Nick Offerman Loved Getting Slapped by Betty Gilpin

Welcome to My Favorite Scene! In this series, IndieWire speaks to actors behind our favorite Emmy-nominated television performances about their personal-best onscreen moment and how it came together. 

In his own favorite scene from “Death by Lightning,” Nick Offerman is not the standout actor. No, that subjective yet irrefutable title goes to Betty Gilpin who, as Lucretia “Crete” Garfield, gets to slap Offerman across the face and inspire his glum vice president to greatness. She drives the action, not him, and it’s her ferocious resolve that lingers in viewers’ minds long after the scene ends.

Offerman said his selection, which he made under some duress (“I really don’t like to receive homework assignments like this”), stems from self-effacing generosity: “I don’t love what I’m doing in this scene … so I chose it for Betty and for Bradley and not for myself.”

But it’s still the perfect choice to illustrate why Emmy voters saw fit to nominate him for the role. Chester A. Arthur, after all, never craved the spotlight. He was first happy to be Roscoe Conkling’s No. 2 man — a partner and enforcer for the power-hungry New York Senator (played by Shea Whigham) — before grudgingly ascending to the vice presidency, where he shirked his duties even as President Garfield (Michael Shannon) politely prodded his long-dormant conscience back into action.

In the chosen scene (which you can watch above), Arthur returns to the White House in shambles. Garfield’s attempted assassination spurred him to break ties with Conkling and return to Washington D.C., hat in hand. He feels unworthy of his current office and, with Garfield knocking on death’s door, fears the promotion most men in his position would covet. He tries to quit. He calls on God to smite him for his sins. He openly weeps, but before his protestations can carry on any longer, Crete steps forward and slaps the Vice President square in the face. “You read me now and you read me fucking well,” she bellows. “If there is even a shred of real nobility in you, I think now is the time to let it shine.”

It’s Arthur’s “crucible moment,” as Offerman calls it. You can see his change of heart flash across his face in stages, evolving from shock to enlightenment to humble acceptance. You can tell how meaningful Arthur’s confrontation with Crete will be, even before he follows through on his promises. You can appreciate the seismic significance of her call to action, largely thanks to Offerman’s performance. But his portrayal never reaches beyond itself. It’s in service to the scene, which is in service to Crete, and thus Betty Gilpin.

In other words, it’s a truly supportive turn, which is exactly what Offerman is nominated for: Best Supporting Actor (in a Limited Series). What a perfect pick.

Below, Offerman breaks down the two-minute triumph even further, including how to take a “full-contact slap” from Gilpin. He also discusses the series’ rollicking tone (in what he calls “the ‘Deadwood’-ification” of history), as well as his special bond with Shea Whigham. “I want to giggle like a schoolgirl just thinking about how fun it was to do that with him.”

That makes two of us. (At least.)

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

IndieWire: How did “Death by Lightning” come to you in the first place?

Nick Offerman: I was in touch with David Benioff, one of the producers — of Benioff & Weiss who made “Game of Thrones.” We were talking about another project, and he said, “By the way, I think I’ve got a real doozy for you.” Then it came through my agents, but pretty quickly I got the messaging from Mike Makowsky, who executive produced and wrote it, that it was the story of James Garfield, it was this four-hour Netflix series, and that the whole time writing it, he could only think of me as Chester Arthur.

It’s funny: If you see the thing, Chester is a fat, sinful hog of a man, and so when people say, “I could only think of you,” you definitely have to be a particular kind of narcissist to work that into a compliment. Fortunately, I’m just that guy.

Fortunately.

“Terrific. I’ve come out on top of the beer drinkers this time.” But the only way I pick a job these days is because the script moves me. I mean, total fancy-pantses could call up and say, “Listen, I want you to do a movie,” and I would say, “Mr. Spielberg, that sounds terrific. Do you have something I can read?” Because you just don’t know. Even if it’s going to be an incredible Steven Spielberg movie, I could read it and be like, “Ah, there’s something wrong about this for me.”

So I read [“Death by Lightning”] and Chester Arthur ends up having by far the greatest arc in the show. He starts out as just this groveling, like a hog of a man, snuffling in iniquity. I can’t think of the verb of what pigs do when they’re hunting for truffles, but that’s where we find Chester Arthur — searching for meaning in life in the gutters of New York. Somewhere in him, there is a scrap of moral fiber that the Garfields speak to, and he gets to come all the way around and pull his soul back up by its own bootstraps and become a decent president by the end of the story. It’s quite astonishing.

It’s a fantastic arc, and I feel like a lot of it comes through in the scene that you’ve chosen.

I feel friendly towards you, and I’m happy to be speaking with you, but I really don’t like to receive homework assignments like this.

Understandable.

Because it’s like, “Pick your favorite Tom Waits song.” Come on, man. Don’t do that to me.

Part of the answer is this list of actors: Mike Shannon, I’ve known [since] 1995 — 31 years ago, we did a play together in Chicago. I think he was 19 and I was 23, something like that. Matthew Macfadyen, Betty Gilbin, Shea Whigham, Bradley Whitford, Željko Ivanek, Richard Rankin, Tuppence Middleton, any one of these actors I would run over broken glass to get to work with; to dress up in 1880 outfits that are so gorgeous and ride in a carriage, or get drunk and scream about sausages and barf in a bathroom.

I literally could have chosen every single scene that I appear in, and I really went back and forth. I had my publicist help me pick between the scene I chose and me and Matthew in the bathroom where I’ve bullied the two guys and I’m wearing their two bowler hats on my head. I mean, Matthew Macfadyen is just astonishing. Watching him work is one of the greatest acting schools I’ve ever been to. He embodies a spirit that’s not something you can teach. I’ve just never seen anybody talk about it, the way that he imbues every moment of his scene work with organic life. It sounds kind of facile, but sitting there watching him was like, “Holy shit, I’m dying to know what you’re going to do or say in every moment.”

All of these actors, it was so incredible to get to work with them. So that could be best encapsulated in getting to walk into a room with Bradley Whitford and Betty Gilpin and be a simpering ninny.

Shea Whigham and Nick Offerman in ‘Death by Lightning’Courtesy of Larry Horricks / Netflix

A smelly ninny, to be sure.

It’s funny, I guess I’m never going to enjoy watching myself. And I think that’s healthy. When I watched the scene that I submitted to you, I was like, “I don’t love what I’m doing in this scene, but I love that I got picked to participate in this scene.” So I chose it for Betty and for Bradley and not for myself, because I would love to get to shoot it again. It’s always that way. Whenever I see anything I do, I’m like, “Oh man, I could have done this better. I wish I had turned my head a little more. I wish I could talk faster. I wish I looked like Antonio Banderas.” You know, the actor’s lament.

But the whole experience — [including] getting directed by Matt Ross, who’s such an incredible, generous, beautiful director and actor himself — the whole thing could best be encapsulated for me in getting to do a full-contact slap with Betty Gilpin. Even though they ended up editing it in a way where it could have been faked, we’re both theater kids and she’s such a mighty human being — I mean, she’s just heroic. She is as good as any movie star we’ve ever put on screen. So to get to collaborate with her with confidence, knowing the right way to do a full-contact slap, I think we did 12 of them.

Oh my gosh.

As you could imagine, Betty Gilpin is not taking it easy on your slap.

I’m surprised you still have your head.

Well, the thing is, if you do it right, there’s a way [to avoid injury.] You don’t clench your jaw. You leave it loose, which makes this fleshy curtain. [To illustrate, Offerman slaps himself, making a sharp clapping sound even with minimal force.] And if she doesn’t make a hard slap, but instead has a softness to it, you can then imagine — sort of like playing a percussion instrument — that you can [Offerman slaps himself again] slap that curtain without causing any damage. And she did, and it was so badass. I could have done 12 more because it’s momentarily jarring, of course, but there’s no bruising, there’s no damage at all. I would just revel in getting to do that successfully with someone as magnificent as Betty. For me, that was like, if I had to boil the whole experience down into one crucible moment, it would be that.

Like you said, this is Chester’s turning point, and it exemplifies what works so well throughout the series: The fate of a nation hangs in the balance, but we feel it within this quick, intimate little interaction between two people. How much pressure did you put on yourself to illustrate his change of heart within the scene itself? You walk in really, really down, and by the end of it, you have to kind of suck it up. How far did you want to stretch those two extremes?

The danger of good dramatic acting roles is answering those questions. This is the pivotal scene, and it speaks to the brilliance of Mike Makowsky’s writing. In real life, there was correspondence that he received from people saying, “Garfield’s on his deathbed. He might die. It’s time for you to step the fuck up to the plate, you sad little man. We know you’ve been good before. America needs you to get your shit together.” And Mike boiled all of that correspondence into this scene with Betty where she’s like, “Now you listen to me, you fat fuck.” So I learned the scene where I can do it in my sleep, and I don’t give it any weight.

I have to say, seeing it back again, I was very happy with how successfully fat I came across in the show. I put on about 20 pounds, but we had me in a full-body fat suit. The trick with those period costumes is you’ve got that paper collar, so you’ve got a loop going around your neck. So then you make it a little too tight and you get this cleavage going on. And that does so much work to say, “corpulent.” So I was really happy with [how I looked].

I wanted to convey something more visceral because when I come in the room, Bradley says, “Good God, man, you reek of horseshit” or something. I wasn’t thinking as much about the emotional state as I was that I’ve just laid in a shitty pile of hay in the back of a wagon in the sweaty carriage ride after I broke up with Shea Whigham [giggles] out in the middle of nowhere. Then I let the writing take me, because I know all I’ve got to do is get to that desk and sit down and turn my head the right way, and then Betty will show me exactly where to go from there.

The show, and you in particular, were so good about elevating the humor without losing any of the resonance and dramatic tension. How do you find that tone, on the day, in the moment?

It’s one of the things that was so attractive about the script because it starts with the writing. I love what I call the “Deadwood”-ification of historical pieces, where you can shoot a beautifully wrought historical piece, but if you don’t have somebody farting or saying “fuck” or behaving like an animal, [it doesn’t feel honest.] Of course in “Deadwood” people are talking like that. The farther back you go, it’s not like everyone had incredible manners and was very well-spoken. People were filthy in so many ways, so Mike really wrote that in. That gave Matt Ross and the cast license to seek out the [comedy]. The drama’s there. The history is there, and it’s dead serious and it’s huge. It’s earth-shattering drama. So being in these absurd situations, like with Żeljko Ivanek poking a needle into the back of the president where we’re all just like, “Hey man, that’s not cool” [laughs] I think that’s one of the things that attracted everybody.

Nick Offerman and Shea Whigham in ‘Death by Lightning’Courtesy of Larry Horricks / Netflix

You mentioned your onscreen relationship with Shea Whigham before, which is just fantastic. How did you go about building their dynamic?

Shea Whigham, I just want to say, he’s one of my favorite actors in my lifetime. I loved watching him. I think he’s such a unique and electric personality. He just thrills me with the work that he does. So that was also just a huge incentive to me, getting to play a political couple with Shea, who I could not adore more.

Matt Ross was very generous with letting us rehearse everything. But the thing is: The better the writing, the less rehearsal you need to answer some of these questions. Shea and I could read that and say, “Holy shit, we get to do this with each other?” There’s a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern quality to it where you’re handed most of the answers to your questions coming in. We know this relationship, we know what Shea’s character, [Roscoe] Conkling, is all about. We know that Arthur is subservient — to an extent — to Conkling. So we know this dynamic and then we know that it’s going to shift and how and why. So then it’s just a matter of delighting and getting to play that out and tease it out.

Another scene I could have chosen is that scene in the carriage where we basically break up. I mean, I could have done that for a month. It was so delightful to get to watch Shea. No mob godfather has ever been as terrifying as Roscoe Conkling spurned by Chester Arthur in the back of that carriage. And it tickles me. I want to giggle like a school girl just thinking about how fun it was to do that with him.

I love how often he tilts his head back, chin up, so he’s literally looking down his nose at people. Anyway, I have to let you go, so thank you for making the time to talk about this show. It’s fantastic.

Right back at you. Thank you. I’m so grateful. It didn’t really get the push from the company that I think it deserved. And I wish everybody would want to talk about it more because I feel like the departments should be winning Oscars for “Death by Lightning.” It’s that good.

“Death by Lightning” is available on Netflix.