Jim O’Heir will be the first person to tell you he doesn’t have much in common with his Parks & Rec character Jerry Gergich, but the actor revealed in his new tell-all book about the hit NBC sitcom that he once defecated himself on set during an “awful” experience that only could have happened to Jerry himself.
“It’s in the final cut,” he recent told DECIDER during a recent Zoom call about his new book, Welcome to Pawnee. “Watch the episode where we’re moving Tom [Haverford] out of his house. I lift a box into the truck. In real life, when that happened, other things happened.”
The Season 2 episode, titled “Sweetums,” does indeed show O’Heir grimacing after he lifts a box into a truck bed. But he masks it by waving off Tom’s (Aziz Ansari) silly remarks.
Over Zoom, O’Heir explained that he woke up feeling like he was “dying” after having dinner with Chris Pratt. But he knew he had to go into work anyway. “The thing about being an actor that people don’t really get there is no, I mean, you can plan days off. They can work around things sometimes, but otherwise… You really can’t [call out of work],” he explained.
Once he got to set, “Everybody was taking such good care of me,” he said, but there is only so much one can do when it’s coming out of “both ends,” as O’Heir so eloquently put it.
“I get there because I know I have to go in, and Susie Flower was our first [assistant director]. I told her. I said, ‘Susie, I’m so sorry, but I’m violently ill,'” he recalled.
Filming continued as planned. The Season 2 episode showed Jerry and his Parks colleagues helping Tom move out of his place, though the scene shows Tom ordering food and ranting on the phone while his coworkers move all of the boxes themselves. O’Heir’s personal discomfort plays nicely on screen as they all get increasingly annoyed with Tom.
“And I’m dying,” O’Heir recalled. “At one point I walked across the street and I was throwing up in a bush. Like, it was awful. The whole thing was awful.”
After he pooped his pants, he admitted that he still told his co-stars because he thought it was “funny.” He also requested someone help him get a set of clean clothes to change into.
In Welcome to Pawnee, O’Heir notes that he continued with the scene “despite the discomfort” because he couldn’t let his colleagues down. “The lesson? Sometimes you shit the bed and sometimes you shit your pants, but the show must go on,” he writes.
Welcome to Pawnee is a lovely trip down memory lane that highlights the joys of one of television’s warmest shows. Featuring anecdotes from O’Heir and interviews with Retta, Pratt, Rob Lowe, and showrunners Greg Daniels and Mike Schur, this book is a clear reminder of why America fell in love with Parks and Recreation.
Welcome to Pawnee hits shelves Nov. 19.