Rashida Jones revealed that she and her Parks and Recreation cast members were seemingly at risk of not returning to Pawnee nearly “every single season.”
On Monday’s installment of the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast, Jones regaled host Conan O’Brien of the struggles she and her fellow cast members experienced at the network, per The Daily Beast. While O’Brien praised the sitcom as having “bloomed, really, in such a lovely way,” he noted that “few people know” that the sitcom “was kind of on the bubble a bit at NBC.”
Jones, who played Ann Perkins in 100 episodes of the now famed series, added, “The whole time. Not even a bit. Every single season, we were like, this is it. They’re not gonna want us back.”
She even recalled the show being canceled at one point, but the president of NBC “got off the plane and changed his mind.”
” It was like, ‘Eh, don’t cancel it yet, I guess,’” she continued. “It was not really a thing at all.”
She cited the work of critics who “championed” the series, but highlighted that they “never succeeded” in terms of ratings, and that they “were just holding on for dear life, hoping we got to do more.” However, Jones claimed that this may have led, in part, to why the show “was so good.”
“There was no stardom,” she explained, referring to the cast of Amy Poehler, Aubrey Plaza, Aziz Ansari, Chris Pratt, Nick Offerman, and Rob Lowe. “It wasn’t infiltrated by any outside feelings about us. People kind of liked us if they knew who we were. And besides that, we just had fun together.”
Although Jones is aware that the show is “kind of iconic now” and is cemented as “one of those great comedies of that time,” she reflected on the fact that they “didn’t feel that way” at the time while speaking with O’Brien. However, at a 10th anniversary reunion event five years ago, Jones recalled feeling “like the Beatles,” as fans were “screaming so loud.” Meanwhile, she and her former co-stars were crying, as she recalled with a chuckle that they “had never been in a room where anybody cared.”
Jones iterated similar sentiments in a recent oral history of the show, published in The Independent in honor of the 15th anniversary since the show’s premiere.
“There were some critics who championed us but the [viewing] numbers were not an indication that it was widely watched. It really took streamers to make the show as beloved as it is now,” she said.
In the same oral history, Poehler, who starred as Leslie Knope, revealed that she and Offerman “would end a scene by making out,” teasing that “the crew would hate it.”
“Everybody hated it and it really made us laugh,” she remembered. “It was like watching your aunt and uncle making out or something.”
Parks and Recreation is streaming on Peacock.
