Nick Offerman appeared on Talk Is Jericho to talk about playing former pro wrestler Jinx Millet in the new Apple TV series Margo’s Got Money Troubles. He came away from three weeks of training with Chavo Guerrero Jr. with ribs out of place and a hard-won respect for the pro wrestling business.
“Never again will I watch any wrestling without remembering how brutal it is,” Offerman told Chris Jericho. “People make a big deal over the showmanship of it, or that it’s not based in reality. It’s certainly a combination of showbiz and sport, but the sport part is pretty damn real. I ended up with some ribs out of place, just connective tissue, getting shoved around. At the end of the day, I felt like I had played four games of football and been in a car accident, and we were being nice to me. So it’s a hats off to everybody who does what you guys do. It’s incredible.”
Offerman trained for three weeks with Guerrero, the wrestling consultant who’s also worked on GLOW, Young Rock, and The Iron Claw. He spent a few months in the gym beforehand with trainer Grant Roberts, who’d previously prepped Hilary Swank for Million Dollar Baby.
“I was relatively ignorant,” Offerman said of his wrestling knowledge going in. “I knew the pop culture, the big stars of my youth, Hulk Hogan and Macho Man. My friend wrote a song about the Von Erichs. I knew bits and pieces, but I had no idea of the rich lore and just the culture, until I started researching for this job.”
“I read Bret Hart’s memoir and Mick Foley’s memoir, basically getting really into looking at all the different looks and gimmicks and characters that wrestlers have had over the years,” Offerman said. “It was a wonderful permission that Jinx’s heyday was like 30 years ago, because that allowed us to be a lot more campy.”
“I have to say, it’s like getting cast as a linebacker or something,” Offerman added. “If you’re going to be out there actually representing and playing the sport, you got to respect it and treat it with absolute reverence, because I own a mirror, so I’ve never had a big enough ego to think that I can just ride it out on my personality alone.”
The first surprise in the ring was the ropes.
“Immediately they just started me running around the ring, and even just learning to bounce off the ropes,” Offerman said. “Those ropes look a lot cushier. It’s a steel cable. They’re like, you’re gonna really bruise up your back and rib cage just from the fun part. So I spent three weeks with them. That was really intense. They did a great job of letting me take baby steps. So it wasn’t until the last week that I was climbing up on the top rope and stuff. If I was younger, I would have definitely been more stupid and I would have hurt myself somehow. But I’m old enough that I listened to them, and I didn’t try to do anything past what the teacher said.”
Offerman compared the work to jazz improvisation.
“When I would choreograph and participate in stage combat, whether it was with swords or hand to hand, the most important thing is your trust,” he said. “I found the same thing with the wrestlers. The first thing you do is just establish we have eye contact. We’re all on the same page. Nobody’s going to throw a move until everybody’s ready, and that keeps everybody safe. I really likened it to improv. It’s improv, but it’s like improvising a jazz dance. You have a vocabulary of moves or notes, so that you’re not just going to flip out and do something crazy. You got three moves to get back to the hip check or whatever. You pick your moves off your own body size, your own strengths and weaknesses. My style turned out to be slow and clumsy. That makes me a perfect collaborator with talented people.”
Jericho appears in episode four (“Buddies”) as himself in a wrestling convention scene alongside Offerman and Nicole Kidman, who plays retired wrestler turned legal mediator Lace. Jericho took multiple hip tosses from Offerman during the shoot.
“That’s a testament to you and all of the collaborators,” Offerman told Jericho. “There is real violence, there’s real physical activity happening, but at the same time, it’s collaborative, because we depend on each other to really do the moves. And there’s a winner and a loser, but we have to get up and do it again tomorrow, so there’s sort of a happy medium in there. All those moves, I never could have been convincing in any of them without all of your excellent coaching and collaboration. I would have been terrified.”
“The fact that you came and generously did those scenes with us speaks to how welcoming and familial wrestlers are,” Offerman told Jericho. “People in the wrestling world, there’s a lot of televised enmity and all part of the narrative, but everyone has to lean on each other, and everyone is working together to support the form. So I was just really grateful to be a student.”
Jericho also confirmed on the same episode that he originally auditioned for Jinx before the casting team wrote him in as himself instead.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles premiered on Apple TV on April 15, 2026, with the eight-episode first season finale airing May 20. The series is based on Rufi Thorpe’s 2024 novel and was developed by David E. Kelley. Elle Fanning stars as Margo, the daughter of a former Hooters waitress (Michelle Pfeiffer) and a recovering-addict ex-wrestler (Offerman) who turns to OnlyFans to support herself and her newborn. Chavo Guerrero Jr. handled wrestling consultation, and Jon Epstein was the stunt coordinator.
Click below to listen to the entire interview on Talk Is Jericho.
