Chris Pratt recalls 'Parks and Recreation' joke he had to take stand against

In his book Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation, Jim O’Heir recalls a heartwarmingly supportive conversation with co-star Chris Pratt.

O’Heir and Pratt played Jerry Gergich and Andy Dwyer in Parks and Recreation, respectively, and talked about the jokes on the show about Jerry.

“I remember you, particularly more than some others, being worried about some of the Jerry bits being…mean,” O’Heir says to Pratt in the book. “I remember you saying, ‘Jimmy, you okay with these?’… Do you remember that feeling at all?”

“I do, I do,” Pratt answers.

The Guardians of the Galaxy star explained: “I was concerned in some of those moments because I care about you and I love you, and I knew that there were some jokes that were, like, mean. But meaner than they were funny. If it’s a joke, it’s funny. But if it’s mean for the sake of being mean, well, I’m not a huge fan of mean-spirited humor, and I just wanted to check in on you.”

“There was one time where I put my foot down on something,” Pratt recalled in the book. “There was that time you use the printer and it says something like, ‘Jerry sucks’ on a piece of paper, and I just said, ‘I don’t think that’s funny. I don’t know about it.’ For the most part, I rolled with it, but there were a couple times where I think it went too far and I was concerned for you.”

O’Heir then shared how touched he was that his co-stars checked up on him, saying, “Just so you know, that meant the world to me. You checked in on me, [Amy Poehler] checked in on me, and it’s not like I expected everyone to check in on me, but the fact that you did was so special…You have the biggest heart, and I don’t mean it from a medical perspective.”

Jim O’Heir’s book Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation is now available for purchase.