Parks And Recreation star Jim O’Heir has revealed Chris Pratt once caused a “big old stir” with a nude prank behind the scenes of the hit sitcom.
Jim is currently promoting his new book about his time on Parks And Rec, and spoke to Decider about an incident that caused a fair bit of alarm among the higher-ups at NBC.
“Chris Pratt was doing the scene where he walks in, he’s trying to get Ann Perkins [Rashida Jones’ character] back, you know, Andy is trying to get Anne back,” he recalled.
“So, Pratt did a bit where Amy [Poehler] opened the door and he’s just butt naked. It was hysterical. And we’re all adults. There was nothing sexual about it. It was just a funny bit.”
It seems not everyone saw the funny side, though, as the next day when Chris arrived on set, he discovered there were “lawyers at his trailer”.
“It caused a big old stir,” Jim continued.
Chris previously spoke about the moment during an interview on The Graham Norton Show, revealing in 2015: “I was wearing skin-coloured underwear and I wasn’t getting quite the right reaction I was hoping for.
“It was late in the day so I decided to improvise and drop my trousers for the take… [Amy Poehler’s] reaction was great! It was the take they used!”
The Marvel star added: “I got a letter from NBC’s HR department that said, ‘There is protocol about nude scenes. This is not a joke and you are being reprimanded and you can’t go around telling people about this like some kind of joke!’. I’ve framed the letter!”
In fact, the aftermath of the Chris Pratt debacle meant that the Parks And Rec team became more cautious, meaning one proposed bit that Jim had planned was given the thumbs down.
He said: “We [were] doing a scene where Jerry says he was mugged. He actually wasn’t, because he fell into a creek trying to get a burrito, but because he knew they would mock him for that, he said he was mugged.
“And now he’s got to do a presentation where he’s talking about the fishing things in the department. And during the presentation, he bends over, his pants split and he farts, and it’s silly and funny.”
Jim and the team did “a whole bunch of takes”, that left them laughing in such an “out of control” way, that Amy Poehler told him: “I’m done. You can’t make me laugh anymore. You can’t.”
“I thought, ‘Okay, that sounds like a challenge’,” he revealed. “So, I went to the wardrobe people, and I said, in this next one, because they pre-split the pants when you bend over, they split. I said, ‘I’m not gonna wear any underwear, so that these guys are just gonna get a big old eye full of hairy Jim O’Heir butt’.
“I start doing the scene, and all of a sudden I hear ‘cut’, and the director comes running in, and he pulls me aside and goes, ‘Do you have any underwear on? Because Jim, we can’t do this. We’re already dealing with lawyers for Pratt.’
“And he ultimately was right, but it kind of killed me, because I think my goal was always to get them to laugh. I mean, the cast and the crew. There’s nothing better for an actor than when you break your cast and crew, because we have egos.”
HuffPost UK has contacted NBC and Chris Pratt’s publicity team for comment.
Parks And Recreation ran for seven seasons between 2009 and 2015, racking up a string of Emmy nominations and boosting the profiles of cast members including Rashida Jones and Aubrey Plaza.
Jim O’Heir’s book Welcome To Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, And Parks And Recreation is out now.
