‘Parks and Recreation actor’ Nick Offerman says he and his friends spent an entire night in jail after being mistaken for robbers

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Nick Offerman recalled the time he spent an entire night in jail (image via Getty)

Parks and Recreation actor Nick Offerman recently shared an episode about his run-in with the cops back in college. The 53-year-old comedian, who appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Wednesday, April 17, 2024, to promote his film, Civil War, reflected on his youth during the interview.

According to the Last of Us actor, he and his friends were smoking m*rijuana behind a community theater when they noticed flashes of light coming towards them. When the group realized it was the police, they began tiptoeing away, fleeing as the authorities chased after them.

"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 shared.
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It turned out that a nearby restaurant had been robbed, and police were looking for the culprits, wrongfully arresting Offerman and his group for suspiciously fleeing.

"It turned out that a restaurant had been robbed of a bunch of cash up the creek. And they naturally saw these kids running, and we spent the whole night in jail," Offerman recalled.

Nick Offerman was arrested on a different occasion for shoplifting

Hailing from Illinois, Nick Offerman is best known for playing Ron Swanson on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation. Swanson is the deadpan superior of Leslie Knope at the Pawnee Parks and Recreation Department. His work on the show earned him several awards, including the Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Comedy.

Since then, he has appeared in acclaimed series like Fargo and The Last of Us. Offerman has also worked on films such as The House of Tomorrow and has voice credits in Gravity Falls, The Lego Movie franchise, and Sing films.

Sharing about the jail experience, Nick Offerman added that although he and his friends were released in the morning, the incident did not end there. When the group walked out of the station, they were disappointed that their friend, Greg, had to throw away the pot. Offerman said,

"‘He (Greg) reached into his crotch and pulled it out and was like, ‘You think I’m gonna throw this thing away?’ So we smoked m*rijuana first thing in the morning in Urbana in front of the sheriff’s station."
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Offerman was arrested on a separate occasion for shoplifting eight Ronnie Millsap tapes. The incident nearly got him expelled from college, leaving him terrified.

"t 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," Nick told Jimmy Kimmel.

The comedian eventually made it to the show just "12 minutes before curtain." A friend bailed him out, and the assistant director for the production, who was a friend, also helped the actor.


Nick Offerman is currently promoting the dystopian flick Civil War, where he portrays the President of the United States. The film centers around a team of journalists traveling across the United States as the country is engulfed in a civil war. It stars Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Sonoya Mizuno.

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The film premiered at South By Southwest on March 14, 2024, and was theatrically released in the United States and the United Kingdom on April 12, 2024. It has received positive reviews, with many praising Nick Offerman's performance as POTUS.

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Edited by Babylona Bora
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