Last week the AV Club posted an interview with Nick Offerman that I really wanted to read completely but it was like 18,000 words long or something, so I gave up a few paragraphs in, thinking I’d go back and finish it over the weekend, though I never did.

Well apparently I missed out, because buried deep within the interview was Offerman’s telling of something he did early in his career in an attempt to get people in the entertainment industry to view him as something other than, well, Ron Swanson types. Hint: it involves a headshot and giant foam penis. Oh, and there’s a pic, and it’s incredible.

Reports the AV Club:

It’s funny, the flipside to that is, once I got into the business, immediately in Chicago—when I met with agents and people taking headshots and all that—they immediately started to categorize me and tell me what I was. When I first met with agents, they said, “Okay, you’re going to play plumbers and mechanics and bus drivers and farmers. Go.” And I was like, “Man… Fuck you. I can play anything, you son of a bitch!” My response to that was to get this three-quarter headshot—like, knees to head—with this huge foam latex cock about the size of my forearm and fist that I’d made for a play. I got a headshot taken with this thing hanging out of my fly and just looking defiantly at the camera. I sent it to everybody in town. [Laughs.] That was my response to being told I was gonna be playing bus drivers: “Oh yeah? Have you seen my dick?” And wonderfully, two people in town got it and thought it was really funny, and they put me in plays in their theaters. I’m gonna go see if I can find this photograph. One of the good things is, I’m super-young. I’m like 22 or 23 in this photo. I’ll be interested to get [my publicist’s] opinion on publishing a photo of me with a huge cock sticking out of my pants, but I believe I’m all for it.

Are you ready for this?

Are you sure?

REALLY SURE?

Well, okay…

The man is a goddamn national treasure. But we already knew that, didn’t we?

(HT: Ned Hepburn. Lead pic via a reader who tweeted it at me whose name I can’t remember, bottom pic via the AV Club)