Nick Offerman and Amy Poehler on Making Out for ‘Parks and Rec’ Blooper Reel: “Everybody Hated It”

Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman are no strangers to committing to the bit. Poehler shared that she and Offerman used to make out while filming Parks and Recreation in an attempt to get the moment into the show’s blooper reel.

“Nick and I used to do a thing every year for the blooper reel where we would end a scene by making out, and the crew would hate it,” Poehler told The Independent UK in an oral history celebrating the 15th anniversary of NBC’s beloved sitcom. “Everybody hated it, and it really made us laugh.” 

Poehler played Leslie Knope, the deputy director of the (fictional) Pawnee, Indiana, Parks and Recreation Department. Her forever upbeat optimism was balanced by Nick Offerman’s Ron Swanson, a cynical libertarian working as the director of Parks and Rec.

“It was like watching your aunt and uncle making out or something,” Poehler continued of her and her co-star’s ongoing joke.

Parks and Recreation ran for seven seasons from 2009 to 2015. Much of the cast and creative team reunited for the 15th-anniversary celebration and several also mused about the close bonds they built while on set. Rashida Jones, Aziz Ansari, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Pratt, Adam Scott and Rob Lowe starred in the series.

“We spent a lot of time together and often ate lunch together,” Jones, who played Anne Perkins, said. “Afterwards, you’d have this lunch slump so we would have dance parties in our trailers. We’d crank a song as loud as we could – ‘We Found Love’ by Rihanna or ‘Dead and Gone’ by Justin Timberlake – and bounce up and down. It actually worked.”

Poehler and Offerman have remained close in the decade since the sitcom’s end, reuniting as co-hosts for NBC’s Making It, a reality competition show for craftspeople, which first aired in 2018 and ran for three seasons.