Jim O’Heir recounts several memorable — and terrible — moments from his time on Parks & Rec in his new tell-all book Welcome to Pawnee. But there’s one unforgettable story that he made sure to include, fortunately for fans: That iconic kiss he shared with Aubrey Plaza on Late Night With Seth Meyers.
O’Heir did not hold back when he recounted that unbelievable moment to DECIDER over a recent Zoom call.
“I always say she’s so smart, because it wouldn’t be funny to do that with Adam [Scott] or [Chris] Pratt or even Nick [Offerman],” he said. “It’s funny to get the fat, white, old guy.”
The Parks & Rec cast was visiting Seth Meyers‘ show that evening to celebrate the series finale in 2015. According to the actor, the evening’s broadcast was thoroughly planned out but Plaza approached him with something else in mind during the final commercial break.
“The plan is, when we come back, Pratt is going to be on guitar, and we’re all going to sing ‘Bye, Bye, Lil Sebastian,’” O’Heir explained. “And Aubrey leans over during the commercial break and she goes, ‘Hey, do you want to make out during the song?’ Yeah, of course I do, but what? I don’t know what the hell she’s thinking. I just know, my God, that sounds funny.”
And it is funny. You can tell that Plaza has something mischievous up her sleeve as they all bid farewell at the end of the show. They wasted no time at all before embracing each other and launching into a passionate kiss as their co-stars began singing “Bye, Bye, Lil Sebastian.”
What makes the scene even funnier is watching Pratt strum away at his guitar with no clue about what’s happening behind him, even as the audience and their co-stars become increasingly scandalized as they watch O’Heir and Plaza fall to their knees while making out.
As he notes in the book, O’Heir explained that he tried to use the tips Rob Lowe once gave him — since “Rob Lowe has kissed everybody. I’ve kissed next to nobody” — when it comes to doing a kissing scene with a co-star: Go in close-mouthed, don’t introduce tongue until she does, and let her take “all control.” But Plaza apparently didn’t give him much of a chance.
“Let me tell you, we went full force,” he said over Zoom. In Welcome to Pawnee, O’Heir is a lot more explicit about just how far that kiss went: “Aubrey had her tongue down my throat so fast that I had no choice but to ‘follow suit’ and ‘say hello’ with mine.”
O’Heir was fully aware that the bit came as a huge shock to their co-stars. “Retta is dying, Amy [Poehler] is disgusted,” he told DECIDER. “It’s very incestuous. It’s Jerry and April full-on making out.”
It was such a spectacle TMZ was waiting for him outside of his hotel to interrogate him on their relationship status. While it may have made some people “totally uncomfortable,” O’Heir maintains that it’s still “a funny bit.”
“I love it,” he said, before jokingly adding, “That’s the day she really became a woman.”
Scroll up to check out that unbelievable moment.
O’Heir’s new book Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation hits the shelves Nov. 19.
