Nick Offerman Says Civil War’s Lack of Politics Is the Point
The post Nick Offerman Says Civil War’s Lack of Politics Is the Point appeared first on Consequence.
One of the most surprising elements of the Alex Garland movie Civil War is that despite being set in a divided and war-torn America, it’s completely free of a political angle: There’s no mention of Democrats or Republicans, or the issues that brought a fictional United States to this point. And Nick Offerman, who plays the sitting President of this crumbling country, says that this lack of politics is “my absolute favorite thing about this film.”
Offerman tells Consequence that when he first read the script for the powerful alternate reality story, “I called Alex and said, ‘This is amazing — you don’t really know what side this President is on. You never really know what has happened, who did what to whom, how did we get to this place?’ He transcends that conversation, with which we are all so obsessed in this day and age.”
So while the Parks and Recreation and The Last of Us actor admits that “it occurs to me immediately to say, well, I have passionate feelings about modern day politics that I would love to slap the audience across the face with, Alex basically disallows the audience that.”
It’s a choice that has led to some criticism, Offerman says: “It’s funny, a lot of the people reviewing the film are angered by this, where they’re like, ‘I really would like to weigh in with my political views. Like, I feel cheated that I saw this movie, and I don’t get to like be a smarty-pants about how it relates to modern-day politics.”
Yet what he thinks “belies Alex’s great sensitivity, is that that conversation is not doing us any good. What he is addressing is that absolute divisiveness. And if I think that if the film had political specificity, it would be a failure. One side or the other would get mad and say, ‘This is propaganda for him or for him or for her.’ And instead the movie disallows that, and if you’re able to silence the pundits in your head, and take it in as a work of art, then you receive it just as a citizen of humanity, and not of any political faction.”
Offerman attributes this to Garland having “a great novelist’s heart. Because it’s incredible that he resisted the temptation to weigh in not just on American politics, but what’s happening all over the world. You know, fascism is knocking on a lot of doors and, and this says, ‘Hey, all of us, we should maybe have a look at this. We should maybe consider a change of tack.'”
While Offerman’s presence in the film is limited, Garland had a moment of on-set inspiration that led to him getting a little extra screen time, as he explains below. He also details why he’s proud to be a part of Garland’s “repertory company,” how many days he shot for, and why, when a script is good, he finds questions about an actor’s craft to be “boring.”
Civil War (A24)
How did you get involved with Civil War initially?
Well, I’ve been a huge fan of Alex since reading The Beach, and I’m a big Kazuo Ishiguro fan, so his Never Let Me Go adaptation, Ex Machina, and then Annihilation just had him cemented in my world as exquisite. I always refer to him as Kubrickian — his sensibility and his artistry, his acumen and filmmaking. I just think [his work] has a beauty and, and depth of sensitivity that transcends most modern filmmaking. And every one of his projects is a morality tale of sorts that I just find really generous.
He’s so multi-faceted. Like it can be a zombie movie [like 28 Days Later, written by Garland]. It can be a weird sci-fi multiverse thing. But at the root of it is always what is up with us funny monkeys and our civilization. So I was over the moon when impossibly, he hired me to be in his TV show Devs, which was just one of the most gorgeous experiences in my career. I’m just besotted with him. I just love working with him. Everyone does by for the most part, because of the reasons I’ve listed. The crew heads, the cast — everyone loves serving under this sort of philosopher wizard king.
So when I meet up with somebody like that, I make it pretty clear to them that “If you have any use for me, please call, and I will leap to your side.” We were supposed to work on another show when the pandemic hit, and the pandemic kind of killed that idea. And then he sent me this script and said, “Would you play my President?” And I said, “Remember what I said, about how you have but to say the word?” I just love to be in service of an artist like Alex, whatever he wants me to do.
But specifically when I read this, I was so powerfully moved by his ability, like a great novelist to sort of drop us into this, to this world this particular narrative and and just marinate us in the lessons therein without ever getting into like pettiness or the superficiality of so much, so much of our modern storytelling is, is is so much cheaper. And, and I think a lot of people expected this movie to be cheaper and to be more lightweight. But when I, from the moment I read it to the moment I saw it, I just shook my head and said, I’m so glad I get to work with people like you.
In the script you read, was the President’s role about the same size as we get in the film?
It was, yeah. All things considered, it was a little smaller. But on the day that we were shooting the speech stuff, Alex, to his credit, saw me rehearsing and going over my stuff, and he said, “Hey, let’s shoot this. Let’s capture this human in this particular circumstance, that we’ve all seen the polished end product of — let’s see the real guy going over his words and crafting his stance.” [The President] was always more of a framing element than a character in the cast, as it were.
How many days were you actually on set?
Wonderfully, I shot the first day and the last day — so two days, and it was the beginning of the movie and the end of the movie. It had a really nice buttoned-up quality to it.
Even though you didn’t have a ton of time on set, what were the conversations around defining this character like?
Well, when the writing is great, it’s interesting — questions that lean into craft like that, my answer is usually that I can’t find anything more boring than hearing actors delve into their craft. It’s like a magician explaining a card trick to me.
And when the writing is great, it usually answers so many of the questions that mediocre writing or more obtuse writing would be like. I’m lucky enough to work on a lot of good writing, and in this circumstance, a lot of those questions are answered. So one of the things that was enjoyable was that I didn’t need any exposition beyond what this guy says. That tells us enough — everything we need to know about him — for me to do my job.
The only question for me was, and this is something Alex and I talked about, the degree of showmanship or mountebank to which I wanted to aspire. I wish somebody would cast me as like a carnival barker or a snake oil preacher, because that would be outside the sort of menu that people expect from me. But Alex made it clear that he wanted whatever authenticity that I bring, for better or worse. That we understand this is a real human guy putting across the particular presidential bullshit that he’s putting across.
Do you know if the role was written specifically for you?
I doubt it. It’s interesting, when we worked on Devs, he talked about loving the idea of a repertory company. And that’s why actually, you know, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Cailee Spaeny, Karl Glusman, and Jin Ha show up. Sonoya Mizuno has a supporting role. And hopefully, this stable of actors will continue to show up for Alex.
I don’t think he thinks of people specifically, but he thinks more in paradigms. And so if he needs a dipshit, middle aged white guy, he’s like, “Well, could Nick do this?” Or it’s an Oscar Isaac role. Those, I guess, are the two ends of the spectrum.
To wrap up, let me ask — having been through this whole journey, what’s the thing you’re hoping audience take away from this film?
When I tour as a humorist, I’ll write a song about accepting it if your kid comes out as gay — like. I’ll write a song about that. And you learn early that no matter how brilliant or not your song might be, not a lot of people are going to march out of the theater to a voting booth and say, well, I heard this song and it’s saving the issue. I don’t have the macro brain capacity of an Alex Garland or an Ava DuVernay or a Mike Schur. That’s why I’m so grateful for these generals under whom I can serve.
The reason I got into this storytelling tradition was to be part of this inexorable force trying to hold a mirror up to society, to tend us toward decency. And so that’s my answer to your question, is I hope that this, along with other great efforts on the part of open-minded and progressive thinking artists, will help us as a civilization avoid things like going to war with each other anywhere on the planet.
This isn’t about white-knuckling trying to avoid an American civil war. It’s saying, “Hey, this is really ugly, what we we’re doing to each other, all over the planet every day. And we, as a group of artists, would like to say, “Let’s consider an alternative. What if we can use the world’s resources — without shooting each other?” I’m so grateful to be part of this film.
Civil War arrives in theaters on Friday, April 12th. This interview has been transcribed and edited for clarity.
Nick Offerman Says Civil War’s Lack of Politics Is the Point
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