable people in all of Pawnee, and having played Josh would have been a waste of his talents. It’s also impossible to tell how much Josh would have changed if Offerman had been cast and how different or similar to Mark Brendanawicz he would have been, but he definitely wouldn’t have had the same impact that Ron Swanson had.
