‘Sovereign,’ Michael Flynn Jr. Meme, Trump

Writer/director Christian Swegal’s “Sovereign” dramatizes the true story of the final days of sovereign citizens Jerry and Joe Kane before their 2010 flight from law enforcement ended in a violent exchange of gunfire. The film fits thematically into a cinematic continuum with recent releases like “Civil War” and “Warfare,” exploring the complexities of American life and belief systems at a time of heightened tribalism. But for fans of its star Nick Offerman, Jerry Kane also aligns with a handful of other roles — including in “Civil War”, where he played the President — where the outspoken progressive has portrayed characters with conservative or extreme right-wing ideologies.

Of course, Offerman is best known for playing Libertarian Ron Swanson for seven seasons on the NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation.” But the juxtaposition between — and conflation of — the actor’s personal and professional lives has only grown more complicated since the show went off the air, not only offering Offerman more of these roles in both TV and film but forcing him to defend the highly meme-able Swanson from being co-opted by people with views the character would vociferously not share. Recently, for example, he felt compelled to respond to a post by Michael Flynn Jr., son of retired Lieutenant General and former Presidential candidate Michael Flynn, after he used a gif of Offerman as Ron to express criticism about Pride month.

Gathering in the long shadow of Swanson, this crop of (distantly) similar performances, including in HBO’s “The Last of Us,” Ava DuVernay’s “Origin,” Craig Gillespie’s “Dumb Money,” and this summer’s “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” evidences the actor’s aptitude for inhabiting characters like these with a complexity that belies the great divide between their values and his own. Ahead of the July 11 release of “Sovereign,” Offerman spoke to IndieWire via Zoom about the opportunities he’s been given as a result of being identified on screen with conservative roles, while maintaining an active and public role as a champion of liberal causes.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

IndieWire: “Sovereign” presents Jerry’s belief system subtly, almost seductively. What, if anything, was the core quality that you zeroed in on when you started to build your performance?

Nick Offerman: In this time in our society … we’re so divided, people are so emotionally biased, based in some part on misinformation. To see this really sympathetic portrayal of these victims of this kind of misinformation, and victims of the way our government is exclusionary toward the working class, like the way a family can end up homeless if you just roll the dice in the wrong way with your mortgage or medical bills, I said to my agent, “I think I have to do this movie.” Because my beliefs are sincerely rooted in a flawed human’s attempts at decency — with equality for all, and discriminating against no one. And even the people who are actually running the country right now, telling us that the floodwaters stopped rising because of prayer, even those people, I want them to be healthy, and happy, and have good, productive lives. That’s the marked difference, I think, in my political ideology, is there are a group of people who want everyone to have the same dignity and rights to life — even the assholes.

It’s disappointing to think that philosophy is considered transgressive these days.

In wanting to be part of the medicinal force that is the arts, to use what powers I may or may not have in storytelling, when I finished reading the script, it made me think about the January 6 rioters … sure there are a lot of actual Nazis, but there are also a lot of Trump voters that are very good citizens who are getting bad information. And people are using our broken system for their profit, to such an extent that I feel like this film is an honest portrayal to humanize that struggle that people undergo.

You compassionately describe Jerry and Joe as victims. But he increasingly uses these philosophical beliefs to validate his own shortcomings. How do you draw the line where his victimhood ends and his culpability begins?

Christian [Swegal] grew up with a Sovereign citizen in his family. The movie is inspired by the true story of Jerry and Joe Kane, but there are scenes drawn from Christian’s own experience as well. He’s done such a beautiful job of embroidering the two together, and I remember specifically saying to him, at a certain point, “How do I justify Jerry? Is he a charlatan? Is he a mountebank? And how much of this is belief?” And he said, “In the case of people who take these ideologies to the mat — who literally die on these hills — they often cross the line into mental illness.” And that is the case with Jerry, that he got around to the delusional sensibility that these things are true, and that he is a victim who will defeat the government that is duping all the rest of us.

That was completely necessary for me to hear from the writer/director. It made sense. And again, it brings up the very interesting conundrum in our country, that religion is being leaned on so heavily in the public arena where we’re officially not supposed to have religion. We’re supposed to all get together and make our government without the church impinging upon the state, but nonetheless, so much legislation and so much policy. Again, it brings me back to what’s going on in Texas right now: Somehow when our elected leaders fail, they somehow continue to get a pass time after time by saying, “I know you elected me to do this job, but I happen to be on vacation, so speak to God. That’s what I do.”

Their constituents are out of luck.

For Jerry, Christianity is part of his ideology, but I think it’s all part of a larger scapegoating that human weakness is susceptible to, where it’s like, “Well, it can’t be me in my failings. It has to be the government. It has to be God’s plan.”

You are outspoken as a progressive on social media. But you have certainly in recent years taken on roles that fall into a similar wheelhouse as this. Is there a commonality, or a psychology that you’ve identified in some of these more right-wing, reactive characters that has helped you dial into them so effectively?

I’ve been asked this a couple of times recently, when I played the president in Alex Garland’s “Civil War.” I am a well-fed, middle-aged white guy who went to college, so, sadly, there are a lot of roles for me, both in the protagonist and villain categories. I don’t seek out anything in this particular wheelhouse. I don’t feel like I have a bailiwick. Or if it is, it may include roles of this ilk, but also plumbers, lumberjacks, dads, farmers. But to think about why people continue to want to see me in this, I don’t know the answer to that because I’m not the discerning eye choosing me.

But I do know that I’m grateful to be given the opportunity, because the mistakes of our civilization are so frustrating on a daily basis. We’re just sprinting to hell in a handbasket at the moment. We’re literally despoiling our public lands. I mean, just as fast as they can hand over the work of our hands to billionaire oligarchs is just really frustrating. And the way that I don’t go on a killing spree, or go burn someone’s building down, or blow up a bunch of embarrassing Cybertrucks, is to say, “OK, look at my next script.” When I tour your town and I sing a song about maybe we shouldn’t be discriminatory to others, if I only sway one person, it’s so worth it to me. And that’s how I maintain my sanity. And so I feel like, if somehow because I played Ron Swanson, I can bring eyeballs to a project that wouldn’t necessarily otherwise be there, maybe just slowly, that’s part of the erosion of the bigotry in this country.

I imagine many of those downstream opportunities came as a result of your success playing Ron. It must be frustrating to see people co-opt him in contexts that contradict his values, much less yours.

Ron Swanson, a wonderful creation from much more brilliant minds than my own, people hold up for the wrong reasons, and take their own reading of this true Libertarian who was cool with everybody. And they somehow say, “Well, he had a shotgun, so he must be one of us.” Like, dumb people insist that Ron Swanson would’ve voted for Trump. And I don’t deign to answer myself. I take it to Mike Schur, the main creator of Ron, and he said, “Swanson would’ve despised Trump, because Ron loved capitalism. And Trump made the stupidest move you could make as a capitalist, which is to go into public service.” He would think he’s an absolute idiot. He would also despise him because he’s disrespectful to women and many others. And that’s just an example of all the people and value sets that Ron would despise, because Ron is a good person.

How, then, do you link your own beliefs with the roles you choose and work you do?

I enter into every conversation with fallibility. I don’t know everything, or near an approximation of it, which is why I remain curious. There are groups of people who are being bombed, and we’re sending people money and bombs so that they can kill other people’s children. I want to side with the children. I approach every issue with that sensibility. When Zelensky came to the White House, this guy who’s a sitcom star who became the leader of Ukraine just unmanned our President and our Vice President. He made them look like simpering schoolboys, just by exhibiting the values that we Americans purport to espouse. All he did was behave with character and allow them to completely humiliate themselves on such a public stage.

By doing a film like [“Sovereign”], I just recognized the value in trying to examine the humanity of all of these people, including the shitty people running our country. I invite people to look at them and say, “Do you really think they are interested in taking care of you, and the good of our communities? Is that really what Elon is after?”

You express such gratitude for these opportunities, but professionally speaking, is that success ever for you a double-edged sword in going, “As good as I am at doing this, I might like to play somebody who’s maybe more openly a little more progressive than some of these characters?”

I’m over the moon with people who are really receiving [“Sovereign”] generously. But it kind of makes me pull my hair out that a lot of people’s reviews open with “Nick Offerman takes Ron Swanson completely to…” Fill in the blank, as though my entire career is some variation on the theme of Ron Swanson. I know actors that have worse problems than that. But the interesting thing is, and part of my gratitude is founded upon the fact that I’m not Ryan Gosling. I don’t have my pick of all of the things that are going on. I’m not a top-tier talent according to the business. I am so grateful that I keep getting material that I am inspired by. I never am made to take a job in order to pay my mortgage, where I’m like, “Well, this is just a good medium superhero thing.” I don’t have to do that. Because I base my choices on good writing, I’m confident that it’s not going to hurt me. So I feel so lucky I keep getting these really plum roles.

I took [MSNBC anchor] Lawrence O’Donnell to see the premiere [of “Sovereign”] at the Tribeca Film Festival, because as I suspected, he was over the moon about the film. And so gratifyingly, he said that he sees it in the sequence of “Civil War,” “Warfare,” and then this movie. And he said, “It’s trying to do the same thing.” To be part of that conversation, and to be in something that Lawrence thinks was a good job, that’s all the approbation I need, where I’m like, “OK, great. For better or worse, for whatever faults I have in my personal life, I feel like I’m making the right choices, as far as being part of the medicinal side of storytelling.”

At a very tribal time, you’ve navigated a narrow line between being publicly open about your political beliefs and working across a broad spectrum of roles. Does it become difficult to assess when the time is right for you to speak out about something?

Social media used to be a lot of fun. I mean, I met one of the greatest friends of my life, James Rebanks and his family, and we own a beef herd together in England. And now, basically since Trump arrived, and the MAGA sensibility, where people use social media to troll and for violence of many colors, I feel like it’s an exercise in futility. I feel like if I’m loud on social media, it’s preaching to the choir. So I’m going to continue to fill my work with my ideology, either overtly or indirectly, like playing a MAGA plumber in “Origin” or whatever.

I do very much curb myself, and I generally will only get loud on social media, [like] in the case of that thing recently with Michael Flynn Jr., where it was using my image and my character for hate. I’m going to say something about that. But even that, it’s just dumb, because a troll like that guy, that’s all he wants to do is use my platform to create clickbait and get more people signed on to take his supplements.

One of the things that you’ve been extraordinarily good at in your roles is presenting what appears to be a very traditional kind of masculinity, and then subverting it. You were very quick to credit Mike Schur about Ron Swanson’s reaction to Trump, but do you feel like you’re able to take any credit for that subversion, even if it’s just in choosing the roles?

I don’t feel like I need to take any credit, per se. The arc of my own messaging was so exponentially serviced by my big break in the role of Ron Swanson, where suddenly I was invited to colleges to perform my stand-up, which was not something I did. I was a theater actor. I wasn’t a comedian. But I am really thrilled at the opportunity to go speak to thousands of college students, so I began to write material and then I began to write books. And here I am putting my sixth book out this fall. What I had to learn, and I think what any successful human has to learn, is that what you have is good enough. Who I am is good enough, warts and all. If anybody has been moved by my writing, it’s a fucking miracle. But the fact that I can bring my shovel to the campaign of these great artists who make these shows. I know that I’m never going to create a TV series, but I’m so grateful that I can be of service to the incredible talents that do.

I feel like that gratitude and humility, again, are both these kinds of “traditional” masculine traits.

So it’s funny, I never realized before I got cast as Ron Swanson that I would be accused of masculinity. I knew I was a guy, I was a carpenter, I was an athlete, and I am built in a certain way. But suddenly, people were like, “Speak to us as the paragon of masculinity. What are your thoughts?” And I was like, “Oh, fuck. I didn’t realize I would somehow become the default, the go-to guy.” And so I looked around and said, “Well, I think, forget John Wayne. I think boys can make cupcakes and girls can swing a hammer.” But I think what you’re looking at as masculinity, in a lot of ways, is just character or decency that everyone should aspire to. And in terms of masculine traits versus feminine, sure, if you want to be a protector, then do it with decency and with empathy. Try to hug someone before you punch them, is my policy.

“Sovereign” is now playing in select theaters.