Nick Offerman has heard what conservative commentators think of his gay love story arc on “The Last of Us,” and he is not losing sleep over it.
On a recent podcast, the actor was shown a clip of Ben Shapiro dissecting the acclaimed episode, in which Offerman’s character Bill falls in love with another man during a pandemic.
Shapiro framed the storyline as an attack on masculinity, mocking the idea of “Ron Swanson” in a same-sex relationship. Offerman’s reaction was blunt.
“Holy s**t,” he said, watching the clip. “First of all, was it necessary to do that at 1.5 times speed? I mean, that poor guy. What? That’s crazy. I don’t, that’s the most Ben Shapiro I’ve ever seen.”
He continued, “I’m embarrassed for his reading comprehension. I think he got eight things wrong in his recap, besides his rampant homophobia.”
Offerman said he had already turned the moment into material for his stand up tour before this conversation.
“I would preface it by saying, I was going to write a joke about this, but Ben Shapiro questioned my masculinity, and I can’t write a better joke than that.”
Asked what he makes of commentary like Shapiro’s, Offerman pointed to a media ecosystem rather than one individual.
“But it’s really upsetting to understand how powerful that probably is and how many people it’s reached,” he said. “It’s powerful. That’s like a Joe Rogan clip or something. That’s just so dumb and so wrong.”
He added that he tries not to engage directly with figures like Shapiro or Tucker Carlson, comparing the impulse to respond to a trap set by billionaires who profit off outrage.
“I think Elon wants me to go on social media and snark back at all of them, and then suddenly I’m 90 and I haven’t read any Wendell Berry poems on the radio.”
Offerman noted the episode, written by Craig Mazin and directed by Peter Hoar, was widely praised on its own terms, calling it “one of the greatest love stories of the year, if not more,” and pointed out it earned him an Emmy.
