Nick Offerman 'spent the whole night' high in jail after being mistaken for robber

"My mom and dad don't know about this," the "Civil War" actor said.

Nick Offerman is reflecting on a highlight of his youth in Illinois.

In an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the Parks and Recreation and Civil War actor reflected on a run-in with the cops while he was in college. “My mom and dad don’t know about this,” Offerman said. “Some friends and I, we can say this now, in California, we were smoking marijuana out behind a community theater late one night. And some flashlights came along the creek where we were hanging out, and we realized it was police, and so we began to tiptoe away, and they gave chase, and we wisely ran. And they tackled us and an incredibly tough, diminutive woman who I think may have been Holly Hunter… had her boot on my head and she had her gun on me.”

Offerman discovered that his group of friends had been mistaken for robbers. “It turned out that a restaurant had been robbed of a bunch of cash up the creek,” he explained. “And they naturally saw these kids running, and we spent the whole night in jail. And the thing is, we were just these innocent, dumb theater kids, and we were saying, ‘No, we were just out there smoking and talking, officer.’”

Eventually, the authorities released Offerman’s crew — but not before they spent a night in jail. “Thankfully we put up enough of a collective front that they decided we weren’t the thieves,” he said. “They let us go in the morning, so they kept us all night.”

The incident ended on a fairly ridiculous note. “As the sun was coming up, we walked out, and on the front lawn of this sheriff’s station, my friend Greg, who had the one-hitter, the pot-smoking paraphernalia, we said, ‘It’s a bummer you had to throw that in the creek when they were chasing us,’” Offerman recalled. “He reached into his crotch and pulled it out and was like, ‘You think I’m gonna throw this thing away?’ So we smoked marijuana first thing in the morning in Urbana in front of the sheriff’s station, and now here I am.”

Offerman also said he was arrested another time for shoplifting eight Ronnie Millsap tapes — “the perfect crime” — and that he believes the incident nearly got him expelled from college. “I went to jail and I was terrified,” he said. “And I was like, ‘C’mon you guys, clearly this is a bit.’ But they wanted to teach me a lesson, and they did. It was the opening night of the first time I got cast in a play at the University of Illinois, and I was in this production of Picnic, and so if I hadn’t made it to the play, I probably would have been kicked out of school.”

The actor made it back for the show in the nick of time. “A friend of mine… came and bailed me out, and my other friend was the assistant director, and nobody knew, nobody told anybody,” he said. “12 minutes before curtain, I got to the theater, and put on my stuff and went out and gave the most tearful performance.”

Watch the full interview with Offerman above.

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Related content:

• Inside Civil War, Alex Garland's provocative take on what a second American conflict could look like

• Kirsten Dunst says filming Civil War gave her PTSD: 'I felt really empty'

• Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman made out filming Parks and Recreation to try to make the blooper reel

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.