Chris Pratt on Parks and Recollection!
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Hey everybody, Rob Lowe here, and I have got something very special for you. We know how much you love my literally podcast episode with the wonderful Chris Pratt and the conversations we had about parks and recreation. So now Chris Pratt is joining Alan Yang and I on Parks and Recollection.

And let me tell you, it's awesome. The three of us talk about the hilarious Parks and Rec season one finale rock show. One of the great episodes ever. You'll hear all things mouse rat. We're going to talk about Chris's audition, which was based on some real life stoner video game sessions, as it turns out. And Chris is going to tell us about how he built that character. And here's a hint. It's not all improvisation. Check out this clip.

Do you remember your audition? Yeah. Oh, I do. I remember my auditions at CBS Radford. I remember walking up to, you know, I was supposed to play this guy who's like a loser boyfriend, rock and roll guy who's kind of a scum. You know, he's the, you know, impetus for and getting into the parks department, but then kind of disappears. And everybody knew that when they pitched it to me, they were like, it's six episodes. It'll be done. It's a six episodes of TV special. Great.

So I like, I made, I was very intentional about staying up almost the whole night before to just really come in and be like a wreck. Cause I thought that would be helpful. And then, so I went in and I remember there was an actor that I had worked with. I won't say who it was, but that I'd worked with before who was auditioning for something. And he was like, Jesus, man, what's wrong with you? Like, you look terrible. I was like, yeah, I kind of,

stayed up was like kind of trying to do you know haha haha trying to do this method thing staying up he's like method more like meth head and i was like what a dick like it was like one of those moments like i went into i was like oh it doesn't make a mistake i shouldn't have i shouldn't have stayed up now i look like i'm a method and then uh i walked into the to the lobby and there was everyone there including

Uh, you know, people that I recognize that were comedic stars, it's like, oh man, here we go. The nerves were kicking in and I went into the audition and for the audition, they, we just started talking. And I remember at the time I was playing a lot of Grand Theft Auto and I had my friend Curtis's house and a big funny thing that we would do in Grand Theft Auto is they gave us cheat codes and you could use a cheat code to spawn a boat.

and then take the boat around. But if you spawn the boat in the middle of the city, a boat could just fall into the road. So we should walk around. We were a little stone and we walk around and just drop boats. We thought that was hilarious. And I thought that would be a really funny thing for Andy to be doing. So in the audition, I just immediately started improv-ing and pretended like when she came home from work that I was playing Grand Theft Auto, dropping boats. And, um, that was

I was getting a big laugh. I remember watching your audition. I remember watching your tape. I knew it was like, Oh, this, you know, we watched a few tapes. It's like, yeah, I mean, this guy is so naturally funny. And again, it was probably like, this guy's a little bit too likable, but let's just cast him and see what happens. And then we just rewrote the character entirely. It's like, why not? Right. It's like, let's just, I mean, comparing this to like that version of Andy to,

Obviously later in the run, it's so funny, man, because he just becomes the most likable character. He's just an idiot who always has good intentions. Incompetent and confident. The best. That combination. Supremely confident, yeah. That's a great combination. You can't go wrong comedically with that. No, you're right. The irony is built in. Every time he smiles, it's funny because you're like, you have no reason to be smiling. Idiot.

Join us over on Parks and Recollection to hear the whole episode and more good stuff to come on Literally.