yes please(50)
19 Note from Mike: No one can. Don’t even try. It’s Chinatown, Poehler.
Once we started to cast the show, what was fuzzy became sharper. Rashida Jones, Aubrey Plaza, and Aziz Ansari came on board early. Chris Pratt and Nick Offerman later. Retta, Jim O’Heir, and Paul Schneider rounded out our first mini-season of Parks and Recreation. Eventually we would be joined by Rob Lowe and Adam Scott and the circle would be complete. I don’t remember much about those first shows. I started feeling my groove after a few episodes. I realized the cast was beyond talented and would eventually become like family. I constantly searched for Mike’s face when I was nervous. But the thing I do remember clearly is a small scene I did in the pilot episode. It’s raining and Leslie is standing and looking outside her office window. In voice-over, she speaks about how this park project is going to take a lot of work and last a long time, but it will be worth it.
21 LESLIE TALKING HEAD
B-roll: Leslie staring out her office window at the small courtyard that serves as her “view.”
LESLIE
I’ve been in the Parks Department for six years, and I’ve handled some things I’m proud of. For example, last year I led the city-wide drive to disinfect the sandbox sand after those problems with the cats. I heard some testimony from mothers of toddlers that would make you cry. But this pit! The chance to build a new park, from scratch . . .
(she thinks)
This is my Hoover Dam.
I remember standing and watching the props guys make it rain in our fake outside courtyard as we shot the B-roll part of that scene—the shot of Leslie from outside the window that the audience would see as she spoke those words. I listened to the words being read aloud by Greg and Mike, and realized this was my new job. A tiny whisper, no louder than the Who that Horton hears, told me we were going to make it. I believed.
We almost didn’t make it. That first year was rough. Critics compared us to The Office, and not kindly. Our ratings were okay but not great. Deadline Hollywood decided to publish our pilot testing results, which was basically like having someone publish the worst parts of your diary.20 According to testing, a lot of people liked it when “that Parks lady fell into the pit.” It wasn’t a good sign when people wanted the show’s lead character to fall into a hole. We regrouped. We changed a little. We figured out what worked and soldiered on. Network presidents came and went as we hung on for dear life. Some liked us more than others. Some canceled us on airplanes, only to change their minds before landing. Critics started to watch the show again and notice new things.
20 Note from Mike: Good analogy. I think of it more like a restaurant critic bursting into a kitchen, eating a half-cooked meal, and then writing a review. “The chicken was undercooked!” The only good thing about that cheap shot—both the leaking of it and the crummy decision to print it without even calling us for comment—is that Louis CK came to our defense in the comments section, and joined us as Leslie’s boyfriend early in season 2.
We kept our heads down and did our jobs. We controlled the only thing we could, which was the show. We did the thing. Because remember, the talking about the thing isn’t the thing. The doing of the thing is the thing.
In season 2 we started to gain momentum. Critics put us on lists and we were nominated for awards. Everyone realized we would never be a ratings juggernaut, but we just kept plugging along as we watched new NBC show after NBC show die on the table next to us. To be fair, we were often on life support ourselves. We would finish a season never really knowing if we would have another one, so Mike would always push the writers to take big swings and let characters evolve and change. Rob Lowe and Adam Scott joining us made us better and less likely to get canceled. We just kept doing it.
Mike would call me in July every summer and pitch me the upcoming season’s story line for Leslie. I can’t explain the joy and relief I felt, sitting on a porch in my Nantucket rental, swatting bugs and hearing about what was ahead. After spending years trying to generate my own material at SNL, this felt like someone was picking me up and carrying me Jesus/”Footprints” style.21 Leslie got to run for office, fall in and out of love, fight for her town, and eat waffles with her friends. I got to write and direct episodic television for the first time. I got to work with people like Louis CK, Megan Mullally, Fred Armisen, Patricia Clarkson, Will Arnett, and Detlef Schrempf. I have sex stories about all of them but I am saving those for my next book.22 23
21 Note from Mike: My grandfather really wanted me to be a deity, and this analogy is the closest I will ever get, and so for that I thank you.
22 Note from Mike: Your seven-year, real-life “will they, won’t they” saga with Detlef Schrempf could fill a hundred volumes.
23 Note from Mike annotating previous note: This is a joke. He is married I think. Hi, Detlef! (He’s definitely reading this right now.)
In the middle of season 2, I got pregnant again. I was excited and surprised.24 This meant that we had to sort of force NBC’s hand and try to get them to agree to shoot more episodes before I really blew up. With its cameras-looking-everywhere shooting style, Parks and Recreation was not the kind of show where you could hide a pregnant belly behind a few bags of groceries. We got an early pickup for season 3, and as soon as season 2 ended we just kept rolling and shot some extra episodes that we would bank for the beginning of the next year. If you have any doubt as to what a great actor Adam Scott is, go back and watch him join a show and immediately figure out how to flirt with a tired pregnant lady. It’s not easy. If I have learned anything from hip-hop, it’s that there’s nothing sexy about a baby that ain’t yours.