The Greatest Love Story Ever Told Read online

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman

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  DUTTON and the D colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Chapter opening photographs by Emily Shur

  Illustration and lettering by Meryl Rowin

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  has been applied for.

  ISBN 9781101986677 (hardcover)

  ISBN 9781101986684 (ebook)

  While the authors have made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the authors assume any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for authors or third-party websites or their content.

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the authors’ alone.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  INTRODUCTION

  Blastoff!

  CHAPTER 1

  The Story Of How We Met

  BAKE AMAZING COOKIES BY NICK

  CHAPTER 2

  You’re Just Trying To Get In On The Action Because Your Family Is Like A Norma Rockwell Painting

  My Life as a Stripper BY MEGAN

  CHAPTER 3

  I Came Out of the Womb In A Top Hat And Tap Shoes

  SEX NINJA BY NICK

  CHAPTER 4

  You’re So Much Of A Whore

  DOMESTIC COMPETENCE BY NICK

  CHAPTER 5

  That’s Why We’re In Love

  PICTURES OF US!

  CHAPTER 6

  Paper Doll

  Booty Tips BY MEGAN

  CHAPTER 7

  It’s Hard To Complain With A Mouthful Of Puss / Couple Goals

  David Lynch: Palm Reader BY MEGAN

  CHAPTER 8

  I Would Have Had Such A Good Speech

  PUZZLES WE DID!

  CHAPTER 9

  Fresh To A Fault

  Acknowledgments

  Credits

  About the Authors

  Megan: All right! Bum-ba-da-dum! Blastoff! (Laughs) This is the introduction to our book. Carefully and meticulously handcrafted, word by word.

  Nick: Start your engines.

  M: This book consists of our time-tested insights into a number of topics, mostly in the areas of math and science.

  N: It’s riddled with sordid details.

  M: Sordid math details?

  N: That’s right.

  M: Like pi . . .

  N: There are specific algorithms we created concerning the relationship between a woman and a man . . .

  M: The birds and the bees.

  N: The body produces its own lubrication in many instances . . .

  M: Oh, wait a minute. This is the intro! Dude!

  N: That’s physics!

  M: No, no. Too soon! We do get into lubricants of various kinds. But not until later on in the book. Let’s not open with that.

  So, Nick, how would you describe this kick-ass sheaf?

  N: To my way of thinking, it’s an illustration of a relationship that the reader might find surprisingly normal. When all you have by which to judge a relationship are some grippingly cute Instagram videos, it might not occur to one that there’s a lot of banal real life.

  M: So this book is all the boring stuff? (Laughs)

  N: Yeah.

  M: Great! It’s going to sell like hotcakes.

  N: It’s more than just cuteness and puzzles with us. There is also a great deal of tedium.

  M: We wanted to make sure we got that down on paper.

  N: Yes. We intend to elaborate for your reading pleasure.

  M: Who would you say is the ideal audience for this book?

  N: Altar boys?

  M: (Laughs) This is a multigenerational, multigenderational, postmodernist deconstruction of the greatest love story ever told. Meaning, our relationship.

  N: It’s for readers young and old, male and female, as well as LGBTQ . . .

  M: . . . AI.

  N: AI. And also every race, religion, every creed, every political leaning will find something to learn about the body’s ability to lubricate itself.

  M: No! Well, all right . . . I have to concede, that is what the book is about.

  N: When you think about it, what we all have in common is a sort of assemblage of meat that has interesting nooks and crannies.

  M: Well, yeah, but then you have to find another meat assemblage with its own nooks and crannies, and then you have to start making the love.

  N: You’ve hooked me. If I were reading this introduction, I would now plunge ahead to chapter one.

  M: That’s the hook of the book. Meatloaf.

  N: Meatloaf . . . with gravy.

  M: Oh god. (Laughs) You’ve circled back around.

  So, yes, it is in fact a book about the love affair—the nonplatonic relationship—between Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally, married couple and holders of social media accounts. That’s probably our biggest claim to fame, right?

  N: Yes, that’s our thing.

  M: My whole thing is really just my Twitter.

  N: Two people who have thrilled millions upon social media. And also done some other things.

  M: And two people who are extremely devoted to athletics. Sports! Sports of all kinds.

  N: If you love sports . . .

  M: You’re going to fucking shit over this book.

  N: You’re going to blow a load.

  M: He’s back to the lubricants here.

  N: That just proves my point.

  M: We have groundbreakingly divided this searing examination of a relationship between two human beings into chapters with different subject matters and headings. It’s an oral history presented to you in an organized yet playful fashion, dotted here and there with photography and cute drawings.

  N: Before you dive in, make sure you’ve had a good meal. You’ll want to make sure you’re hydrated. And if you’re of age, a little bit of intoxication would not hurt the consumption of this tome. And then you may want to buckle up. Actually strap into a seat, because otherwise you might end up on the floor. If you’re wearing a hat, go ahead and remove it, because it’s guaranteed to fly off by the end of chapter three.

  M: All right . . . I don’t think we’ve oversold it.

  N: No, I don’t think that, of the many dangers facing us . . .

  M: I think we’ve exercised a good deal of restraint in our praise of our own book about ourselves.

  N: Antony and Cleopatra . . .

  M: Fuck off.

  N: Samson and Delilah . .
.

  M: Get lost.

  N: Bogart and Bacall . . .

  M: Never had a chance.

  N: Suck it.

  M: All right! See you guys in the book!

  N: See you there!

  Megan: Hi, Dad.

  Nick: Hi!

  M: We’re starting our book now. What day is it?

  N: Wednesday. It’s the eighth. Of February. Two thousand and seventeen.

  M: So let’s talk about how we met.

  N: The year was 2000.

  M: That’s right. I agree with you so far.

  N: The month was April? May? (Sounds unsure)

  M: (Firmly) April. I have the actual date written down at home in my old Filofax.

  N: I love the way that you take note of important moments and fare-thee-wells.

  M: And here we are, writing a book, so I guess the joke’s on . . . somebody?

  N: Do you think we have enough?

  M: (Laughing) The End. Actually, I think that we should just list a bunch of dates. That could be the book.

  N: And then I could record what I wrote on a Post-it about those dates?

  M: It could almost be like a Farmers’ Almanac.

  N: I had been in Los Angeles for a couple of years, and I was having a pretty lousy time with the transition between Chicago theater and a life in Los Angeles.

  M: How old were you when you moved to Los Angeles?

  N: It was Christmas of 1996, so I was twenty-six.

  M: I was twenty-six when I moved to Los Angeles. But we weren’t twenty-six at the same time.

  N: No. And that won’t be the last coincidental set of numbers you’ll read about.

  M: Not the first, nor the last.

  N: Not within these 1,200 pages.

  M: A 1,200-page comedy book about relationships.

  N: Wait until you get to volume three!

  I was depressed, I was drinking a lot. (Laughing) Drinking a lot and falling down with regularity.

  M: You were basically homeless. You were sleeping on a couch in someone’s basement.

  N: I had a domicile with a locking door. That’s a home.

  M: Mmm-hmm . . .

  N: There was a place to hang my hat.

  M: Where did you go to the bathroom?

  N: This is a comedy book.

  I told my friends—all three of them—“Guys, I need to do a play. That’s what’s going to save me.”

  M: We met doing a play called The Berlin Circle in 2000. How did you get involved in the play?

  N: Two of the friends I put the word out to were Nicole Arbusto and Joy Dickson, champion casting directors, who had put me in a movie. They knew me from a Mike Leigh play at the Odyssey Theatre. They also knew of Bart DeLorenzo and the Evidence Room theater company, and they said, “Bart’s doing this crazy play and has a part in it for you.”

  M: I had started my first band, Supreme Music Program, at that point. We had done this crazy performance art show at the Coast Playhouse in West Hollywood. The guy who coproduced it told me that some people he knew were doing a play downtown and they were hoping I might be in it. I read it, and I thought it was weird but interesting. This was between the second and third seasons of Will & Grace, during my four-month hiatus.

  N: What was the popularity of Will & Grace after two seasons?

  M: It was high. It was maybe at orange. It wasn’t quite at red alert. Maybe yellowish orange. But obviously I wasn’t any kind of a big sensation, since I was free to do an equity waiver play in downtown Los Angeles that nobody had ever heard of.

  N: Was there a moment in those first two seasons when it dawned on the collective Will & Grace family that “Oh, this is off the hook”?

  M: Will & Grace started off on Monday nights, and we didn’t have an overabundance of viewers. They moved it to Tuesday, and after the first season, they reran the whole season over the summer. Which is something they never do anymore, but it’s such a smart move. And all these new viewers found the show. Then they moved it to Thursday, and it became a big deal. But there was some foreshadowing, even when we were doing the pilot. Very early on, one of the big swinging dicks who worked at the network . . .

  N: Debra Messing?

  M: (Laughs) Hilarious. Don Ohlmeyer, who was working at the network or the studio or something—he was a good friend of O.J.’s, if that tells you anything. The cast was sitting outside on a break while we were shooting the pilot. So we’re sitting out there—Debra, Eric, Sean Hayes, and me—and Don Ohlmeyer saunters up to us. This was completely unprecedented in my experience as an actor, and I was thirty-nine at the time and had done a ton of TV pilots. The brass did not fraternize with the chattel. Debra, who smoked at the time, was going to have a cigarette, but she couldn’t find a match. Don Ohlmeyer handed her his solid-gold Cartier lighter. She lit her cigarette and went to hand it back, and he said, “Keep it.”

  (Both laugh)

  M: He walked away, and we all said, “Oh, this shit is getting picked up.”

  N: (Laughs again) It’s like a Selznick moment!

  M: And then he later ended up giving me a lighter for some reason, and also one of the guys—Eric, I think, but then I’m pretty sure Eric lost his. So sorry, Donny O., some of your many dollars went to naught. I think I still have mine somewhere. . . .

  N: (Narrator voice) That is only the first of many spoilers that will be revealed in this salacious journal. . . .

  M: So. The story of how we met. We were between the second and third seasons, and the show was pretty popular at that point, but it hadn’t taken on any sort of behemoth status.

  N: I suppose it’s worth mentioning that part of my philosophical makeup as a Chicago theater person—there’s this defense mechanism by which we look down at things like the television sitcom as so much drivel.

  M: May I interject? I remember walking down the sidewalk with a friend when I was in college at Northwestern, vowing passionately that I would NEVER do television, that it was beneath my dignity. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do—Shakespeare? In the Vatican?

  N: (Laughs)

  M: It’s so stupid. Because, PS, I love television, and I always have. I loved it when I was little, and I never stopped loving it, so why I had this bee in my bonnet about television is inexplicable.

  N: It has something to do with defending the highbrow choice of pursuing theater.

  M: Or movies. But of course that’s all changed now. Because the majority of the best material is now on television.

  How do we get back to our actual subject?

  N: They told me, as an incentive when they set up the audition for the play, that they had Megan Mullally from Will & Grace as their lead in the play. And I said, “I know you think that’s attractive, but I’m not interested in working with a person on television. I don’t own a television, and I haven’t for ten years.” I’d never even seen Friends or Seinfeld.

  M: Because you were sleeping on a couch in someone’s basement!

  N: I also didn’t have electricity. Is that important?

  M: (Laughs) Or indoor plumbing.

  N: So I auditioned for the play, and I got the part, even though we found out later that the director hadn’t wanted either one of us, for his own personal reasons.

  M: It was funny, because we were the only ones who weren’t members of the Evidence Room theater company. These two roles were offered to Nick and me, two big roles, and the director, who is clearly one sharp cookie, didn’t want either one of us. But he did want all of the other people in the cast, some of whom were literally terrible.

  N: The producer of the play and artistic director of the company, Bart DeLorenzo, was instrumental in convincing the director to hire both of us. When everyone showed up for the first read-through, I was actually there already. Part of the incentive for me, becaus
e I used to build all the scenery for my company in Chicago, the Defiant Theatre, was to help turn this beautiful warehouse building into a theater as we put up the show, so I signed on to help with that. I don’t think they paid me . . . I guess that was part of my rent for living in the basement of a married couple who were in the company.

  So I was there working, in a tool belt, building the walls, as we sat down for the first read-through. Apparently everybody was cowed by Megan because they were fans of her show, and rightly so.

  M: Or maybe they’d never seen it; they just knew I was on a television show, period.

  N: There was a weird standoffishness about it.

  M: There was that theater snobbishness, or maybe people were going to reject me before I could reject them . . . ?

  N: I think I’m more qualified in this instance, because I was one of them, one of the plebeians. And I think they were scared. It was the equivalent of “We’re going to sit down and read the play like we always do, but Madonna is going to come and have a role.”

  M: (Laughter) Oh no. Well, I guess everything is relative! But you asked me at what stage Will & Grace was at that point. It was April of 2000 at the time, and in July of 2000 I found out I was nominated for my first Emmy. So I guess it actually was big enough to create at least a minor ruckus in the equity waiver world. . . .

  N: So we did that first read-through. I love first read-throughs, because you get to find out—

  M: We were sitting in a big circle, sitting in chairs in a big circle.

  N: And if memory serves, if I may, I will say you were sitting at the noon position. I love first read-throughs because you get to find out what everybody’s vibe is, and who’s good, and who sucks. It’s fun—it’s like the first day of school. You find out who you’re going to be friends with. I remember whatever preconceived notions I had, I was just gobsmacked by how funny, sharp, and smart you are. Now, you know that you would have shown up prepared—you wouldn’t have just shown up and shit out a cold reading.

  M: No, Mother doesn’t do that.

  N: (Laughs) So it was an absolute delight, as a cast member, to see that we were going to have a very strong leader.

  M: And this is one of my few regrets—short-listed—I specifically remember I was wearing these giant red wooden platform sandals that had a rubber tread. I thought they were amazing. Several years later, I was cleaning out my closet, and our assistant at the time was there. I will not comment on his sexuality, but we got to that pair of shoes, and I said, “Should I keep these?” and he said, “Oh my god, NO!” And so I got really scared and threw them away.