Jim O’Heir Reveals What Goes on in the Parks and Rec Cast’s Group Text — and Who Sent the ‘Cutest Picture You’ve Ever Seen’

Jim O’Heir is pulling back the curtain on what really goes on in the Parks and Recreation cast’s group text — and it’s just as sweet as you’d expect.

Fans of the beloved NBC series will remember O’Heir as Jerry Gergich, an employee of the show’s fictional Indiana town’s Parks Department who was frequently the butt of his coworkers’ jokes. On a recent episode of NPR’s Book of the Day podcast, O’Heir joined host Juana Summers to talk about his memoir Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles and Parks and Recreation.

Nearly 10 years after the show’s 2015 finale, Summers was eager know what the Parks and Rec cast talks about these days in their famous group text thread. In the interview, which originally aired on NPR in November, O’Heir noted the recent birth of Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger’s son Ford.

“He sent us the cutest picture you’ve ever seen,” O’Heir said of Pratt, who played Andy Dwyer on Parks and Rec. “It’s that type of stuff. It’s not show biz-y at all.”

However, he said, the cast did send their congratulations when Nick Offerman, who played parks director Ron Swanson, won a 2024 Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his role in HBO’s The Last of Us.

“But it’s generally, like, Retta is the queen of history, and Retta will just post some random thing that happened,” O’Heir said of the actress and comedian who played Parks’ Donna Meagle. “She goes, ‘This was 10 years ago today,’ and then we all just go on a rant about whatever that was about.”

“It’s just personal,” he added of the group chat, known to the cast as “Parks Family Text.” “It’s people who, to this day, are good friends, and we love each other.”

Over the years, other Parks and Rec stars have confirmed that the cast have continued to keep in touch via the group chat since the show ended.

“We’re all so busy so it’s not like we see each other all the time,” Aubrey Plaza said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2019. “But we have a mass texting chain and someone updates it every other day so we’re all still spiritually and technologically connected.”

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“We have a text chain,” Adam Scott also confirmed in a 2022 appearance on Access Hollywood. “Everybody’s in pretty close contact. It’s a tight group.”

And on Watch What Happens Live last July, Rashida Jones told host Andy Cohen that the Parks text chain was “very active.”

“They’re just the greatest,” O’Heir told Summers of his former costars. “And I sometimes think I sound very Pollyanna and very, like, ‘Oh, it’s all — everything was wonderful.’ But it kinda was. It kinda really was. And I will be forever grateful. And I know I will always be known as Jerry. And people are like, ‘Does that bother you?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, hell no.’ I will take that with a badge of honor.”