A couple of months ago, Vulture published “The History of Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally’s Awesome Marriage.†And as comprehensive as it was, we were still left with questions about their magical relationship. Luckily, Vulture’s Jesse David Fox was able to interview Offerman and Mullally together — the two are out promoting The Kings of Summer. In that coming-of-age indie comedy, out this Friday, Offerman and Mullally play parents of separate kids who run away to build a house in the woods. Here, they talk about working together, their first and most recent date, and anal sex, of course.
Hi, guys. We recently did a thing about the history of your relationship. So I wanted to talk to you about your most memorable dates.
Nick Offerman: Okay.
Megan Mullally: We’ve had a lot. Well, definitely first we need to decide if we’re going to answer these seriously or not. In case we are, we had a good one at the Hollywood Bowl.
Offerman: Anal.
Mullally: Where we performed anal sex in the stands.
Offerman: We were invited onstage where we performed anal sex to the “1812 Overture.†You can only imagine.
Mullally: With a fireworks display.
Offerman: Traditionally they use cannons —
Mullally: They used Nick as the cannon for this one.
Offerman: Sort of an explosion in the Hollywood Hills that evening.
Mullally: [Laughs]
Offerman: We were celebrating our nation’s independence.
No better way to celebrate than you two having anal sex set to fireworks.
Offerman: Tell me about it.
Mullally: We had a lot of coyotes around us early on. I don’t know what that was all about but it seemed like some kind of good omen. We’d be making out on the street at two in the morning and we’d look up and there’d be a giant coyote staring at us.
Offerman: It’s worth mentioning this would be downtown L.A., where we met doing a play.
Mullally: Well, yeah that’s true. It happened around Tamarind, where the UCB theater is now, and it also happened in a park off of Coldwater in Beverly Hills.
Offerman: The Coldwater one was crazy because I was sincerely going down on Megan —
Mullally: This is true.
Offerman: And she was laying down in the traditional position to receive those pleasures and I looked up and ten feet above her head was a coyote sitting there in repose and we nodded at one another and then it sagely walked off into the brush.
Mullally: You were like, “Don’t turn around quickly, but do turn around.†And I did, and I saw him, then he left.
Offerman: I took his nods to mean “Nice technique.â€
Mullally: I think he was trying to give you tips.
Offerman: Like, move your head up and down.
Do you remember the first date that you went on?
Offerman: Yeah, Megan has a good recounting of the first time we went to dinner together.
Mullally: We went to dinner together with another person. We were doing a play together in this theater that was near downtown and there was another cast member who had become our sidekick.
Offerman: She was kind of like one those fish called a remora that clings onto whales and sharks. She was always there but we didn’t notice too much
Mullally: We were in tech, which means long days. You have an hour-and-a-half dinner break instead of a half hour, so Nick and I said, “Well let’s go to this restaurant†and our sidekick chimed in, “Great!†So the three of us went to actually a nice restaurant downtown. What was it? I can never think of the name of it. A Spanish place …
Offerman: It was called Ciudad.
Mullally: Ciudad! So we go in and I could tell immediately that both Nick and the sidekick were completely overwhelmed by it. You would think we were going to some five-star restaurant in Paris or something.
Offerman: Mmm hmm.
Mullally: Like they’d never been inside a normal restaurant with patrons sitting at tables.
Offerman: They had more than one fork for each of us. Napkins were made of real cloth.
Mullally: [Laughs] It’s very nice, but Ciudad is not an incredibly fancy restaurant. We sit down and Nick and the sidekick both were wearing overalls. Nick proceeded to tuck his napkin into the bib of his overalls and I just loved it. I was like, Wow, okay that’s a new one. That’s how we had our dinner and he didn’t spill anything on the bib of his overalls. They were safe.
Offerman: I had seen it done that way on a television program.
Mullally: The Beverly Hillbillies?
Offerman: Yes, Jethro. An early inspiration was Jethro.
Mullally: Yeah, you never saw his overalls were spotless?
Offerman: And he was a TV star so …
So how did you know it was a date? Did the sidekick eventually leave?
Mullally: It was the first time we had left the theatre and entered another establishment together, so that qualified. And on our way back to the car, we had parked in a parking structure, so we had to take an escalator. The sidekick was right in front of us and Nick surreptitiously reached over and took my hand. I had butterflies in my solar plexus and then it was officially a date.
Yeah, I think that qualifies. Do you remember maybe your most recent date?
Mullally: We went to San Francisco. Nick had an American Ham show and Nancy and Beth opened for him. My bandmate, Stephanie Hunt, left a day early and Nick and I had a romantic day in San Francisco. We went to Chinatown and we wandered around and bought some little things for his nieces and godchildren. Then we went to dinner at a sushi restaurant. I commented that every time he and I go to dinner together, which we don’t get to do often because we’re so freaking busy, we start really talking about life and how lucky we are and the future and I invariably start crying. He says, “Yup, that’s true, glad you said it.†I get so excited and happy that I have tears rolling down my face and he has to get his handkerchief out and give it to me. I have to try to pretend like I’m not crying because there are other people there. It’s pretty consistent.
Offerman: It’s consistently touching.
It sounds—
Offerman: And then we had anal sex.
At the restaurant?
Offerman: In a rickshaw.
Mullally: Actually, I think I felched you in the rickshaw.
Offerman: That’s right.
Mullally: Yeah, it gets kinky in there.
Offerman: I’d like to say we were on Nob Hill.
Mullally: Well, obviously.
Offerman: But we were a little south of it, if you catch my meaning. We were a little closer to the Tenderloin.
Well, that does sound very touching. When you’re on set together, do you have dates? Are you able to separate yourself from the crew to have moments alone or do you treat each other like co-workers?
Mullally: I always feel like we’re the same on set. We’re always kissing and holding hands and hugging and touching each other. People often remark, “Jesus Christ, you guys, does it ever end?†We normally have lunch together in one or the other’s trailer.
Do you —
Mullally: And by “lunch†I mean “anal sex.â€
So in Kings of Summer you guys are only in one scene together and are kind of adversaries. Is it fun to be confrontational with each other?
Mullally: Yeah, it is fun. We’ve done that before, certainly in Parks and Rec. It’s funny that we both love it. I don’t think we have too much screen time together in Kings of Summer. We have a little bit, but not too much. It was just a fun movie in general to shoot.
You guys met working together. Do you think that’s helped? That you built working together into your relationship?
Mullally: I do think that kind of kick-started everything. Since we started acting together, I never felt shy performing in front of Nick like, Oh he’s never seen me perform. We never had that hurdle to get over. And there’s a lot of trust there, both in the relationship itself and just as actors.
Offerman: I would agree. I feel like that was what first attracted us to one another. That and Megan dangling the hopes of anal sex, eventual anal completion. For both of us, seeing how one another worked around the theater, the particular cut of one another’s jib, that we said, Oh, you’re my kind of theater actor, and then we said, Oh, you’re my kind of person, and ultimately, Oh, you’re my kind of butt fucker. And here we are.