As difficult as it will be for fans of Parks and Recreation when the final episode airs, at least supporters of the NBC half-hour comedy can take solace in knowing that it was executive producer/writer Mike Schur and executive producer/actor Amy Poehler’s decision to end it with a 13 episode seventh season that will allow all of the main characters the opportunity to say good-bye.
During the TCA winter press conference, the cast – Poehler, Chris Pratt, Aziz Ansari, Retta, Adam Scott, Jim O’Heir, and Retta – along with executive producer Schur talked about the show’s run and plans for this final season currently airing on Tuesday nights at 8pm ET/PT.
On why the series is ending after seven seasons:
Mike Schur: “Well, we started talking about it at the middle of season six, I think, like, ‘How do we feel? How do we feel?’ We pretty quickly came to the same exact conclusions. I usually started every year over the summer by pitching Amy like the first half of the season. Then somewhere in the middle of the year, I would pitch her the second half in a very rough outline.”
Amy Poehler: “And it’s truly one of the things I’m going to miss the most is like hearing what’s going to happen to Leslie next year. You know, like we would have a summer discussion about it and Mike would be like, ‘I think she’s going to run for office.’ I was like, ‘You knew this was going to happen,’ and I’m going to really miss that.”
Mike Schur: “So we just sort of came to the same conclusion which, as we were heading toward the second half of season six, it was I feel like it’s one more year, and I feel like it’s a short year. And I remember saying that and I remember Amy going like, ‘Yeah, I think that’s right.’ That’s just what we felt in our guts was the right move and just purely creatively.”
On plans for the finale:
Mike Schur: “Everyone is there at the end. I haven’t edited the episode yet, but the last moments of the show are everybody in the same place at the same time.”
On the final season’s time jump and how it affected the end of the series:
Mike Schur: “We didn’t really think about the end until after we had made the time jump, so it wasn’t like we had a plan. I mean, we’ve been in the position of writing season finales that could have served as series finales if we hadn’t gotten picked up, and fortunately, that was never the case.
We had the luxury of going into this season knowing it was the final season and having the whole thing laid out in front of us. So we didn’t really we didn’t have a different plan for how it was going to end. We didn’t come up with the idea for how it was going to end until we had already decided on the time jump and we were already in the middle of it.”
On the Kickstarter campaign for “Cones of Dunshire:”
Mike Schur: “I think it’s great, and I am going to definitely donate to it. Cones of Dunshire is very, very important to me personally. It’s not a joke. It’s very important to me and when we shot the first episode when Adam had to memorize all these ridiculous terms and gameplay terminology, we told the director of the episode, two-thirds jokingly, I said to her in our tone meeting that we had before the episode is shot I said, ‘This is the single most important thing we’ve ever done on the show.’ She kind of took it to heart in a very nice way, and she spent four hours shooting the first incarnation of it. It’s the most annoyed Poehler’s ever been, I think. Don’t you think?”
Amy Poehler: “I hate Cones of Dunshire.”
Adam Scott: “She had no…”
Amy Poehler: “So confusing.”
Adam Scott: “…patience.”
Amy Poehler: “It gives me a headache. It’s really cool that people are raising money for it, but I mean it’s just that it’s so many rules. And Ben explaining it to Leslie really condescendingly.”
Adam Scott: “Dave King, who was the writer on set that day, had just a stack of alternate jokes and alternate rules for the game. We kept shooting all these different rules and scenarios in the game. Amy was just like, ‘Why? Can we just stop?’ I mean, we spent so much time on the Cones of Dunshire and it was all worth it.”
Amy Poehler: “So make sure you contribute.”
On the evolution of Donna and Jerry over the series’ run:
Retta: “Well, when we first started, I remember my manager was like, ‘It’s a glorified extra, so if you don’t want to do it …’ I was like, ‘Dude, I’m not doing sh*t. I might as well be on a set and learn stuff.’ When I went in for my audition, I remember Mike – I tell this story all the time – asked me a question, and I’m good with the bullsh*t chat. You know, it’s the audition that’s hard for me.
As soon as he asked me a question, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m in like Flint.’ I just chatted, chatted, chatted. So I just took it as an opportunity to be on a set and learn, and then slowly they would trickle stuff to me, and I got to do more and more stuff to do. Was it 10 cast members in the beginning? It was a lot of people. It’s hard to learn about 10 people in the first five episodes. So you had to work your way down. And then I got to be Donna, so it was totally worth it. You get to a point when people are like, ‘Oh, I cannot wait to learn more about Donna.’ Then I was like, ‘Oh, I’m a little bit of an enigma.’ So I was cool with it.”
Jim O’Heir: “For me, it was kind of the same thing. I initially auditioned for Ron Swanson. Seems crazy now. Nick Offerman, who else could have done it? So my agents called, ‘Well, they want you to come in and do this other role. Would you do it?’ ‘Of course.’ Then when they said, ‘They’re making you an offer to come in and do it,’ they said the same thing. ‘We don’t want you to feel like an extra if you don’t want to do this.’ I said, ‘These are the people, Greg Daniels and Mike Schur, who have been on The Office. Look what happened to those ancillary characters.’ So to me, it was a no-brainer.
[…]It’s been a really fun thing I’ve gotten to play. To be honest, I think some of the other characters have gotten more protective of Jerry than I have because I remember an instance where Chris Pratt was like, ‘This might be too much’ for his character to do to me. I’m like, ‘No. It’s awesome.’ Anytime they could sh*t on me, I was all on board.
As Mike has always said, the reason it worked is that Jerry has the most amazing life out of all of them. He goes home to a family who adores everything that he does, crazily. He really has a lot of talent, a beautiful wife. So I think the two worlds combined, it was awesome. But I’ve enjoyed every moment of it. Say the word, and I’m back. I’ve gone to the sound stage every day since we’ve wrapped, so I’m just assuming something is going to happen.”
On embracing nostalgia for the series but not wallowing in it:
Mike Schur: “There’s certain things that are going to happen this season that are going to be a lot more enjoyable for people who have been close watchers of the series. But what’s important is to keep those things in the margins a little bit and make them more Easter-eggie and like little hidden treats than moving them to the center of the show, because the goal is always to do a good funny half hour of television that is relatable. I mean, this was something that’s sort of a mantra in the writers’ room up until the very end was like it is possible someone is watching this for the first time. Like it’s hard after 120 episodes or whatever to do an episode that can kind of sort of stand on its own because the characters have such complicated lives at this point.
We always tried to build the stories as just enjoyable stories so that if you happen to catch it on a plane or something and you’re like, ‘Oh, that seems funny. I like those people. I could follow that story, follow that narrative.’ So that was what we did. That’s what we always tried to do, and it gets harder and harder as you go along, but that was always the goal. There’s a couple like real nostalgia storylines where for various reasons a lot of people in the town of Pawnee will come back at once for some kind of event or something like that and you get a kind of like, ‘There’s that guy. There’s that guy. There’s that guy.’ So, there are things like that. But the goal is always to have the story stand on its own regardless of whether you’ve seen the show before, and hopefully we achieved that.”
On the reasoning behind setting a show in a parks and recreation department in the first place:
Mike Schur: “[…]Part of what makes Leslie Knope a very hopeful and optimistic character is that her chosen field was to preserve public spaces for the community. That was why Greg Daniels and I chose this as her job, because that’s the essence of if government can do good, that’s when it does good is when it finds ways to hold communities together and present ways for people to meet each other and shake hands and walk their dogs and get to know each other and know who their neighbors are and who the people in their town are. So it’s less important to me that people care about parks specifically than that people get the idea that, one, the idea of community is important.
I think it is, and I think it’s harder and harder to remember that as the days go on, and that also just in any institution like local government or national government or any institution where a lot of people are in the same place with opposing viewpoints, that it’s a lot better to have constructive dialogue and to have some sense of working together and some sense of compromise than it is to just retreat into your defensive positions and shout at each other, which seems to be the way that the country has gone, especially in the last 10 years or so.”
On why this busy cast has stuck with the show for seven years:
Chris Pratt: “Oh, man, it’s funny that you would ask that because it never once occurred to me that I was… I’ve never even asked myself the question. That would never happen. I would never f**king ever leave this show.”
Aziz Ansari: “We’re all leaving now.”
Chris Pratt: “What? What do you mean?”
Aziz Ansari: “We’re out.”
Chris Pratt: “I need to pay attention more. No, I think like, you know, I’ve been doing this business for 15 years and I’m realizing the things that really matter about what you’re doing, for me at least, just the relationships you have while you’re doing it. And for me, this show likely will…I mean, I hope that it could possibly – I could have the good fortune of finding another group of people like this…but I don’t expect I ever will. I don’t care how much money someone would offer me or what I could be offered, I wouldn’t abandon ship. There’s no f**king way.
This team was awesome and the process of making this show spoke to me and was so perfect for me [for] the way I like to work. Like it’s loose and it’s fun, and you get to try something new every take. And you have the opportunity of making Amy Poehler laugh or making Adam Scott laugh or making these professional people who are professional.
I don’t know. I never would have thought. I didn’t even know that was an option.”
On Chris Pratt’s favorite ‘Andy Dwyer’ era:
Chris Pratt: “I love living in the pit. That was awesome. Living in the pit was amazing and having dirt fights and rock fights with bums. It’s like being dirty, that was just the best for me.”
Amy Poehler: “And jumping in it, doing your own stunts.”
Chris Pratt: “Doing stunts into it.”
Mike Schur: “We had a joke that I think we cut that you had become like kind of good friends with some gophers. I think we cut all of the stuff. Yeah, maybe some of it was left in. At one point, there was a long run where he was talking about these gophers down there and he kept talking about them, and then he started referring to them by name. And it was like – I am sure we cut all of this – but it was like they were his buddies.”
Chris Pratt: “Associates. My associates. ‘Friends’ is weird. My associates.”
