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Ben Schwartz Explains Jean-Ralphio's "Bananas" Parks and Recreation Evolution
"Mike [Schur] pitched the idea that I just pop up out of nowhere. I never enter a room anymore. I just appear," Schwartz told Jimmy Fallon of Jean-Ralphio's "Muppet" evolution.
While Parks and Recreation was full of hilarious characters, Ben Schwartz's Jean-Ralphio Saperstein was one who always stole the show.
The beloved NBC sitcom ended in February 2015, but the residents of Pawnee still hold a special place in the hearts of fans. So Jimmy Fallon asked Schwartz about playing the fictional entrepreneur during the Sonic the Hedgehog star's August 15 visit to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Schwartz explained how Jean-Ralphio grew more ridiculous as the seasons went on.
"The amazing part is that role kind of started as I thought it was just going to be like a one-off, and that character started as almost a normal human being," Schwartz revealed.
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"If you track the show, slowly he just becomes a Muppet and a cartoon — someone that doesn't live on this earth anymore," Schwartz said of Jean-Ralphio. "So we got a clip from the very first time I was on the show. And then we got a clip from the end of the show, and you're going to easily tell that I got a little bit more comfortable and then things got bananas very quickly."
The first clip, from Season 2, Episode 13 ("The Set Up"), is Jean-Ralphio's first appearance on the show, when Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari) pitched him to Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) as a prospective assistant.
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"That's like a regular person. It's like a person you might see," Schwartz remarked after the clip. "That's a person that you might see on Earth. You could see that person and be like, 'That's a human being!'"
"So after that rehearsal we did that, [Parks and Rec creator] Mike Schur came up to me and he said, 'You know, we're going to be bringing you back,'" Schwartz recounted. "Which was so exciting, because I thought it was going to be one episode."
"Slowly we started going more bananas," Schwartz told Fallon.
"Then Mike pitched the idea that I just pop up out of nowhere. I never enter a room anymore, I just appear," recalled the comedian, voice actor and improv performer. "This is in the end, when we've had quite a bit of time to have fun. This is near the end of the show, so this is the arc of Jean-Ralphio. This is how silly it was."
Fallon rolled a clip from the final season of the NBC sitcom, a scene featuring Jean-Ralphio and his equally absurd sister, Mona-Lisa Saperstein (Jenny Slate), dancing in a cemetery after Jean-Ralphio faked his own death so his sister could cash out on the life insurance policy and launch a casino in Tajikistan.
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"Who is that person? What has happened in their life?" Schwartz said once the clip was over. "He's a Muppet. That's an intense little Muppet."
"But isn't it fun to get to do that?" asked Fallon. Parks and Recreation fans would agree.
"Oh, it's the best. Silly time is the best," Schwartz answered.
