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"Parks and Recreation is undoubtedly one of the funniest television series right now, with an amazing cast headed by Amy Poehler as the cheerful Leslie Knope. Among the ensemble is Nick Offerman, who plays Leslie&amp;#039;s hilarious Libertarian boss Ron Swanson.  For Ron, the biggest news from the summer hiatus is that Patricia Clarkson will play his first ex-wife Tammy 1 early in the sitcom&amp;#039;s fourth season. Read what Nick and co-creator Michael Schur had to say in a conference call earlier this week about the NBC comedy. Have you started shooting with Patricia Clarkson? Michael: &amp;quot;We indeed have, yes. She&amp;#039;s in the first two episodes of the year, and we have shot and mostly edited both of them, so we&amp;#039;re almost done with her, sadly.&amp;quot; What was it like working with her? Nick: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve been such a huge fan of hers for many years, and it&amp;#039;s nothing short of a dream come true that I got to actually work in scenes with her. When the possibility arose, I couldn&amp;#039;t believe my lucky stars. And she even surpassed our expectations. Not only is she gorgeous and an incredible actress, but she is insanely hilarious to boot. I think everybody on set was just bowled over with how funny she was on the show.&amp;quot; Can you describe Tammy 1&amp;#039;s personality a little bit more? Michael: &amp;quot;I would only say - with a heartfelt desire not to spoil too much - that she is very different from Tammy 2&amp;#039;s character. The relationship she has with Ron is not a hedonistic animal attraction that we&amp;#039;ve seen before. They have a more complicated and rich backstory that we get into and delve into. We wanted to do something very different from Megan [Mullally]&amp;#039;s character and I think we accomplished that, so we&amp;#039;re very excited for people to see it. We&amp;#039;re just worried that if we go into too great of detail about who she is... that it&amp;#039;ll be anticlimactic when you finally meet her.&amp;quot; Did you ever expect Ron Swanson to be such a breakout character? Michael: &amp;quot;I know that you can never expect anything to break out in television, especially in this very crowded landscape... [Ron]&amp;#039;s a character who&amp;#039;s not that common on TV. He&amp;#039;s a big, strong man who doesn&amp;#039;t care about pop culture or the world around him, and a sort of 19th century individualist who likes to spend time alone in a cabin and hunt and stuff. It&amp;#039;s just not a character you see a lot, especially in a comedy show. I would never in my life have predicted anything would break out from any show, but it&amp;#039;s not surprising to me that if there is a &amp;#039;breakout character&amp;#039;, that [people] would say it&amp;#039;s Ron.&amp;quot; Nick: &amp;quot;I, for my part, would not have expected it, no.&amp;quot;  The woodworking that Ron does on the show is a Nick Offerman thing. Are there going to be more Nick Offerman things integrated into Ron Swanson&amp;#039;s character this season? Nick: &amp;quot;Well, I have a penchant for ballet and I&amp;#039;ve been pitching the fellows for the whole time we&amp;#039;ve been in production for a Ron &amp;#039;Swan Lake&amp;#039; episode. I haven&amp;#039;t heard of anything coming down the pike just yet, so...&amp;quot; Michael: &amp;quot;I know you can dance the &amp;#039;Black Swan&amp;#039;, but can you dance the &amp;#039;White Swan&amp;#039;?&amp;quot; Nick: &amp;quot;Give me a chance, I&amp;#039;ll show you!&amp;quot; Michael: &amp;quot;There is actually a [future] episode that has a little bit of a real-life Nick Offerman in it. I&amp;#039;ll try not to give anything away except to say &amp;#039;home repair&amp;#039;, how about that? And for the record, the Duke Silver saxophone-playing is also a real-life Nick Offerman thing. Nick really plays the saxophone, and that&amp;#039;s really him playing in the episode from season two. He [also] does build canoes - that&amp;#039;s a Nick Offerman thing.&amp;quot; At the end of last season, Leslie is faced with the possibility of running for office, although it may come at an expense with her romance with Ben. What&amp;#039;s her thought process going to be? Michael: &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s in a kind of odd situation where she really likes the guy that she is dating and the guy that she&amp;#039;s dating is her boss. And that means that if she dates him while she&amp;#039;s running for office, it&amp;#039;s a scandal. The basis of our entire premiere is her trying to make a decision about what to do. Then, the basis for the first half of the season - all the way through December - will be her living with the ramifications of that decision and probably occasionally second-guessing herself and trying to deal with the inevitable buyer&amp;#039;s remorse.&amp;quot; How do you feel about the possibility of winning the Emmy for &amp;#039;Outstanding Comedy Series&amp;#039; this year? Michael: &amp;quot;That would be, of course, an honour and I would say a stunning honour. I am of the opinion that there is more high-quality television being produced right now than at any time in the history of television. I think that there are 20 shows in every genre that deserve recognition as being at the top of the heap. We just like making this show and we want to make it as long as we possibly can. It&amp;#039;s incredibly fun... We&amp;#039;re shooting episode five of season four right now and just that fact alone makes us all want to weep with joy that we&amp;#039;ve made it this far and that we get to keep going.&amp;quot; Nick, what are some of your most favourite moments from playing the role of Ron Swanson? Nick: &amp;quot;Gosh, probably the first one would be a phone call from Mike Schur telling me I got the job of playing Ron Swanson. Beyond that, that&amp;#039;s a really tough question. This is such a plum role, it&amp;#039;s really hard to choose favorite moments. I love when I get to eat meat. I love when I get to dangerously make out with my wife to the point of destroying buildings and furniture. And I love everything else about [the role].&amp;quot;  You have to love working with Aubrey Plaza (April Ludgate). Nick: &amp;quot;Oh, absolutely. She is a dream because she&amp;#039;s so insanely funny in such a confederate way. She&amp;#039;s always thinking against what is the right thing to do and it makes for great comedy, and she&amp;#039;s a really lovely young lady outside of the office.&amp;quot; Why do you think people continue to tune in and watch Parks and Recreation? Michael: &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know why anybody does anything in the world of television... but I think [the show] has a very optimistic world view. One of the themes of the show is that optimism is better than pessimism and that optimism wins the day. That&amp;#039;s what Leslie&amp;#039;s all about, and her character colors the show that way. It has a warm and positive feeling to it. And besides that, I think it has the best cast on TV. I know every showrunner says that about his or her show, but I honestly don&amp;#039;t think there&amp;#039;s a better cast of comic actors anywhere. &amp;quot;If you are a fan of any kind of comedy, of dry comedy, of political satire, of physical comedy, or of pop culture reference comedy, there is a comedian for you on this show. I think that you would find that the people continue to watch it because for me, it&amp;#039;s comedically speaking a very big tent show. There&amp;#039;s something for everybody.&amp;quot; Parks and Recreation returns for its fourth season on September 22. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/parks-and-recreation/interviews/a338027/parks-and-recreation-qa-nick-offerman-michael-schur-talk-season-four/>