Nick Offerman Teases Why “Civil War ”Isn't What Audiences Expect: 'Just Wait' (Exclusive)

Nick Offerman plays the president of the United States in 'Civil War'

Nick Offerman's new movie Civil War is not quite what audiences may expect.

"For me, when I first read the script, I just said, 'Alex, I think you're so incredible,' " Offerman, 53, tells PEOPLE of the film and its writer-director Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation).

In the new film, the Parks & Recreation alum plays the president of the United States. The movie follows a group of journalists (Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura and Stephen McKinley Henderson) traveling to Washington, D.C. during the final days of a fictional modern American civil war.

"He is a novelist first before he became a filmmaker," Offerman notes of Garland's background, saying he "has such an incredible perspective to sort of transcend any sort of current politics in our country or elsewhere" with the movie.

While it's easy to paint a path between current real-world politics and the story of Civil War, Offerman describes the film as "like an alternate reality or a multiverse."

"It's another timeline of here's a situation that has occurred in the near future that we could imagine in many countries on the planet," he says.

"It is funny because the trailer elicited so many passionate... [it] had people shaking their fists at each other, judging [it] superficially, and I thought, 'Just wait till you guys see this movie. It doesn't matter. None of the things you're getting upset about or speculating about, they're not in the movie.' "

Related: Kirsten Dunst Documents a Divided America — Under a President Nick Offerman — in Shocking Civil War Trailer

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"It's an incredibly ripping and realistic action-packed thriller about how dumb people are and the trouble we can get ourselves into," he adds.

In the film, Dunst, Spaeny, Moura and Henderson's characters wind their way through a war-torn country with the hope of securing an interview with the president as rebellious forces close in on Washington, D.C.

"If it's a movie about a fox chase. I'm the fox that you rarely see," Offerman says.

Related: Nick Offerman Wins His First Emmy for The Last of Us: 'Fortune Presents Gifts Not According to the Book'

The actor says he felt a "wonderful camaraderie" filming Civil War, though he was only on the film's set during the first and final days of shooting. Offerman previously worked with Dunst on 2010's All Good Things; he also connected with Spaeny, whom he says is "like a younger sibling," on Garland's 2020 series Devs.

"Getting to see them all and sort of coming in as a weird sideways elder statesman, I was like, 'Okay guys, I'm here to shoot the politician stuff,' " Offerman says. " 'Why don't you guys go grab a beer and I'll hand it back over to you here in a minute.' "

Civil War is in theaters April 12.

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