Played by Helen Slayton-Hughes

You'd never know it, but Ethel Beavers, the Pawnee courthouse’s deadpan stenographer, had a number of lovers throughout her life. None were more important than Bill Murray’s Mayor Gunderson.

“I had to give a speech about my ex-lover, but nobody told me who it was and the coffin where I was supposed to kiss my ex-lover was empty,” Helen Slayton-Hughes, who played Ethel, said of the season 7 episode “Two Funerals,” when the producers finally revealed Gunderson’s face.

“So it was just pretend and I thought that was the end of that scene, but a couple of days later they called me and said, ‘We need you very much to come in tomorrow and reshoot that scene.’ I felt terrible because I thought I must've done it very badly. Why would we have to reshoot a whole scene? And then I went in the next day and there was Bill Murray.”

Series creator Mike Schur and his team first tried to fill the role with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who turned it down because he was still serving as governor of California, and they weren’t sure if Murray would be able to do it.

“They explained to me that they couldn't shoot the whole scene until they knew he was available at the last minute. I was thrilled,” Slayton-Hughes says. “And then I got to be hugged by Bill Murray for a long long time.”

It seems Ethel also had a crush on Ron, based on this tidbit the actress offered: “I do remember at one time being kissed by Rob Lowe in between scenes. He got very passionate to be funny and kissed Ethel Beavers twice. Somebody said, 'How did that feel? Did you love that?' I remember saying, 'Oh, I wish it had been Ron Swanson.' It was only a commentary on the fact that Rob Lowe was much too young for me but Ron Swanson, he got a little closer to me in age.”